Steven Rumbalski says:

Having worked customer service for several large corporations, I can say with confidence that the way to resolve this is to make contact outside of the normal channels (good luck finding what those are). As soon as someone outside of customer service owns a problem it will be resolved. Letters are harder to ignore than phone calls (preferably sent via certified mail). In the letter detail clearly your claim and the resolution you expect.

gnomic says:

File a consumer complaint with the AG office, email ziff davis, and post this on the consumerist.

That will get their attention.

Randy says:

I find it easiest to always start at consumerist.com and let them know of your problem. They tend to publish those things on the web page, and someone invariably comes along with the helpful information you need to get the problem resolved.

Andrew says:

Right now I’m waiting to hear from Seagate. They said they would contact me within a day with the return information, but that was Friday evening. I’ll give ‘em till Monday evening then call back and see what’s what.

And you bet the Consumerist is high on my list. I also have PR contacts at Seagate who can probably get me through to the right people. The level of silliness is absurd, to be sure.

Dave says:

I had the same thing happen to me with Seagate. My drive was roughly 1 year 2 months old when it took a dump. Seagate tells me the warranty is expired, I argued the drive is less than 2 years old, yet they indicated the warranty expired BEFORE I even bought it. Luckily I was able to print off the Newegg PO and fax it to them. They agreed, of course. Still, that was some bullshit on their part to try and get out of doing a warranty replacement. I’ll never buy Seagate again.

My latest drives are the WD 640AAK’s. Dual 320 platters with speeds almost matching the Raptor’s. I’m sticking with WD for now on.

Andrew says:

Update: No message from Seagate. Called again. Different rep told me they’re still waiting to see my receipt. I explained that I already explained that I didn’t have one.

So “Kirsten” is going to have “Lance” (the supervisor) get in touch. Sheesh.

Meantime… I found the receipt. Yay, Newegg for keeping all of them on file.

And… Seagate’s automatic “tell us how we’re doing” e-mail came. So I did, nicely (even giving credit for things like ease of use of the site). We’ll see if my “Very Unsatisfied” ratings earn me a response.

My Barracuda 7200.10 drive failed. Your web site indicated it was out of warranty, which is incorrect — the 7200.10 drives are less than three years old, and have a three-year warranty. (Further, the date code on the drive indicates it was manufactured in Oct. 2006.)

The phone rep told me that the warranty *expired* in October 2006, which is impossible. (As I pointed out, the 7200.10s were just coming off the line then.)

I could not find my receipt, but the fact that the drive *couldn’t* be out of warranty should have been enough to get me a replacement. But it wasn’t.

I finally convinced a customer service supervisor (”Lance”) to “extend the warranty” — his words, and incorrect — but haven’t heard back with instructions.

To say my frustration level is high is an understatement. There is no way that a 7200.10 drive can be out of warranty, period. And the date code should have clinched it. But I have called and called to try to get a replacement.

At this point, I’m beginning to think you should be offering to replace this drive with a newer, better one as an apology for this hassle. C’mon, guys — you can do better!

Andrew says:

‘nother update: Lance from Seagate explained what the problem is on his end:

The problem is that is shows up as a drive that was intended to go into an enclosure for an external drive. With those types of drives they are warrantied as one unit not just the internal drive. When you remove the drive from the enclosure it voids the warranty of the drive. However sometimes mistakes in the system are made so the proof of purchase should resolve this issue.

I don’t know why the records show that. I bought it as a ’straight drive,’ not as any kind of special. And the second drive I got from Newegg at the same time shows up as A-OK, warranty-wise.

Luckily, as I said, Newegg keeps purchase records for years, so I was able to send the receipt to him. But that still doesn’t quite resolve Seagate.

1. It shouldn’t have been this hard. The drive was introduced fewer than three years ago (the warranty period). Ergo, it has to be under warranty. End of story!

2. In my first phone convo, the Seagate rep said they were “extending” (read, “honoring”) the warranty even though I couldn’t produce a receipt. But then the company continued to require one. So did that first guy lie?

Regardless, it looks like I’m finally on my way to a new drive. But we’ll see.

tommy says:

I have never *NEVER* had a problem getting faulty WD drives replaced simply based on the date code on the drive. Of course it’s been a LONG time since I’ve had to do it (knock on wood), but their warranty/policy was (at the time) 5 years from the date of manufacture if there was no receipt. I would get my replacement drive overnight and ship back the faulty one in the same box.

Cake.

I agree with the first poster (Steve), go up higher than ‘customer service’ who are trained to give as little as possible. … and do it in writing, via certified mail.