Kinda got screwed/****ed at Western Digital

I figured that this would be the best place to put it, either here or in Storage...

Anyways. So my hard drive that I have of theirs (180GB PATA) has crashed on me twice, showing up as not formatted in My Computer, basically causing me to format and recover, or just plain give up on it (which I have now done). So I go through and find that my hard drive is still under warranty until the first of the year (yay for me) so I email their support and they say that I can either replace it (for the $77 market value) or turn it in and get an upgrade to a different drive. Upon hearing that I went through and looked and saw that I would like to get the SATA 160GB version just for simplicity and a tiny speed boost. I am then directed to call on the phone support...

So I am on hold for 30 minutes, okay whatev, then I talk to the guy, he tells me they give generous discounts for the "upgrade" process so I figured, sure why not, and tell him the model number which has a $100 market value and figure I will pay the extra $20 to get it out of the way. Well he tells me that with turning in my hard drive I get a WHOLE $18 credit!!! making my price come down to $82... told the guy, thanks, but no thanks, and just asked for him to replace my drive with a new one of its kind. I dunno, just doesn't exactly seem fair to only get a measly discount on a drive, when I would much prefer to go and buy another 160GB SATAII Hitachi drive for that money.

Oh well, just blowing off some steam, and I should be getting a new drive next week sometime.

Anyone else had a problem like this with them?

I don't think you got screwed. You are getting an exact replacement rather quickly.

It is too bad that you can't get a screaming deal out of WD. You are still getting a replacement which is all they have to do to not screw you over. Next time you have a drive problem run the drive diagnosic software from he drive manufacturer right after backing up anything you don't want to lose.

never had a prob with WD for replacements..

However I only buy enterprise level drives..

anything less than a 5 year warrranty is bogus..

Do they still offer those replacements? I remember RMA'ing a 10GB WD Caviar drive about 2 years or so ago, and they offered either a 30GB drive for free, or $20 for a 40GB drive. Needless to say, I went with the 40GB drive, and didnt even have to mail my bad drive to them.

I guess they got more strict with their prices, it used to be quite a bargain.

I dunno, I mean, I can understand their side somewhat. Seriously, how much would you pay for a dead hdd?

Midnight Dream said:

I dunno, I mean, I can understand their side somewhat. Seriously, how much would you pay for a dead hdd?

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lmao

i sent back a 200gb to them, they said it had a market value of about $80, fine whatever. i just went to their website, put in my serial number, saw i still had warranty, then had my choice of sending it first or them sending first and holding the $80 against my credit card. i did the second option and it was great.

I can't remember if it's nVidia or ATi that have an upgrade plan, but they do nearly the same thing with it.

thanks guys for the replies.

karl pell said:

It's not clear from your post whether or not you've shipped the defective drive ... when you do, I would advise that you track it's progress carefully.

I recently warranty replaced a 120 ... UPS had it signed for on WD's dock on Date x, but WD did not acknowledge receipt until I filed a dispute with VISA.

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I did the "advanced replacement" so they have charged my debit card $90 until they receive the defective drive. Basically I get my new drive and ship them the bad one.

Midnight Dream said:

I dunno, I mean, I can understand their side somewhat. Seriously, how much would you pay for a dead hdd?

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Well it isn't the point that they are going to be buying it back from me. The fact is that it is still under warranty and I figured I could get my money's worth out of the drive and not get cheated out of ~$60 (79-18).

Appears that you just have a corruption problem. If you're OC'ed, make sure that the PCI lock is enabled. You should also run Memtest86 for RAM-related errors.

JoT said:

I can't remember if it's nVidia or ATi that have an upgrade plan, but they do nearly the same thing with it.

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ATi - they will buyyour old card no matter WHAT it is, for liek $50 or $100 - kind of a scam if it works for some,

RJARRRPCGP said:

Appears that you just have a corruption problem. If you're OC'ed, make sure that the PCI lock is enabled. You should also run Memtest86 for RAM-related errors.

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the first time it happened though was running on stock settings though and the second was just on a completely random bootup. I will do as you say and run memtest though to see if it picks anything up.