Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,misc.consumers (
More info?)
In article <h3ob11p829d84a4e5a9jj7tqfdastscrkh@4ax.com>, neutrino1@comcast.net (Daniel Prince) writes:
| I recently purchased a Seagate oem 300 GB ide drive from an ebay
| vendor. He claimed in his ad that the drive had a five year
| warranty. When I checked the Seagate web site, it said that the
| warranty on the drive ends on 10-MAR-2006 which is only one year and
| a few days.
|
| I contacted the seller and he said:
|
| "Currently Seagate is reworking its warranty for the drives it
| manufactures. The warranty is retroactive on all its internal
| drives but all the drives I currently have do not reflect the new
| change in warranty status. I can either ship another drive that
| seagate will warranty regardless of what the web site says or I can
| refund your money."
|
| Is this true? Does the drive I bought (Model: ST3300831A S/N:
| 3NF05G94) have a five year warranty? Thank you in advance for all
| replies.
I bought a new, shrinkwrapped Seagate retail drive kit at CompUSA. On
the outside of the shrinkwrap was a big sticker proudly proclaiming the
new 5 year warranty. The documentation in the package described only the
old one year warranty. I checked Seagate's web site and the warranty was
listed as expiring in less than one year. I called Seagate's customer
service and (with great difficulty due to the language barrier) had the
rep do the same lookup. After five or six tries of entering the wrong
serial and/or part numbers (and telling me that the drive had no warranty
at all because because it must have come from an OEM) she finally got it
right and confirmed the ~10 month warranty.
Over the course of several more calls to Seagate customer service and to
CompUSA I tried to find out what had happened to the 5 year warranty. Some
people claimed that it had never applied, some people claimed that it applied
from the date of manufacture (suggesting that the drive was 4+ years old)
and others said not to worry about it as long as I had proof of the warranty
(the big sticker?). I spent more time on this than I normally would because
the drive itself seemed to be flakey (recoverable read errors) and I wasn't
sure whether it was a compatibility issue or an actual drive failure. Between
the warranty issue and the reliability problem I decided to return the drive.
CompUSA did not charge a restocking fee.
If I were you I'd get a refund. My experience was months ago and Seagate
had supposedly changed their warranty a while before that. I don't think
they had any 300G drives out before the change. Regardless of whether
the confusion is Seagate's or your seller's at this point it sounds like
a bad deal...
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com