An RMA-process Review for Western Digital

[BonzaiDuck]

On approximately July 11, 2014, I put in a request for RMA replacement of a 600GB VelociRaptor HDD I'd purchased in June, 2011.

I made the purchase then from Compu-Plus in Monsey, NY/NJ. I had used the reseller since 1997. Apparently, they only recently went out of business, since I can no longer find their web-site.

The original drive arrived DOA after I purchased it. Or -- perhaps it made it through initial format and Win7 installation for about a day's time. In any event, I returned the drive to the reseller for replacement. The working, error-free drive was soon installed, and it served me for three years. The warranty on the VR drives is 5 years. I wouldn't have known if there were any caveats to the warranty.

After decommissioning the drive from 24/7 use at the end of that three-year period, I tried to re-partition and re-format the drive for use as a backup. The drive gave up its ghost and died during that operation.

So I poked around the Western Digital web-site, attempting to arrange an RMA. The automated RMA page failed to verify that the drive was under warranty. I was able to communicate with WD Support via e-mail, and got a response two days later.

There was apparently some gap or omission in the WD database of serial numbers. I continued my e-mail exchange with the support-rep (Amy), who asked for the drive's serial number. Eventually, I had to produce a picture of the yellow/black&white HDD label. Amy persisted in escalating the RMA request, since the serial number didn't match any in their database eligible for warranty replacement. Of course, the drive-model was listed for 5-year-warranty, but not the serial number.

A few days later, I received a direct e-mail from WD RMA support stating that the request had been refused. I only responded briefly and politely, wondering how someone would have the resources to counterfeit a hard disk.

But within a day of that response, WD RMA-support sent me a response to my response, stating that they would go forward and honor my RMA request. A flurry of additional e-mails followed -- directions for shipping the defective unit, a UPS shipping label and RMA label I could print. I still thought I wouldn't get the replacement until I shipped the HDD carcass.

I was stunned. On the day they sent me the reversal and approval of my RMA request, I found the replacement drive delivered on my doorstep.

In a world where institutions, agreements, promises and contracts seem to be evaporating before our very eyes, this has been a most pleasant experience with Western Digital RMA-Support. My hat is off to all the WD folks who assisted me with the replacement.

[Disclaimer: I offered -- on my own -- to post this "RMA-review" at Anandtech, when I received the decision-reversal for my request. I figure the WD folks deserve it.]

 

[Blain]

[Disclaimer: I offered -- on my own -- to post this "RMA-review" at Anandtech, when I received the decision-reversal for my request. I figure the WD folks deserve it.]

Did they understand the "review" would not be posted on the main site, but the "Forums" instead?

 

[Arcanedeath]

I've had good luck with WDs RMA process in the past as well. They replaced a doa 1TB faex black drive with a 2TB one when I did an advanced rma.

 

[Dahak]

I noticed that they changed the way that you do the RMA process now too, about mid June i had to do an RMA for two RE4 drives and the way I always used to do it did not seem to work. So I had to create a WD Support account and register the SNs

Once the SN where registered then I was able to get the rma process started. Only to then find and issue with it accepting my CC for that Advanced RMA process. For some reason it would not take my visa, which I had used before, but my MC worked fine.

Now something else I found is that the Advanced RMA does not seem to work like it used to before,

Old - it would ship within 2-3 business days, most of the time I would get it next day, 2nd day at most
New - it will ship within 3-5 days, so it seems like for the Advanced RMA which you have to pay for (albeit its is inexpensive) this seems to be a step back.
This time it took 4 days before they even shipped it.

Now if these where standard consumer drives, I would be ok with but for the "Enterprise Drives" seems a little odd.

But all in all, I still had good success with doing RMA's with WD Drives. Now going forward I know the proper steps and info so it should not be so bad.
I believe part of it was because of the change

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I noticed that they changed the way that you do the RMA process now too, about mid June i had to do an RMA for two RE4 drives and the way I always used to do it did not seem to work. So I had to create a WD Support account and register the SNs

Samsung's tech-support site seems completely inoperable. I had noticed that a lot of tech support links of manufacturers seemed to be retreating from the use of e-mail: sometimes, you get a "chat" option -- which may not work; other times, certain magic passwords like "serial numbers."

