Here's a little story...
I bought a 3 gig maxtor back in 96, between 96 and 3 months ago, I've purchased 4 IBM drives (misc sizes), one seagate, 2 Western Digitals, and one other Maxtor (30gig). the ibm drives have been ok, except for one, it died about 3 hours after plugging it in, the western digitals have both been replaced 3 times in the past 2 years, and the seagate just all around sucked, so I threw it out. anyway, 3 months ago, my little 3 gig maxtor finally gave up. No biggy I thought, so I yanked it out, and the sticker said it was still under warranty. So I call maxtor and got an rma#. On the same day I had called WD for an rma on an 8.4g. Sent both drives out the same day. 4 days later my new maxtor arrived, to my delight it wasn't a 3gig drive, it was a 30gig (mistake? really nice folks?? I dunno). Western Digital still hadn't shown up, but it was only for days, I can wait. About 2 weeks later, I check the WD rma status page, and it still wasn't "recieved". I check ups, they'd had the drive for about 13 days. I check back a week later, and they FINALLY accepted the hard drive.. so I wait another week, still no drive, no change on the rma page.. nothing.. I'm getting really pissed off at the point, so I call em up. They tell me they have 7-9 days from the time that they recieve the drive to issue a replacement, fine... I'll wait 3 more days. 3 days pass... still no drive, so I call em again, they give me the same line again (quite rudely at that) and hang up on me. 2 more days, I call again, actually reach someone nice, and she agrees to manually issue a replacement. So I wait for another week, and airborne arrives with my replacement. a month later!! the next day airborne shows up again with another package from wd, this time it's a 10 gig drive. sweet... free drive. the next day airborne arrives AGAIN with yet ANOTHER package from WD... another 10 gig!! so now I had 3 drives for the price of one, and was feeling quite happy, and the next day guess what?? That's right, Airborne arrives AGAIN!! another 10 gig drive! I check the status page to see what happened, and WD only "shipped" one 8.4 gig drive, so I assume the 3 10 giggers were a screw up on western digitals part (in my favor, but a screwup nonetheless). Anyway, moral of the story is, Maxtor replaces drives quickly and efficiently, and I talk too much.