Is Seagate a godawful company?

[John Connor]

I always disliked Seagate. I acctully have two very old Quantum fireballs that still work! WTH happened?

 

[DrMrLordX]

I used to be a big Seagate fanboy. The 7200.7 and (to a lesser extent) 7200.10 were both good-to-great drives. That's ancient history now, though.

I had already switched to WD by 2008/9 and didn't look back. Now they are a dysfunctional company desperate to survive the agonizing contraction of the platter-based HDD market. It is not surprising that their warranty policies are abysmal. They are going to cut costs everywhere possible, even if they run the risk of alienating customers.

If you choose to deal with 3rd-party/grey market resellers, you only increase your risk of warranty struggles.

 

[mxnerd]

Seagate and several companies took the money from investors, big or small, converted the public company into a private company, after a few years, it went public again.

All they care is how much money they earn, not how satisfied their customers are.

 

[jhansman]

My 2TB Backup Plus Slim USB 3.0 drive has proven to be a workhorse. Dunno what kind of company they are, but so far I have confidence in that product and would buy it again.

 

[Exterous]

I always disliked Seagate. I acctully have two very old Quantum fireballs that still work! WTH happened?

I kinda liked their old CEO for his statements: "I help people watch porn". Missed the boat on SSDs big time though.

I'm sad HGST got swallowed up.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I always disliked Seagate. I acctully have two very old Quantum fireballs that still work! WTH happened?

Maxtor happened to Seagate

 

[DKlein]

Not sure why you would be pissed at Seagate, for any reason whatsoever.

You went shopping based on price, bought used from a grey-market seller, and now you're pissed that you got a lemon? C'mon man, own up at least some responsibility here.

Edit: You might want to change your OP, so as not to unnecessarily libel Seagate here; they're not the ones who sold you the drive.

I like how you assume the worst about me just because I didn't realize I was buying from a bad seller. I saw a page, it said the drive was by Seagate, I bought it mistakenly thinking Seagate was still a reputable seller. Apparently, I did not realize there was a scummy third party seller involved due to not being an Amazon expert. But instead of help me out, you berate me. Stand up guy.

I explained why I was pissed at Seagate specifically still, after finding out it's a third party seller: their customer service was feces. It was hard on their website to find how to directly contact someone with the information, and then their phone service charges $15 to discuss something out of warranty, so had I talked to someone about the warranty, I'd have been charged for it? bs, bs ,bs.

Furthermore, whoever is selling this, there's a sales page on Amazon for the product (directly linked to the Seagate Amazon account) which details their warranties as 2-3 years, varying by drive. Then you buy it to find out it's out of warranty immediately? If Seagate doesn't want me to blame them, Seagate should police their Amazon sellers better, or better yet actually cover their warranties. Of course, then they'd lose sales and profits, so no, they won't until enough people complain, which is what we're doing here. But then there's always someone to come around and say, "oh no, don't complain, you're a cheap idiot, that's all." Kudos, brother Larry.

They don't stand by their warranty from the date of purchase by the customer; that in itself is enough to call them a godawful company. They clearly allow other people to buy and resell their drives, but won't cover them with warranty once sold off to the end customer. That's a deliberate business decision on their part, and I'm calling them out for it.

I am clearly not the first or only person to find this a terrible business practice. You can defend corporate BS all day, apparently you're making that your cause in this thread. Good luck, those poor companies and all the libelous accusations against them... who will think of the companies? Who?

Other than all the paid PR shills that do damage control on social media, I guess it's just up to you, VirtualLarry. Keep up God's work there.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I can sell you a 10 year old can of beans, that's not the bean company's fault.

Yes, if you report a fraudulent seller offering expired goods as new to Amazon and Seagate and they do nothing to stop it then you have a point.

But keep in mind that people want Amazon to let third parties sell things like 20 year old games, obsolete parts that Newegg no longer carries, ultra-cheap no-brand electronics from China, and so on.

The trade-offs are that you must be more careful when choosing a third-party seller, and sometimes you might need Amazon's help when the seller turns out to have scammed you. Amazon can't inspect a billion+ individual doohickeys for quality and value in advance while still offering the prices that the market demands. All they can do is ban the bad sellers after the fact and see that you get a refund or replacement.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If Seagate doesn't want me to blame them, Seagate should police their Amazon sellers better, or better yet actually cover their warranties.

Seagate doesn't police their Amazon sellers, Amazon does. (Or rather, actual, more often does NOT.)

They clearly allow other people to buy and resell their drives, but won't cover them with warranty once sold off to the end customer.

They are mfg. They cover them from the date of mfg. They also have authorized supply chains. You buy grey-market, you takes your chances.

Or do you want to live somewhere that doesn't have a free market? Caveat emptor! Why do you hate freedom? With freedom, comes responsibility. Which I have seen very little of from you in this thread.

I can sell you a 10 year old can of beans, that's not the bean company's fault.

Exactly! Especially when you're buying beans out of the back of a white van in the grocery store parking lot, looking for a deal, instead of just going into the grocery store and paying full price.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You can defend corporate BS all day, apparently you're making that your cause in this thread.

