I’m having an annoying and horrible experience with the WD RMA.
My WD D50 gaming dock was suddenly dead after JUST 3 months of usage 3 weeks ago. I immediately claimed an RMA then was a little shocked when couldn’t find my device anywhere on the WD list. It turned out to be moved to Sandisk site (it’s not clearly for me to figure it out in the first place).
I then logged into Sandisk site to make an RMA and struggle to find the product category for the D50 dock (there’s no such thing related to any pc dock). Finally I choose the “Drive” and managed to create the RMA. It said it was accepted and I needed to send it to Hongkong (I’m in Korea). I paid $50 for DHL to send just 1kg to Hongkong because I really need the dock for my work.
==> Western Digital’s bad information
The package arrived just 2 days after but the status keeps saying “Waiting for return”. I was annoyed and trying to reach WD support by chatting with an agent vja EMEA - CHAT now, because it’s the closet to APAC time. After several minutes I was connected with a guy and he asked me some questions about the RMA then he said he can’t do anything and I need to use APAC - CHAT now channel. I was like “what the heck, there’s no APAC - CHAT now channel”.
Why on earth that I’m in Korea, reaching to an Europe service and connected to some guy in India (or Middle East), and being said that he didn’t have permission to access APAC’s database?
==> Western Digital’s bureaucracy.
Next day I called Hong Kong’s supporting number => no answer, then I tried Korean’s number. I didn’t do it in the first place because it is mentioned explicitly on WD website that there’s no English for Korean line.
And surprisingly, some Indian guy picked up and started speaking English with me. But the signal is freaking terrible, it’s like we’re using walkie talkies and there’s a huge mountain between us. Luckily, he somehow routed me to another agent with better audio signal and higher tone woman’s voice (easier to listen). We’re able to communicate and my ticket was escalated, the day after the status was changed to “Received/Processing”. Then I received an email saying my replacement will be shipped within that week (only 2 days left for that week). It didn’t happen.
==> Western Digital’s bad working flow.
Now it’s been 9 days after the promise and nothing changes. I escalated the ticket again yesterday, nothing, and escalated again today, still nothing. I all have is automated replies saying something like “We promise we’ll do anything we can…”
==> Western Digital, the master of promises.
I paid $170 for the D50, and $50 for the RMA shipping, so in total $220 for a fragile product and an awful RMA service. And now I’m still waiting in eternity for my god-know-when shipping replacement. It’s near Christmas now so if it doesn’t come in 3 working days, I definitely have to wait until next year.
I had 3 RMAs with Corsair in the past and they really went well. Corsair is even nice to give me pre-paid DHL label, twice. And they kept communicating until the ticket is completely solved.
It’s sad that I was always prioritizing WD over Seagate when buying HDD, and even Samsung sometimes when it comes to SSD. Now WD is losing my trust even if I can receive the replaced product. Unfortunately I still have 5 SSDs and 4 HDDs of WD in my inventory, not to mention a bunch of CFExpress and SD cards, all are still under limited warranty. Maybe I should dump them into used market and have Corsair or Samsung as replacements.
