Warning about Seagate drive support

[m1abrams]

Well I just had a Seagate 7200.10 500GB drive die on me. This drive was only 40 days old. Oh well I said it happens nice thing is the drive has a 5year warranty. So I call Seagate to get it RMA'd and they offer an advance replacement plan for $20 which will include the return shipping. So you get the replacement drive in 2 days and then send back the bad drive. Not too bad of a deal right.

Well they shipped the replacement drive and I noticed that the model# does not match the drive I am having replaced. In fact it is an older generation 7200.9 drive. So I call Seagate about this and the lady from India explains that it is a comparable drive! So is every other drive on the market but I bought the 7200.10 because of its data density and throughput over that of the 7200.9. So she finally says when the drive arrives ship it back and we will ship you the right one. Ok, well what about the fact that I paid extra to get a replacement fast and now it is going to take longer, her response was I am sorry but we can not do advance replacement on the 2nd drive! So not only am I screwed out of $20 but I am also going to end up waiting even LONGER than if I had not paid $20.

So I ask her to let me talk to her manager. He was a bit nicer and actually found out that the issue was with the S/N on my drive does not match in THEIR system the model number that is printed on my drive. Yet when I gave them the info on the drive for RMA they asked for BOTH the S/N and the Model #. Now they want me to scan the drive label and send them the image.

[cenwesi]

lol, i just bought one yesterday... I hope mine doesn't die anytime soon or at least give me some sort of error when the drive starts to die like my last 250gig did.

[m1abrams]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

lol, i just bought one yesterday... I hope mine doesn't die anytime soon or at least give me some sort of error when the drive starts to die like my last 250gig did.

Funny part is the reason I bought this drive is because I have 4 7200.10 320GB drives that have been rock solid for 2 years now. However with hard drives you never know how long they will last. I do know one thing and that is they will in fact die one day. This particularly early death could have been caused by mishandle in shipment and/or by the stock boys at Staples, who knows. I am not upset by the drive failing, I am upset by the treatment of Support.

[Slipshod]

That's a pretty jacked-up support response.

I switched over to Western Digital a while back, and have been very happy. Of course that's probably just because I haven't had to contact their support yet. And I *HIGHLY* Recommend their new 640GB WDs. Screaming fast, super quiet, fairly inexpensive, and modest power consumption. Not as low-power as the WD Green drives, but these are also 7200RPM instead of ~5400. REALLY fast, REALLY quiet. Better sustained throughput than a raptor!

[bastafidli]

Call you credit card and dispute the charge. They have usually an option "service not as described" that covers your situation.

[m1abrams]

Thanks for reminding me about disputing the CC charge, I may have to resort to that. When I mentioned that since I am not getting my drive replaced as quickly as advertised and what would Seagate do to resolve that issue, his flat response was "Seagate can not refund the Advance replacement charge". When I receive the proper drive I will contact them and see if I can get this handled without resorting to calling the credit card.

On top of these issues, I noticed that I have 3 pending charges on my CC from Seagate for the exact amount of the advance placement fee! Hopefully they are just "reserve" charges and will go away, but who knows with this wonderful company.

[mayamaniac]

From the title of the thread, i thought there was something faulty with all seagate drives. But this is about their customer service, not their drives. And by far not the worse case of customer service I've heard, actually it's not that bad at all compare to the horrible stories I've heard from other companies.

[m1abrams]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

From the title of the thread, i thought there was something faulty with all seagate drives. But this is about their customer service, not their drives. And by far not the worse case of customer service I've heard, actually it's not that bad at all compare to the horrible stories I've heard from other companies.

I will see if I can change the thread title to show that it is a Support issue, good call.

And you are right this is not even the worst customer service I have come across, however that is still not an excuse. Yes I am venting here a bit in this thread, it is my form of "kicking the cat".

Update: They are shipping me the correct drive under 2day shipment, should have it on thrusday.

Edit: Does not look like I have access to change the thread title, if an admin would like to change it to show that the warning is about Seagate Support that would be nice.