Shipping of fragile components

[zibizibi]

Hi,

I'm about to buy a harddrive on amazon, but I wonder about something : is it frequent that fragile components like this get broken during the shipping ? Because even well packaged a harddrive remains somewhat sensible to shocks or vibrations I guess..

 

[welshmousepk]

im sure they are well aware of the sensitivity of the products they ship.

and if it arrives broken, you can return it. an inconvenience, but a small one.

 

[cjl]

Hard drives are surprisingly resilient when they are not running. I've ordered many hard drives online, and I've yet to have one DOA (dead on arrival).

 

[zibizibi]

Ok but my question is more specific : how frequent are that sort of problems ?

 

[jitpublisher]

Unless you go the factory and pick one up as it is coming off the assembly line it HAS to be shipped at sometime, to someone, somewhere, right? What, are you doing a survey or something?

 

[zibizibi]

Hehe no, just worried as it's the first time I buy a harddrive on internet. I'm kind of nut though as I already bought mobos on internet..

 

[steve9207]

Like cjl, I too have bought a number of hard drives online, just recently in fact. I've ordered a Seagate 7200.12, Samsung Spinpoint F3 (x2) and a WD Caviar Blue - all in the past year & all have arrived fine. They were all from Newegg, but Amazon is a large online retailer and I'm sure they package their drives accordingly.

You can always go to Best Buy, Frys, MicroCenter, etc for the piece of mind - but that also often will cost you...

 

[jsc]

You can always go to Best Buy, Frys, MicroCenter, etc for the piece of mind - but that also often will cost you...

And how do you think they get their drives?

You have to balance price and product range against the convenience of local purchase and possible return.

I also have never received a DOA drive, and I pretty much buy OEM drives - the ones that come in an antistatic bag in a box of styrofoam peanuts.

 

[jasobnd]

Its not the packaging but the delivery guy you need to worry about. I once ordered a MOBO from overclockers.co.uk delivered using Citylink which is a sub company of the Royal mail ( in the UK for anyone cross border ).

Door bell rang early in morning i found my keys open the door, look round to the right hand side of the house. I see a delivery driver trying to push my delicate package over a 6 foot gate. Now anyone tell me this, would packaging save myMOBO ??

 

[welshmousepk]

Its not the packaging but the delivery guy you need to worry about. I once ordered a MOBO from overclockers.co.uk delivered using Citylink which is a sub company of the Royal mail ( in the UK for anyone cross border ).

Door bell rang early in morning i found my keys open the door, look round to the right hand side of the house. I see a delivery driver trying to push my delicate package over a 6 foot gate. Now anyone tell me this, would packaging save myMOBO ??

outside of the UK, and away from royal mail, im sure these issues are much less common.

 

[zibizibi]

Anyway I bought it (WD drive), I'll post a line when I receive it.

 

[imnoeinstein]

outside of the UK, and away from royal mail, im sure these issues are much less common.

I'm not sure about the UK mail system,But I do know that here in the US it's more likely to arrive damaged if it passes through SC.
Thankfully, most Tech. co. insure their merchandise when shipping so inspect the packaging BEFORE you open it.If the package is damaged you can bring it to the post office and refuse the shipment.It will then be diverted back to it's origin.

 

[welshmousepk]

I'm not sure about the UK mail system

let me enlighten you. the UK mail system would be vastly improved if it were run by a bunch of trained monkeys. and stupid ones at that.

 

[zibizibi]

It works well. But I have to send back the Corsair PS I also received from Amazon because it makes some abnormal noise. It's not the first time I need to send something back, I guess it is definitely not uncommon to have problems with stuff bought on internet, the question are such problems less frequent in conventional brick and mortar shops? Not sure.

 

[jasobnd]

It works well. But I have to send back the Corsair PS I also received from Amazon because it makes some abnormal noise. It's not the first time I need to send something back, I guess it is definitely not uncommon to have problems with stuff bought on internet, the question are such problems less frequent in conventional brick and mortar shops? Not sure.

the main fact would be is that there are feck all high spec hardware shops around only in select places. most of which have to order the parts in and offer things at the same if not higher price. so when it all boils down the chance of a damaged package is out weighed in my eyes.