Old - it would ship within 2-3 business days, most of the time I would get it next day, 2nd day at most
New - it will ship within 3-5 days, so it seems like for the Advanced RMA which you have to pay for (albeit its is inexpensive) this seems to be a step back.
This time it took 4 days before they even shipped it.

Now if these where standard consumer drives, I would be ok with but for the "Enterprise Drives" seems a little odd.

I examined the label on the replacement drive: The label says "Recertified." I ran the WD Diagnostics program against the raw drive -- "extensive" test. It breezes right through; appears flawless.

It may be that certain production-runs identified by serial number were sold under a procurement contract, with different terms of warranty. So the question would then be how the reseller obtained them. In all likelihood, there could be all sorts of steps prior to reseller possession of the stock with a range of different legal ramifications, and the ramifications could also all be entirely kosher.

WD never gave me an explanation, choosing to make vague mention of the question I raised over possibility of a "counterfeit." [Who would have the resources to do something like that, or even why?]

I'll never know for sure what it was all about. It was just nice to get a replacement, even if "recertified." I don't expect, for the prospective usage of the drive, that it will crap out anytime soon.

Did they understand the "review" would not be posted on the main site, but the "Forums" instead?

In the e-mail communication, I used the word "forum."

 

[Compman55]

My experiance with WD has always been very good. Back in the days of the non fluid bearing motors, I would have to RMA due to loud whine. Every time the process was like butter.

 

[Charlie98]

I examined the label on the replacement drive: The label says "Recertified." I ran the WD Diagnostics program against the raw drive -- "extensive" test. It breezes right through; appears flawless.

I got a 2TB WD Red that came with pending sectors right out of the box. I needed it in service so I went ahead and installed it and ran it for about 6 months. I error checked the drive and the pending sectors turned into bad sectors, so I RMA'd it. Nice and easy... I don't recall if I sent them mine first or not, but I got a 'recertified' 3TB drive in return. Even though it had been blocked down to 2TB, I used Acronis to wipe the drive and... voila!... a 3TB drive; that kind of made up for getting a recert drive in exchange.

I had just gone through the RMA process with my Samsung 840Pro... which was like pulling teeth, so the WD RMA process was a welcome relief.

I have a very hard time trusting recertified drives... I have 2 now... the replacement 840Pro (first as a laptop drive until it proved itself, now as my OS drive in my backup computer,) and the 3TB Red (as the backup media drive in my HTPC.) Funny thing is... the recert drives have lasted longer than the drives they replaced. Go figure. :\

 

[996GT2]

WD has one of the best RMA processes in the industry. Because of their great customer service, I would gladly pay a premium for a WD drive over any other brand.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I've had good luck with WDs RMA process in the past as well. They replaced a doa 1TB faex black drive with a 2TB one when I did an advanced rma.

Same, i've had them replace 5-6 year old WD RE4 (just barely out of warranty) drives with newer models, and sometimes larger sizes depending on what they have in inventory at no extra cost.

 

[Atreidin]

WD has one of the best RMA processes in the industry. Because of their great customer service, I would gladly pay a premium for a WD drive over any other brand.

I'm of a similar mind, but not when an equivalent product from a competitor costs half as much (taking into account spindle speed as well, such as 7200rpm, 3TB), and I'm building a big ZFS pool and expect some drives to die and get replaced eventually anyway. With how much they charge for their drives I would practically expect my replacement drives to be delivered by unicorns.

 

[mirageracerx]

Western Digital has always been great with RMA's on my end. seems to me they are quicker with the consumer RMA than they are with the enterprise stuff. all in all they always do a good job regardless.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've only had to RMA one WD drive (I haven't bought that many WD drives, I bought a lot of Seagates before they reduced the warranty), and didn't have any problems with the process. The only thing that irritated me was that I RMA'd a WD Black with 4.5 years warranty left and got a drive with only six months warranty.

