I know what they "say" and what the warranty "says". That is not in doubt. What is in doubt is that every company does what it says, they don't, I assure you.
Those are not the only two unsatisfactory, to say the least, experiences with Seagate that I've had just in the last couple of years. Also, I don't mean to offer a comparison to any other company, with one being better. I'm sure others have similar or worse experiences with other storage companies as well.
Nor should you think that my own experiences reflect what will happen in your situation. I only offer it so that you are aware that just because the public facing mouthpiece for a company says a thing, even confirming it by written or electronic document, does not mean they will honor what they have said or that they can't find a way to twist or otherwise wiggle their way out of it.
It is no different than what happened recently with another of the moderators here who had a high end ASUS motherboard under warranty. It was sent. Then,.............nothing. For a long time. Despite communication attempts. This was long before the current virus situation, so there was no excuse for it. Then, they sent him a USED replacement with a broken rear integrated I/O shield and despite communications conveying unhappiness with being given a replacement part that had visible damage while the original under warranty part did not, nothing further was done to amend the situation. These companies couldn't care less about you or your hardware, in most cases.
There are a few exceptions, to some degree. EVGA customer service is, to my experience, one of them. They tend to go above and beyond when it comes to making sure their products are well supported and that customers are happy with any transaction whether it's related to an RMA or warranty or not. Others, not so much
As to the drive that was "lost" and not returned or replaced, or fixed, and that they failed to retrieve data from for my client, yes, as I said, it was only 8 months old and was under warranty.
Seagate claimed that the drive was damaged due to an impact, likely being dropped, which it was not since it failed while installed in a machine it had lived in for about 8 months,
The whole "you are free to pursue other service providers at your own expense" is a joke because they know full well that anybody who had data worth enough to warrant doing so would have done so from the start and not sneezed at the 1500 dollar deposit most reputable labs would charge before even arranging courier service to take possession of the drive, much less the probably additional 1500-3000 dollar expense that will be incurred if anything beyond a basic forensic scan and retrieval process is required. Been there, done that, several times, for that same client, who happens to be a very prominent private investigator but whom it took several instances of storage device failure to convince them that purchasing and configuring multiple device and multiple location backups was not just me talking out my dirt hole.
Now they not only have three copies of all important data at any given time, but also an additional drive to plug in in the event any one of them should fail or become problematic, so that there is no significant period of time when three copies don't exist at the same time. Why it wasn't already like that, for years, for somebody with mission critical data like that which somebody's freedom might depend on, IDK, but at least they finally listened.
Really, that is the only "warranty" you need. Even with a warranty, and even if it is honored, you still have to lose the use of that drive for a period of time and hope it is recoverable data. No thanks. I'd rather that the biggest fear was simply the potential for financial loss of the drive in a worst case scenario.
Myself, I have three copies of everything at home as well, including the 8TB of movies and 2TB of music in my collection. Actually, four copies, since I have been making a yearly backup to BD disks so that if there is a catastrophic even that somehow zaps all those drives at once, such as a fire, I won't entirely lose everything since they are stored in a fire proof safe at a different location.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram