I went to take the drive back today after 4 hours of backing up and cleaning it off, only to realise that there is a small sticker on the front of the box, which says in big letters 3 TB. It also says in very small letters, green drive, and the sticker is green.
Legally I could probably claim confusing marketing in a civil court, but who’s got the stomach or the money for that?
So I have to let it go and put up with a 5400 rpm drive.
My personal feeling is that this clever form of packaging is deliberately deisgned to confuse and sell a much cheaper product to the unsuspecting. Let’s face it, £90 for a 3tb drive these days is a lot of money, for a 5400 rpm drive it’s too much.
I’m fed up with companies pulling stunts like this, you can’t have a blue box with a tiny green sticker and then claim it’s a green drive. It’s cheating, and thre’s no othe way to put it. So Western Digital in my opinion are no better than cheating liars, and I’ll make sure I ring that bell eveywhere I go at every opportunity.
I can understand your frustration, but you never did show us the front of the box. We don’t sell WD Green drives in blue boxes, that I know of. How can we know what exactly it is that you were sold. And, if it is something off, then we could investigate it. Besides, I don’t think there’s anyone out there that hasn’t made the mistake of mis-reading a label and buying the wrong product. But it’s not fair that you blame us without giving us a chance to see what might be going on.
I never showed the front of the box as there was no value in doing so. At least, I thought there wasn’t, until I found the sticker.
Bill your are missing the point. Yes most of us have misread something and that’s why I am not pursuing this in court (although to be fair if I had the financial resouirces I would pursue it til the end of time because it is misselling) however the point is why have a tiny sticker to denote the colour denomination of a drive when the colour of the box itself gives a contradictory statement?
If you are using colour to denote a specification then it ought to be clear and use the colour of the drive, green, not the colour of another drive, blue. That’s intended and deliberate obfuscation in my opinion.
Here are the front and rear images: It’s blatantly clear that the box colour matches the colour on the chart on the reverse, and the green sticker on the front has WD green so small and unobtrusive next to the drive size that it is absolutely likely it would be overlooked by someone who did not know the labeling system.
I’m afraid Bill you’re wrong, this is a WD green drive, sold in a blue box.
I never showed the front of the box as there was no value in doing so. At least, I thought there wasn’t, until I found the sticker.
Bill your are missing the point. Yes most of us have misread something and that’s why I am not pursuing this in court (although to be fair if I had the financial resouirces I would pursue it til the end of time because it is misselling) however the point is why have a tiny sticker to denote the colour denomination of a drive when the colour of the box itself gives a contradictory statement?
If you are using colour to denote a specification then it ought to be clear and use the colour of the drive, green, not the colour of another drive, blue. That’s intended and deliberate obfuscation in my opinion.
Here are the front and rear images: It’s blatantly clear that the box colour matches the colour on the chart on the reverse, and the green sticker on the front has WD green so small and unobtrusive next to the drive size that it is absolutely likely it would be overlooked by someone who did not know the labeling system.
I’m afraid Bill you’re wrong, this is a WD green drive, sold in a blue box.
It is definitely a green drive sold in a blue box with a green sticker identifying the drive you got. Just so you know, that drive was first released back in 2013, and since our company color is blue, I’m sure it’s possible that we sent out blue boxes with stickers on them.
Please keep in mind that it wasn’t until last year, 2014, that we changed our naming scheme for our internal drive products to strickly colors - WD Black, WD Blue, WD Green, etc. Since then we have been releasing our drives in boxes that are the color of the drives. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t still find our drives being sold in blue boxes with stickers on them. That’s because blue is our company logo color, and because they may be older drive versions.
You’ve been escalated to support. I’m sure they will do everything they can to help you.
Unlike you, I have filed papers in court. When filing suit, there are costs to submitting it with the clerk. In my state in small claims court, the filing fee would be $31 for issues up to $500, and there are no jury trials, not to mention that you would be suing an out-of-state entity which cannot be done in small claims court. In county court, the filing fee is $97, more than you paid for the drive. In district court, the filing fee is $224. In regular courts, the initial filing fee is only the opening salvo.
When you visit the grocery store, do you threaten the store manager with a lawsuit if green beans are not in green cans and corn is not in yellow ones?
Hi Bill, I suspect support cannot do anything to help me except stop deceiving customers by working from a colour code, then obfuscating what colour a drive is.
There is no getting around this it is a deceitful at worst, increcibly confusing at best situation and I’ve already blogged it now because I get tired of greedy corporations takng peoples’ hard earned money under what could be described as cheating.
i know this is an old post but
hey gary i just found out my hitachi drives are 5400 as well. the 2 previous ones are 7200 and i bought 4 of these new ones and was just glancing through my system report on my mac pro and the 5400 caught my eye! i swear these drives were 7200 i would never buy 5400 drives and if you look at my picture u can see drive 1 and 2 the older ones clearly say 6gbs and 7200 but on the newer ones drive 3 and 4 the rpm is not even written, sounds sneaky to me hope this helps open eyes.
PS we know WD owns hitachi
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