Hi,
I live in Poland.
I have recently purchased 6 HDDs of the RaidEdition4 variety, 2TB SATA. Not the cheapest drives around.
When ordered from Komputronik/Karen, who seem to be an official WD distributor, the drives came packed in twos, bumping against each other, inserted into a bubblewrap bag, and put into a flimsy carton:
To my knowledge, this is not a proper way to pack drives. At least some separator should have been placed between the two drives, so that there’s no “metal-to-metal” bumping (I don’t count the antistatic bags, which provide no damping). Not to mention the amount of filling material, which was insuficient to keep the drives from rattling inside.
I didn’t even want to unpack the drives from the bags and try them, as I don’t accept this form of delivery. Komputronik upon receiving my complaint promptly issued an RMA, we returned all the drives and obtained a refund.
ACT II
We puchased 6 identical drives at a different seller, company called AGITO, who claim to be the official WD reseller and webstore. I specifically asked twice whether they have proper packaging material and dispatch people trained in packing multiple drives, because their competition failed in this respect. They knew in advance I was sensitive about packaging.
Guess what - the drives from AGITO came packed not really any better. They were in threes together , again with no separation, wrapped in bubblewrap. At least there was more bubble wrap and the box was a bit thicker.
At first I was furious. Then I thought - perhaps things have changed since I last ordered multiple HDDs and maybe my expectations are too high? But then I looked at the instructions on WD website regarding RMA shipping:
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapacking.asp?custtype=dir
where it clearly says that multiple drives “must not directly touch each other”.
I’ve seen multiple times how the drives are packed in bulk by manufacturers - the box has foam moulds or at least strips that position and provide separation of the drives.
Who on earth takes drives from such a properly-equipped box, and slams them together into a bag?!
When I claimed this with AGITO, citing the a/m link as an example of packing HDDs, their first reaction was that WD doesn’t pack the drives this way when sending them to the distributors. In my opinion this is a lie, I never saw drives packed one on top of another anywhere, there always was some form of separation between them.
Could someone confirm, that drives shipped in bulk are packed with separation material, and explain to me why two of the largest computer companies in Poland, authorized by WD , treat hard drives (and expensive versions of them too!) like potatoes in a sack???
Regards
Stan
