Ryan,
Unfortunately, I already sent the drive in. I can assure you it is packed well. Please use good judgment and inspect the packaging properly. Simply voiding my warranty over a trivial technicality is unfair in my opinion.
The drive is defective and has been giving me headaches ever since we bought it 2yrs ago. The OS just will not boot after a few months of use. All I get is a black screen and a flashing cursor. This has caused my customer a lot of frustration with us, and I have had to spend a massive amount of time and energy troubleshooting due to the spotty nature of the drive. Every few months for the past 2yrs I have had to drive 120miles round-trip to troubleshoot this issue. I have systematically tested every component, and I have to assume it's the drive giving us issues after all the trouble I've gone through. It passes all tests, but then just stops booting Windows after a few months. I reinstall Windows and it works fine...for a while. There is no virus, malware, or anything else I can detect when I put the drive in another PC to test.
Seeing as how 1TB drives can be purchased for $60-$80 now, the 250GB drive in question is only worth $15-$20 to me. Asking me to pay $20 to get your provided packing materials through advanced RMA, or $10-$20 for me to go out and fulfill your absurd packing requirements is unacceptable to me. I have plenty of packing materials here that will protect the drive just fine if it is packaged properly with care.
If you return the drive to me and void my warranty then I will throw the drive in the garbage and you will loose all future business from us. Your competitors don't have these super-strict conditions, and are happy to do advanced RMAs without having to pay anything. They do require a credit-card hold, but that is completely understandable. If you want to hold true to your packing requirements then I suggest you adopt a similar stance and process advanced RMAs without a $20 surcharge. This way you can be assured that you will get the defective drive back in your packaging without ripping off your customers. If you have a good product, you stand behind it.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Jason