It's not corporate BS. Stop being such an irresponsible entitled little child. I haven't seen you once man up and admit that you were shopping for a cheap drive, and didn't pay attention to the fact that you were buying a grey-market drive from a third-party seller, and screwed up.

It's like buying a cut-rate Chevy from a backwoods user-car dealer in LA, without inspection, after the floods, and then asking the mfg for warranty service. Use your friggen noggin.

Edit: That said, aside from my lack of tact, I'm sorry that you got suckered, and were left holding the bag. I only know that (allegedly) Finity India sold used HDDs with their SMART data reset from a couple of threads by John Conner and cbn, here on these forums. I would never buy from them.

Also, if you were a new user to Amazon, you may not know of the many "issues" that can arise from their many third-party sellers.

 

[whm1974]

Seagate doesn't police their Amazon sellers, Amazon does. (Or rather, actual, more often does NOT.)


They are mfg. They cover them from the date of mfg. They also have authorized supply chains. You buy grey-market, you takes your chances.

Or do you want to live somewhere that doesn't have a free market? Caveat emptor! Why do you hate freedom? With freedom, comes responsibility. Which I have seen very little of from you in this thread.


Exactly! Especially when you're buying beans out of the back of a white van in the grocery store parking lot, looking for a deal, instead of just going into the grocery store and paying full price.

I'm kind of mixed on this. My advice is simply don't buy from third party sellers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've been snookered too, on cheapo Windows license keys. I thought, initially, I was getting a deal.
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/windows-product-keys-from-bonanza-sellers-avoid.2492789/

The difference between me and the OP, in this instance, is I didn't start a thread bad-mouthing Microsoft for not policing key sellers more. I accepted the loss as a learning experience, sucked it up, and moved on.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Amazons poor policing of marketplace, and OP's haste are to blame.

Gotta be careful on amazon, lots of cap like that

 

[Spicedaddy]

Bought drive from shady unauthorized Amazon seller, blames Seagate... Sorry OP, but deal with your mistake. You probably bought a used OEM drive, not Seagate's fault.

In my experience Seagate's reliability isn't worse than the other brands, and I've been satisfied the few times I've had to deal with RMAs. I haven't dealt much with their newer 3.5" drives, but if you want something more reliable go with enterprise class drives.

 

[Wuzup101]

Never had any issues with their drives. Have 6 of their 4tb NAS drives in my Raid-6 array. They have worked perfectly since I purchased them several years ago *knock on wood*.

 

[Fardringle]

If Seagate doesn't want me to blame them, Seagate should police their Amazon sellers better, or better yet actually cover their warranties.

The problem is that you did NOT buy from a Seagate seller. You bought from a third-party seller who sold you a drive that was OEM and already out of warranty when they sold it. Just because that seller included a link to Seagate's page in the product listing, that doesn't mean they are an authorized retailer.

A rough equivalent would be you buying a used car from a used car lot or a random person off the street, and then being mad at the vehicle manufacturer for refusing to pay for repairs on an old vehicle that they did not sell to you and that does not have a valid warranty. Be mad at the person who sold you the OEM drive with an expired warranty. Or at least contact them to see if they will replace it, and if not, THEN be mad at them..

 

[daxzy]

Furthermore, whoever is selling this, there's a sales page on Amazon for the product (directly linked to the Seagate Amazon account) which details their warranties as 2-3 years, varying by drive. Then you buy it to find out it's out of warranty immediately? If Seagate doesn't want me to blame them, Seagate should police their Amazon sellers better, or better yet actually cover their warranties. Of course, then they'd lose sales and profits, so no, they won't until enough people complain, which is what we're doing here. But then there's always someone to come around and say, "oh no, don't complain, you're a cheap idiot, that's all." Kudos, brother Larry.

They don't stand by their warranty from the date of purchase by the customer; that in itself is enough to call them a godawful company. They clearly allow other people to buy and resell their drives, but won't cover them with warranty once sold off to the end customer. That's a deliberate business decision on their part, and I'm calling them out for it.

That is literally the dumbest idea ever... to force businesses to police where their items end up along a vast distribution chain? Do you want an Idaho potato farmer to RFID every single potato to make sure some idiot doesn't end up buying fake/mislabeled Idaho potatoes from some roadside stall in BFE?

I personally have avoided Seagate drives (due to their 3TB debacle). But this is clearly not Seagate's fault. You bought from an unauthorized 3rd party seller. For all Seagate knows, it could have been used 24/7 until it was shipped to you.

 

[MongGrel]

I've avoided Seagate drives for decades myself, I usually would not voice an opinion like that in a tech area.

Just my two cents and opinion at any rate.

 

[MongGrel]

I used to be a big Seagate fanboy. The 7200.7 and (to a lesser extent) 7200.10 were both good-to-great drives. That's ancient history now, though.

I had already switched to WD by 2008/9 and didn't look back. Now they are a dysfunctional company desperate to survive the agonizing contraction of the platter-based HDD market. It is not surprising that their warranty policies are abysmal. They are going to cut costs everywhere possible, even if they run the risk of alienating customers.

