When buying Western Digital products I suggest you take the warranty with a grain of salt. Despite having registered my unit online as stated in the instructions, Western Digital is now telling me the mycloud unit is out of warranty unless I can produce the original sales receipt. Of course, there was absolutely no mention of this requirement when I was registering my unit and still have the sales receipt sitting on my desk.
I was considering upgrading to one of their larger Soho NAS units, but not after this. If you’re willing to be unethical to avoid honoring the warranty on a $150 item, there is no way I’m going to purchase $1,000 item from your company.
The sad thing is that my unit it’s not actually broken. I just needed help understanding why a feature wasn’t working.
While my warranty has already expired it is always important to save copies of important items like that. See image, copy, of mine below.
Click on, tap or activate image to enlarge it.
You should be patient, a WD staff person told you he was taking care of your issue. And saving receipts is not that hard to do; tape the frikkin’ thing to the bottom of the drive, or scan it and save the image. You are being a bit of a PITA in some ways. I never have warranty issues – it’s all in how you ask, and if you don’t like the answer, politely ask to speak the next level of support.
How would they possibly know when the item was purchased? Presenting a receipt is really necessary thing in many places to validate warranty document which can even have such a notice as one of the requirements to be honored by vendor or manufacturer.
What if you buy in 2014 and register 20 months later claiming you bought it 2016?
In almost every case of a brick and mortar store purchased item that I’ve executed a warranty return on has required me to include proof of when the item was purchased. For online sales one can typically just print out the email invoice indicating date of sale.
The OP learned a valuable lesson. Always keep the sales receipts for electronics even though one may feel they don’t want to keep a sales receipt on a “$100 consumer electronics”. If you don’t want to buy the product out of pocket if it goes bad in the warranty period, keep the receipt.
Generally I keep the sales receipt for any electronic product I buy over $20. I figure the cost to ship anything back for warranty repair/replacement will cost $15 or more anyhow so it makes sense to have a cutoff for certain items under such a shipping return cost. I go so far as to scan in the sales receipt, keep any emails indicating date of purchase of said product, and keep any shipping paperwork included in an online order. Because of my anal side I even take pictures of the box and product unboxing including all paperwork and sales receipts as a backup. Is it way overkill? Absolutely but comes in handy if a manufacturer ever tries to deny a warranty return.
First, I do not expect a technology product to be over two years old when purchased new at retail.
Second, when registering the product the customer should be made aware at the time what is required. At the very least, failing to notify them that their brand new product is already expired is unethical.
Third, I cannot count how many pieces of technology I buy each year, let alone how many I have purchased in my lifetime. I have NEVER purchased an item new, registered it as required, and been refused support. Receipt or not.
Finally, I wasn’t even asking them to replace a dead unit. I wrote to inquire why my new (properly registered) unit is already expired despite a TWO YEAR warranty.
So you guys can keep saving $20 receipts if you want. I’ll simply replace this disposable unit with a product from a company that values my business.
I’ve had support offered by WD as a result of my posting queries or responses on this forum. I’ve never contacted WD directly for support. They’ve never asked me for proof of anything to provide support.
It is, of course, entirely your choice who you choose to buy products from; I really couldn’t care less. But I think you are being unreasonable about the need to keep a receipt. I’m coming around to mike27oct’s PoV…
Never write to a company support, CALL THEM. People who respond to support emails are at the lowest level of support staff. I recently called WD for some support (an inquiry of how the gizmo worked) and they gave it to me; no hassle…
Many companies do not ask about when a product was purchased or ask about the warranty; they just look up the serial number you give them. Not mentioning any company, but when a wireless drive I had purchased at close out price failed, I called the company after I had the thing over a year… The support guy looked up my serial number (I had not registered it) . He said I had about six months left on the warranty based upon that info and sent me a brand new one and I was to return the old one.
So, OP, CALL WD, you seem like a nice guy, so charm support into answering your question!
Not so! I’ve emailed companies and got the guy who designed the product. Another time, it appears they couldn’t answer my questions so they passed my info to an engineer in the UK, who called me. The first was Ideal Industries and the other was Fluke Corp.
Unfortunately, @Philip1, I’ve bought plenty of devices “new” from retailers that I found were actually old products. So, I understand your frustration. Nevertheless, requiring a receipt in order to extend your warranty is a necessity. Otherwise, we would never know if the warranty claim was valid.
I’m sorry Bill, but I’ve been buying technology for 30+ years and I have NEVER had a manufacturer refuse to honor the warranty on a product because of a receipt.
Furthermore, if that is your requirement you had an obligation to your customer to make it known when they used your system to register the product (as required to validate the warranty)
I don’t know if you read above, but I wasn’t even asking WD to honor a claim. I just wanted them to honor my warranty so that if a problem ever arose I could get help. They could have done so from the registration date, which is also the first date that the S/N for my device ever connected to MyCloud. And doing so would not have cost WD one cent. Instead, they chose to tell me all the reasons why they couldn’t help.
What this tells me is that it’s more important to WD to find a way to deny a claim than to find a way honor it. And a company that operates like that is simply not a company I wish to give my business (or entrust my data) to.
Philip
P.S. Since my last post one of your one of your upper level managers validated my warranty. I appreciate his efforts, but it doesn’t change my position. I buy technology to make my life easier. If it makes it harder, I find a new vendor.
Get off your high horse. You say a WD manager honored your warranty, and rectified what the likely newbee support person told you. So, consider it a misunderstanding that is now settled, and get over it! Sheesh!
Your little rant has been given all due consideration and filed appropriately.
As for support, the person who contacted me here vanished without further response. The support agent I contacted replied only to tell me they wouldn’t help. The escalation supervisor was equally unhelpful, and rather unprofessional. Only when I got a 4th person (in customer relations) did I get a helpful person and a positive result. So this was hardly just a case of trainee error.
I’d say your are doing most of the ranting. Granted, this has been a hassle for you and the previous support people appear to have really dropped the ball. Nevertheless, a helpful person got in touch with you (or maybe you called the support line and “muscled” your way to the appropriate person. ( I sure would have called and politely but firmly asked to speak with someone higher up the food chain.)
The point of my “rant” was, if the problem now has a happy ending, then let it go and not belabor it. I guess everyone has his own style.
To conclude, I have had better customer service experiences than this with WD and others, and I wish you better luck next times with any company.
WD is imho notorious for having a really mickey mouse help and servicing. No real support except “failure? replace!” and of course the usual “have you tried switching it off and on again?”, “is it on?”, “have you plugged it in” stuff they ask off the script.
The trouble is, NAS is part h/w, part s/w and you do not fix s/w by checking the plug.
However I do maintain my stand that a warranty is subect to rules and limitations all set up by the vendor/manufacturer and if they ignore it to the buyer’s favour, they can ignore them to their own, sometimes.
My trouble of the MC gen 1 waking up by itself while it’s not used (it does so every few seconds and/or minutes at best) is still unsolved. Well, I did solve it by running the box 24/7.
Absolutely but comes in handy if a manufacturer ever tries to deny a warranty return.