http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2007/03/antiterrorist_o.html
March 26, 2007 Anti-Terrorist Oath Required for Seagate RMA With all the hoops manufacturers are making customers jump through, getting a warranty honored is getting almost as complex as getting a rebate check. But Seagate appears to have taken that trend to another level by making their customers promise not to use their repaired hard drive to make a nuclear bomb. "We had to get an RMA for a defective hard drive to Seagate the other day," wrote a reader at a small computer shop. "I went online to their web site and was greeted with the message 'This website has been changed and updated to make RMAs easier and quicker.' Uh-oh. Everyone in the computer business has learned the hard way that most companies are following Microsoft's lead, meaning that they're distorting the term 'quicker and easier' to mean infinitely harder and more complicated and frustrating and involving far more time. I pointed out the quicker-and-easier term on the Seagate website to my boss and he smiled knowingly and wished me luck." True to the reader's expectations, the new and improved Seagate RMA website turned out to be virtually useless. "Essentially, after spending 20 minutes filling out a long and complicated 'registration' form (this is quicker and easier?), the website flat out malfunctioned. It absolutely refused to issue an RMA number and simply ran me around in circles. I attempted for some time to get a phone number off the website, but none was present." Fortunately, as a computer dealer, the reader was able to find a number for Seagate in their files. Calling the number, I was danced through the usual phone tree, and put on hold, and eventually got through to the usual English-challenged representative from India (I think). Explaining my situation, he admitted that the website was 'having problems' and promised to help me. After taking the required information (including all the company information I had already typed into the website), he verified that the hard drive was indeed under warranty, and offered to set up an RMA. He instructed us to wait until we received THREE emails confirming the validity of the Hard Drive warranty and setting up the RMA, and to print out the third email with the actual RMA number and information. I asked why fully three emails were necessary, instead of one or even two, but he did not know. What part of 'quicker' and 'easier' does three emails replacing one represent, do you suppose?" Sure enough, though, after waiting several hours all three emails arrived. "The first two were useless, but the third one promised requisite information when we clicked on a link," the reader wrote. "We clicked and ... you guessed it ... it turned out to be a dead link. We tried on two different computers using two different browsers, still dead. So another phone call, work through the phone tree, more time on hold, and eventually another foreigner struggling with English. After some time he actually DID process the RMA, but before activating it he said he had to read a 'disclaimer.'" Disclaimer? Not your typical RMA process. "I then listened in amusement as he read a page-long statement in which I essentially had to promise that I would not use the replacement Seagate hard drive to build or disseminate information on building a nuclear bomb, or participate in any other 'terrorists activity.' I was laughing so hard that I had to calm myself down in order to give the 'proper' answer to this ludicrous question. By the time I finished assuring the Seagate representative on the phone that I would NOT use the replacement hard drive to build a bomb, even he was laughing." Once he took the anti-terrorist pledge, the reader's RMA was duly processed, but still not quite the way he would like. "Disappointingly, Seagate has abandoned the long available industry-wide policy of cross- shipping or advanced replacement in which they would ship the replacement hard drive immediately, and take a valid credit card number and hold it as insurance that we would promptly return the defective drive. This means that after getting the RMA number, we have to ship the defective drive to Seagate, and wait who-knows-how-long for the replacement. This extra delay means that our customer will have to wait longer for the repair, unless we replace his hard drive with one we have in stock, but this means when we finally do get the replacement back from Seagate, and put it into our stock, its warranty period will be mostly used up. And usually refurbished or replacement drives are less reliable." Unfortunately, as the the reader points out, it's getting harder in the storage market to vote with your feet when you don't like a manufacturer's RMA policies. "I would like to say we will replace Seagate with another brand, but with hard drive companies either going out of business or buying each other up, such as Seagate acquiring Maxtor, our options are becoming more limited," the reader wrote. "In summation, Seagate's 'quicker and easier' means several hours of company time, but at least we can all sleep well knowing that no terrorist would ever even think of using his Seagate hard drive to foster his evil ends, lest he risk voiding the warranty." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are a member of the Google Group dm.osint Contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit the group's archive at http://groups.google.com/group/dm_osint/topics To unsubscribe send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] FAIR USE NOTICE. 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