If you choose to deal with 3rd-party/grey market resellers, you only increase your risk of warranty struggles.

I had a couple old Barracudas in the past that only lasted a couple years, switched to WD myself in the past as far as HDD's.

I still have many WD Blacks and RE3s working just fine in the house from over time.

But I could not testify to WD's newer things as far as long term.

 

[mindless1]

Went through Amazon, and yes apparently it was a 3rd party ("Finity India" or some such).

Have to agree with others, you gambled and lost. Not Seagates' fault. If you want to make purchases like this and win often enough to accept the losses, then accept the losses...

Even if you didn't realize it was fulfilled by a 3rd party, it was a gamble to not research enough to know that. I do it too, sometimes assume things and later realize I wasn't paying attention, or didn't have the time to fully analyze every aspect of every purchase, and even if my assumption was correct I still jump on deals a little too quickly sometimes.

As far as my experiences with Seagates in recent years, I do think it's shady that the warranty period starts from the date THEY ship it, when this is not how most other consumer products are warrantied, but it is what it is.

I haven't had an abnormal failure rate with Seagates, though my failure rate in general with all brands seems to be lower than a lot of people experience. I often wonder if it's that I don't shoehorn drives in with minimal cooling and only use quality PSU well below their wattage rating, but in your case I just suspect it was a used drive that they reset the smart data on, and that at the least you should complain to Amazon that they should drop this seller for fraud if they won't send you a replacement NEW HDD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I do it too, sometimes assume things and later realize I wasn't paying attention

Done that a few times. Saw a nice QNAP TS-431 NAS on ebay, on sale, and it seemed like a hot deal. It was the last one left from that vendor, so I hurriedly bought it. Then I started reading reviews, and saw that it was apparently limited to a 16TB total net RAID volume size. I was planning on using it with four 5TB HDDs I had shucked from external desktop enclosures.

So I cancelled the order (within 15 minnutes), and bought a TS-451, from the same vendor. Well, what shows up on my doorstep, but BOTH NAS units. Ugh. Total outlay, like $600-650, on NAS units. Whoops. Anyways, the 5TB HDDs worked with the TS-451, and I threw some 2TB drives I had leftover from decommissioning my server box into the TS-431.

Then, after upgrading the firmware to 4.2.2, I found out that by adjusting the inode size during the format process, you get various options on total RAID volume size. I think that the largest is 144TB. So, in the end, if I had just waited a month for a firmware update, I could have been happy with the TS-431 and saved a lot of $$$.

Oh well. That's what happens when you impulse-buy big-$$$ electronics, without doing your homework first, and making assumptions.

 

[Rifter]

I never buy anything from third party sellers unless its cheap enough that the warranty doesnt matter. Because you cant expect Manufacturers to stand behind unauthorized sellers.

If you want a warranty buy it from a authorized seller. Its really that simple.

And expecting seagate or amazon to help you out in this situation is OMFG laughable. Seagate has nothing to do with it, and amazon is literally working against you in this situation, look uo the forearm forklift situation, amazon is helping illegal knock off sellers destroy a US run company, ON PURPOSE! Amazon purposefully supports gray market sellers.

You cant blame either of them because you failed to do your homework.

 

[bigboxes]

I empathize with you, OP. It sucks being a victim of fraud. Hopefully, this wasn't too expensive of a lesson that you can learn from. I was a Seagate fanboy for well over ten years. They had good drives backed with good warranties. Sure, they eventually had issues and were replaced under Seagate's generous five year warranty. I had six of those IBM "deathstar" drives. Even after Hitachi (HGST) took over the line I stayed away due to their reputation. I didn't want to believe everyone when they started to complain about the 3TB drive failures. Surely, they were just exaggerating based on anecdotal experiences.

I was so worried about all my 1.5TB - 2 TB drives I had in my use. As I started replacing them with 4TB drives I tried some of Seagate's NAS drives. I just couldn't shake the lack of trust that I had developed. All the comparisons on Storage Review said that HGST was the most reliable drives. With Seagates warranties now at 1 year (down from 3 years which was down from 5 years) I decided to pay the extra and migrate all new HDDs in my file server to HGST. I am at a point in my life that I value reliability over cost. I back up all my data, but I rather not have to replace my drives on a yearly basis because their quality is so bad. I won't buy low end WDs any longer either. I do have a Raptor drive that is still going strong in its 12 year of operation.

 

[twelfth]

Maxtor happened to Seagate

Although it was Seagate that bought out Maxtor, this actually is about when I would point to Seagate taking a big fat dive in quality. I've run a simple 2x2TB NAS in Mirror 1 for 6 years now. The two 2TB WD Greens in there have run for longer than 7 separate Seagate 2TB drives combined.

 

[bigboxes]

Although it was Seagate that bought out Maxtor, this actually is about when I would point to Seagate taking a big fat dive in quality. I've run a simple 2x2TB NAS in Mirror 1 for 6 years now. The two 2TB WD Greens in there have run for longer than 7 separate Seagate 2TB drives combined.

I had two WD Greens fail in short time. WD has their bad drives as well.