One of my Western Digital G-Drive's died. Now the marathon with WD begins

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41

Yeah, when I was dealing with their RMA ~4 years ago, the process was very similar. The date was given, actually even the tracking number (to a wrong address and wrong case) was given. Also, every time they hit the deadline, the case somehow disappeared. It took me 3-4 months of restarting it to finally get the replacement. At the end, they blamed it on not having that model for RMAs anymore (I pointed them to Amazon).

Although, I have never managed to get a live person on the phone, as those prompts always were ending up hanging up on me. But, every time I got an email from them, there was a link at the bottom to provide updates, and another (working) link to my RMA page, that was dropping those cases, once they claimed that drive was shipped.

So, how this compares to that UPS store that was asking for $20 more? How much did you pay for that drive?

By the way, HGST is the IBM/Hitachi disk division that WD purchased few years back.

42

This is a great read. Please continue! I’m sure it’s annoying to go through but it’s great info for any Chia participant. I fear where the hard drive warranty is headed though. Seeing cracks.

43

It is 18 TB.
I believe that I paid $499, and then the price went up to $549.

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When did you buy this drive? My last WD 18TB from Amazon was in April 2022 I paid $329.99 with tax $353.09

45

Over a year ago, just when large capacity drives were becoming hard to find.
Chia was selling for $1600, if I am remembering correctly.

That was the timeframe.

Yes, you can find WD 18 TB drives for $329.
But you will not find any from their G-Technology (G-Drive) line at that price.

I purchased the G-Drives (several of them), because they were the only high capacity drives available at the time.

There were some other high-end drives available, such as LaCie with Thunderbolt ports. They were hundreds more expensive, and I have no Thunderbolt ports on my computers.

46

But see you didn’t talk with Toni to hook you up.

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Who is Toni?
(20 chars)

48

Your telling me that you live in Jersey, and you don’t know Toni Pepperoni that will get you stuff from the back of the truck :sunglasses:

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My buddy George, I wish we still had shows on like that still without having to hunt down reruns.

52

So, that beats that $22 UPS clerk hands down.

As mentioned, I was using WDC for a long time, but after having to go through my last RMA, and seeing what you are going through, I am not sure whether I will be looking at their drives anymore. Although, them and Seagate basically purchased every other HD company, so we are really stuck when in need.

53

More companies need to start making those SSD like Nimbus EDDCT100/EDDCS100 100TB but $40,000.00 won’t happen today.

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By the way I offered that guy $230.00 to see what he does.

55

Yet another “due date” not honored.

I got an update today (a day past Charles’ promise). The relevant paragraph from his e-mail message is:

“Based on your concern, we appreciate your patience as your case is undergoing further review by myself and other resources on my team. We are prioritizing the investigation to receive an update in 1-2 business days.”

“further review”?
Further than what?

They probably have not yet plugged it in. And I doubt that Charles, who was overseas, is reviewing anything.

“other resources on my team”
More meaningless random words.

What are those other resources?
Is Charles’ team engaging the services of NASA?

“We are prioritizing the investigation”
Why must my return be prioritized?

You would think that Western Digital handles thousands of returned drives each week.
Will my higher priority result in other returns getting delayed?

Are there special circumstances with my failed drive that require a team and special priority?

“investigation”
Have they brought in Hawaii Five-O’s Che Fong?

720×540 69.5 KB

This is par for the course with Western Digital.
They shine their customers on with BS excuse after BS excuse for delay after delay after delay.

56

That photo make me LOL. Thank you.

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I got an e-mail message from Western Digital, today. The body of the message reads:

Response
---------------------------------------------------------------
New RMA Standard message sent to myemail@myemail.

Subject
---------------------------------------------------------------
Service Request - Product Registration

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Auto-Response By (Administrator) (07/11/2022 08:18 AM)
New RMA Standard message sent to myemail@myemail.

[—002:000403:29046—]

The above came from westerndigital_gtech@custhelp.com which is yet another domain.

The above message means zero to me, other than something happened on WD’s end.
How a customer is expected to decipher the above message is a mystery?

This is a huge drive manufacturer, and they do not give a $h!t that they send out pointless e-mail messages to countless customers.

Who was the executive that signed off on this type of useless customer notification going out?
How can they think that this is a good idea? How can they think that this is helpful?

So I called up Western Digital. After being forced to listen to 2 minutes of recordings that have zero to do with my phone call, I was connected to Eric.

I gave Eric my incident number, my RMA number, my e-mail address, my name and my phone number.
I read Eric the e-mail message.

Eric had no record of my incident.

After a while, Eric found whatever he was looking for, and told me that an RMA was created today.
That’s right. “Today”, weeks after they already gave me an RMA number and received my failed drive.

Eric told me that my replacement drive will ship out “As soon as possible”.
I pointed out to Eric that I would rather he use accurate language, and not what he thinks I would like to hear, or what his management tells him to shine me on with.

“As soon as possible” means that my drive will ship within the hour, or some time today – and we both know that nothing is being shipped today.

Eric told me it will ship within 5 to 7 business days.
I told Eric that that is what Charles (from my previous phone call) told me, and that was 7 days ago.

So here we are, again, with Western Digital not honoring their commitments – and I was told that my case has “Priority”.

I asked Eric why, if Charles’ deadline was not honored, then why should I expect this new “5 to 7 business days” to be honored?

I told Eric that I would rather be told “One month”, if that is the truth of when the drive will really ship, rather than being given dates that he knows that Western Digital has no intention of honoring.

I explained to Eric that my issue is not with him, and that it is unfortunate that he has to deal with frustrated customers that are the result of problems that his executive management create. But the executives that cause these issues do not take the calls from the customers. So the customers have no one else available to vent their frustration.

By the way, think about this.
Assuming Western Digital will ship me my drive in 5 to 7 business days…
Why are they delaying the shipment?

If you go on their website and place an order, I bet it will ship within 24 hours.

And I bet that my drive will not ship for at least two more weeks.
So what is so mismanaged with them? What is stopping them from putting a drive in a carton and shipping it out?

They are not a new company. They are not learning how to do this.
They should have a system in place where this happens as easily as taking a nap.

Yet the customer is unable to check their own RMA on Western Digital’s website, the customer gets e-mail messages that are pointless, the customer gets e-mail messages from multiple domains, the Western Digital employees have trouble finding the customer’s case, they miss deadline after deadline, they shine the customer on with promise after promise, and they delay and delay and delay shipping the customer their drive.

59

I’m just curious if you ever mentioned to them what the drive was used for. Could that result in an account/person being flagged? Can me leery from the GPU mining side of things where any mention of crypto mining and warranties are void. Yes, I could easily see this happening in the Chia space. If not today, maybe tomorrow. This will all come down to longevity. In theory right? Chia farming is light on drives. Low energy. But if OGs start talking about drives failing? Think about it.

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He used the drive to store pictures of the BBQ party, yea that’s the story!!!

61

Not at all. I had exactly the same experience with WD Red drive about a couple of years ago. My RMA was dropped, and a new given two/three times. So, @seymour.krelborn is just at the very beginning of that process.

Also, I assume that that drive was purchased prior or just when chia started, as such WD cannot just retroactively change their warranty terms (some NVMe providers did try that, but backed off from that BS).

Lastly, trying to look at correlations, where there are virtually no causations is just a waste of time. Chia has zilch effect on those drives.