Can't Replace a Warranty Product with an RMA replacement

Hi – I’ve run into what appears to be a comically unbelievable issues. To understand this issue, you have to imagine a world where WD would design a system that assumes as a core tenant, that no My Cloud Home device will EVER FAIL or EVER BE REPLACED.

But mine did. Or at least it had an issue that required it to be replaced. Inconceivable!

First - the customer service through this forum in spotting the issue and offering to immediately replace the faulty unit was OUTSTANDING! FAST! and FRIENDLY! So let’s be clear - Sal was awesome!

Now I have the replacement unit in hand. But get this – I can’t access it. I log into my account, and it is still looking for the old unit. I know how utterly ridiculous and… stupid… this sounds… but there’s not a way to disassociate my account from the old unit so it can get to know my new one. I’ve looked for an answer and you won’t believe what I found:

First - I only say this based on what I’ve seen posted on the WD support site. So I’m not making this up! But it seriously, with a straight-face, appears WD’s vision for how a customer will go forward in the totally unanticipated event of a drive failure is as follows:

For the rest of your life 1) create a new email address; 2) manage access to that new address, it’s separate credentials, etc.; 3) keep up with all that comes with a totally extra email address that you don’t need or use at all for any other purpose; 4) use that email address to create an entirely new account with WD for your replacement unit; 5) stop using your efficient, well organized and smart email solutions and preferred email addresses for your personal cloud solutions; 6) for the rest of your life, if you expect to get what you paid for, use a different email address.

IS THAT TRUE OR IS IT A PRANK?? If it’s true, who in upper management will call me to take this product back, return all of my money, so I can go get a solution from a competitor that will not expect me to re-order my entire email-life just to use their product?

Someone please respond letting me know: “NO SILLY. We aren’t so stupid as to make it impossible to use what you paid for w/o changing your preferred email addresses for life! That would be crazy dumb! We have a process that is grounded in reality and customer friendly! You’re just too dumb to find the button to delete your account and re-register your address anew to associate the replacement drive! Of course we know some percentage of drives will fail and this functionality would be essential before general release!”

OR, please someone refund my money asap.

Sorry for the smart ass response, but I’ve remained unbacked up for 7 days now through no fault of my own. This is getting truly frustrating. It is extremely reasonable to question the judgment of whomever made the decisions that led to me writing this message.

I know it’s not the fault of anyone helping customers through these forums. Based on my experience, the folks on here are highly competent and would never ship a product with no solution in the event of failure other than telling a customer to add a new email address to their life just to use one product. I’m not going to to do so, because that’s a completely unreasonable request.

If one of you can solve this issue, and maybe pass my ire on to the “genius” who makes the calls about when something’s ready for general release, and what burdens are appropriate to place on customers, that would be good too.

None of you deserve to deal with this needless mistake in product development and customer service recovery.

Perhaps the person who decided that me changing email addresses “wasn’t a big deal” (at least not to WD) needs to be replaced by someone working with customers on the forums. Management would learn a lot from them.

1 Like

Hello @IPDude

I escalated your comments to WD support management and we have removed the association with your old device on the back end so you should now be able to on-board your replacement using the same email address.

Let us know if it will work now and sorry for the inconvenience.