 

[Burpo]

WD is GREAT for RMA's. Went thru their website for an RMA on a 3TB, and it was here in 3 days. They shipped me an external USB 3TB, so I removed the drive & saved the box & interface for a 1TB backup drive I had. Thanks WD!

 

[jjsbasmt]

I, too, have had superb service from WD with RMAs that past several years for myself and friends. Most of the time I did the request online, but in a couple of the cases I had to talk to Customer Service, and in each instance they were friendly, and very cooperative in the RMA process. And in one particular case I returned and External HD that was USB 2, and got back a brand new (not recertified) USB 3 drive of twice the size as the defective item.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I got a 2TB WD Red that came with pending sectors right out of the box. I needed it in service so I went ahead and installed it and ran it for about 6 months. I error checked the drive and the pending sectors turned into bad sectors, so I RMA'd it. Nice and easy... I don't recall if I sent them mine first or not, but I got a 'recertified' 3TB drive in return. Even though it had been blocked down to 2TB, I used Acronis to wipe the drive and... voila!... a 3TB drive; that kind of made up for getting a recert drive in exchange.

I had just gone through the RMA process with my Samsung 840Pro... which was like pulling teeth, so the WD RMA process was a welcome relief.

I have a very hard time trusting recertified drives... I have 2 now... the replacement 840Pro (first as a laptop drive until it proved itself, now as my OS drive in my backup computer,) and the 3TB Red (as the backup media drive in my HTPC.) Funny thing is... the recert drives have lasted longer than the drives they replaced. Go figure. :\

Well . . . surveying customer reviews of products has provided me some experience about how other folks perceive (or create their own) problems. I recently had a situation in which I'd purchased four Seagate NAS drives. [I would have been as well off or better to get WD Reds, but I bought the Seagates.]

I was working with two controllers: a dated NVidia nForce mobo controller that wasn't fully AHCI-compliant, and a PCIe SATA-III controller. Formatting one of these NAS drives on the nFarce and then reconnecting it to the newer controller caused a malfunction. I think after I'd "30-day-RMA'd" the drive back to the Egg, the same problem occurred with one of the remaining three, and so I started from scratch with AHCI-configured Intel controllers exclusively. The drive I'd sent back was wrongly judged to be defective. I'm guessing this might happen a lot, adding to "good recertified" product in addition to those that had actual "refurbishing."

But the manufacturer (like WD) deserve credit when customers are satisfied with RMA processing. Here's how I think they organize it.

With enough testing and product-improvement, they can reliably estimate what percentage of product will fail before the end of alternative warranty periods. They do the cost accounting; they know the average cost of simply administering an RMA return -- including replacement by a new or refurb unit; they set their warranty-period as a trade-off between customer satisfaction, low failure rate, and other factors acceptable to their profit expectations over the product life-cycle.

If they send you a unit relabeled "re-certified," they likely expect it will last at least through the end of your initial warranty. And as I understand it, the replacement unit is not covered under the initial warranty. As long as there's an equal chance the unit will last longer, I can't expect much better treatment.

Now I had another experience with Crucial-Micron a while back . . . The RMA replacement was quick -- no doubt about it. But the original modules weren't being run "out of spec" but that I could set CMD=1 instead of 2. The replacements barely held their own to the original specification. So one could conclude that they'd tested and binned prior RMA returns and putting them together to make kits for RMA replacement.

I just wasn't happy with the replacement I got from Crucial -- whether or not it was "acceptable."

 

[hinduluv]

Also report a very favorable experience with a WD RMA . I was even able to purchase inexpensive shipping within their RMA process. Whole process took less than 1 week.

 

[Coup27]

I should do an RMA review of Corsair. I bought a Flash Voyager GS 64GB because of it's advertised sequential write speed of 170MB/s. The unit I received would only reach 100MB/s no matter what computer, OS or settings were used. I had to return it at my cost for them to send me another one which performed exactly the same. I then found further evidence like internet reviews that could only reach ~100MB/s as well and then they stopped responding to my ticket. I gave up in the end because it became a waste of time but it has left a bitter taste in my mouth from a company I held in high regard.