Early this week, without warning, a 500gb SSD we purchased and installed in August 2022 died without warning. This set of alarm bells to see a unit ■■■■ out after just 1 year of use because our activity with these is exceptionally light duty office work.
And we had bought 9 of these drives between spring 2022 to spring 2023.
We have begun scanning the rest , using the WD Dashboard tool. It does not present reliable information. On one scan, it showed a drive (after just 8 months!) to be down to 20% health. Ran the firmware update for that drive, scanned again, and then it said it was 57% health. Still very bad.
We started a chat with a tech agent. The … attitude… was to just make sure we get a backup, and keep using the drive. This is OUR company data, and clearly Western Digital gives not a ■■■■ about it suddenly being lost.
So we need to clone the data off the current drive, to a replacement. But WD says to get what they call an “Advance RMA”, we have to PAY for this… a price that is almost 50% of what we paid for the drive in the first place, and, they need a credit card to put a hold for an amount equal to what the price of the new drive us until the old one does come back. So… then its charging us %150 for the replacement. Plus shipping!
This is for an item under warranty. For a product you have made, and which is clearly a flawed design! I am seeing many posts about this in your forums and elsewhere about this model. You are ripping people off by this approach, and I am certain it would be in contravention of consumer protection laws.
You have sold a lie, and you do not have the right to bill us for your failure. Your responsibility is to make it right. Supply the replacement drive to the customer so they can get their data off the old drive first, without some made-up fee. Get the old drive back from the customer and figure out what you’ve done wrong with all these units.
We’re a non-profit and we do not have the funds to pay 150% of the original cost to replace what your company has failed to manufacture correctly. You advertise that these things have a warranty and that they are rated for 5 years, and that you are supposed to be the leader for performance and reliability in the industry. PROVE IT. Do the right thing. If you don’t, we can and will take this to other avenues and levels to raise awareness about this poor service, poor product, and will draw upon consumer law to address it.
