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Maxtor cuts warranty from 3 to 1 year effective 10/1/2002!

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Posted by: deeremj

Well, I guess we can now debate how strongly maxtor feels about the reliability of their drives:

http://www.shareholder.com/maxtor/n...20905-89398.cfm

excerpt:

Effective October 1, 2002, all Maxtor desktop drives will carry a one-year standard warranty.

-MJ


Posted by: tivohaydon

I've had to replace roughly 1/3 of my Maxtors in the last few years. Quite a few needed service outside the new 1 year window.

Most of them didn't outright fail but had too many "seek retries". Definitely made them unsuitable for TiVo ("stopple") and also quite a bit disconcerting to watch your PC lock up for a quarter second or so every minute or two.

Before anyone says anything about "personal experience" I'd just like to say I have a stack of 12 drives sitting around doing nothing, 2 waiting to be shipped for replacement, and roughly 20 drives operating in machines or TiVos. I've had quite a few more flow through my hands.

I guess Maxtor feels it's cheaper for them to have someone buy a new drive than service it. (Duh?) Wonder how the consumer will feel about throwing away a drive slightly over a year old they paid $200 for?


Posted by: kgidley

Does anyone know if this means that the warranty on ALL drives is changing or is this only for drives sold after Oct. 1? Doesn't seem like they can alter the warranty after you purchase the drive, so I have to assume that means as long as you buy before Sept. 30, you should have a 3-year warranty. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Thanks,


Posted by: mrtickle

I think it's only for drives sold after Oct 1, otherwise as you say it wouldn't be fair. Also it's only for you guys - here in Europe they have to give a minimum 2 year warranty by law :)


Posted by: nineatesix

So is there any reason to buy a retail drive anymore instead of a white label?


Posted by: bsnelson

Well, at least in theory, if it's a retail, Maxtor will still RMA the drive directly, where a OEM has to be sent back to the place of purchase.

Having said that, I've RMA'd four OEM drives with Maxtor in the last year or two, and they didn't blink once.

Brad


Posted by: Merle Corey

Well, in all fairness, they're not moving all warranties to 1 year:

quote:
Maxtor said:


The MaXLine is the one that's probably going to get the most attention anyway - that's the line where they're bringing in the 320's. That said, it's still a drastic reduction on the other lines.

MC


Posted by: c3

Just like what I had predicted, Western Digital is joining Maxtor by reducing the warranty on most drives to 1 year, effective (guess what?) 10/1/2002.


Posted by: RichIngram

Seagate as well.

From seagate:

"Seagate® would like to inform you that beginning October 1, 2002, all Seagate desktop and personal storage products will ship with a one-year limited warranty. "

Then they also said:

"The new warranty policy will allow Seagate to remain a leading supplier in the highly competitive desktop disc storage market, delivering innovative, reliable and cost-effective personal storage products. Seagate continues to incorporate state-of-the-art features, such as SoftSonicÔ fluid bearing motors, G-Force Protection, and other 3D Defense SystemÔ features, to ensure that its drives perform reliably in the field. "

So cutting the warranty enables them to be more competitive - eh ? I would buy their drives if they had 3yr warranties.

Are these companies run by MBA's - only interested in lining their pockets with stock options (and needing to raise the price) and stuffing the customer ?

Richard.


Posted by: vertigo235

man what a ripoff, this sucks


Posted by: PVR Joe

WOW!

Not a good thing, I go thru alot of drives. go figure, and I have ALWAYS AND ONLY used Maxtor. One thing about Maxtor is their RMA department has always been tops, if you do an advanced RMA it will be on your doorstep in 4 days MAX. That was until I RMA'ed a 160GB drive about 3 weeks ago, I have not done alot of diggin in the forum however they must have had some major issues with these drives, you could not even buy one again until last week, I think they knew they had an issue and pulled them, this brings on another point...

With the race for more GB moves on it's not like it used to be, add more platters and move on, these bad boys are going insane with space, thus more problems, It's a race to have the biggest drive on the block and I think the product quality is takin the hit, thus the shortened warranty periods. Kinda stinks since there is no use for a 320GB drive in a tivo anyway, but it sure would be nice!


Posted by: rogo

The "best" part about this is the rapid-fire agreement across the industry on the new policy.

It's a good thing the airlines... er, drive makers never collude.

LOL!

Mark


Posted by: RichIngram

Basically then we are left with no HD makers giving 3yrs on the *lower* end of the market. Not going to be good for consumers when they loose all their photos and data when the drive fails 1 day out of warranty.

Ricky.


Posted by: tivoupgrade

But, also potentially good for consumers, as it allows to drive manufacturers to charge less for the same drives. It doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the quality of the drives sold after October 1st vs prior to it - it does have a bearing on how much financial liability Maxtor (or any other manufacturer) wants to incur, and how much of a premium a consumer is willing to pay for that extra warranty.

As for losing data - a drive crash and the resulting data loss is essentially the same, whether the drive is under warranty or not. Consumers have to make the decision to backup and guard their data whether or not the drive is warranted for 1 year or 3 years... to assume that the 3 year warranteed drive is fundamentally better quality is probably not a good asumption...

Lou


Posted by: jasonh

Charge less? I don't think so....

It might enable them to make a bigger profit (or make a profit, where there was none before) and thereby delay a future price increase, but I won't hold my breath waiting for a price drop!

Historically, the only people who believe those kind of things are the manufactures themselves.... ha ha...


Posted by: harrellsm

ok. they all reduce their warrenty to one year. so, in the 11th hour the drive mysteriously fails. too bad. where's my replacement? god! is it my fault i've become so cynical and devious? i don't think so!:D


Posted by: tivoupgrade

quote:
Originally posted by jasonh
Charge less? I don't think so....

It might enable them to make a bigger profit (or make a profit, where there was none before) and thereby delay a future price increase, but I won't hold my breath waiting for a price drop!

Historically, the only people who believe those kind of things are the manufactures themselves.... ha ha...



Well, the first hard drive I purchased was a Tandon 10MB hard drive and it was $450 (this was 1983). Since then, drives have gotten cheaper to manufacture, cheaper to support, and cheaper for the consumer.

Historically, as things become cheaper to manufacture and support, prices go down, even if demand increases - manufacturers will lower their prices and 'go for volume'

Expect the prices of large drives to CONTINUE to go down as they have been for many years -- by reducing the warranty period, the manufacturers have just lowered their costs - and when their manufacturing ramps up to meet demand, they will lower their prices yet again to spark more demand.

Lou


Posted by: Rick lite

As tivoupgrade from Chicago says, we all face the risk of data loss from drives going bad, regardless of warranty length; therefore, the only protection is to back up data. But how do you back up TiVo data? I understand about small backups using MFS tools, but what about the shows? Only frequent, massive backups produced by drive removal and replacement could accomplish that, and that's not feasible. Even the smaller backups, containing wishlists, etc., lose their usefulness with time. Has anyone figured out how to connect the TiVo to the PC through a network (TiVoNet?) and make selective, frequent backups through the network?



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