Supply of WD hard drives without 3 year warranty

[IanAG]

I am planning on replacing a number of hard drives in my server with larger ones and have been checking the remaining warranties. Two WD10EACS drives, purhased from Scan 21/10/08, are showing as no warranty due to being sold to a system manufacturer. Obviously this should not be the case as they were purchased as drives only.

I was looking at selling these but given that they would now not be replaced by WD their resale value is reduced. On drive specifications you state "Remember ALL our Hard Drive brands we sell are official 3 or 5 year Maximum Warranty Product. Peace of Mind!
Many of our competitors sell Grey/imported or system integrator product with only 1 year warranty! to achieve a cheap price."

This doesn't appear to be true for these two drives, can someone at Scan comment or advise the best way to resolve this?

Thanks for your help.
Ian

[Mossy]

Sure

If we have advertised these as a 3 year warranty Scan will be covering the warranty.

Regards

[Chris P]

IanAG

When you need to replace the drives a Return can be arranged through the following link
http://web6.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Suppor...px?QueryType=R

Best Regards

[IanAG]

I'm sorry, this doesn't really help with a view to selling the drives. Any buyer will be put off by the chain of having the warranty offered when official drives are backed up by 3/5 warranty direct from the manufacturer. Could you provide something in writing to back this up?

The statement on the specification page of the drives should be amended, you ARE selling system integrator drives but backing them up with warranty yourselves. This does NOT make them official WD warrantied products.

[malfunction]

Is this standard practice on some or all of the HDDs Scan sell these days? If so what would happen if say in 2 years 11 months time a drive died - are Scan keeping some in reserve or would they be looking to refund or replace with a similar product?

[IanAG]

Is this standard practice on some or all of the HDDs Scan sell these days? If so what would happen if say in 2 years 11 months time a drive died - are Scan keeping some in reserve or would they be looking to refund or replace with a similar product?

I can verify its not standard practice on all of the drives as I have purchased one more of these since and the correct warranty is reported on the WDC site. I am interested in what the replacement would be, and also concerned about the hassle - although VERY slow, WD RMAs are pretty easy.

I will now be checking all drives I purchase immediately to ensure they are not grey!

[malfunction]

I can verify its not standard practice on all of the drives as I have purchased one more of these since and the correct warranty is reported on the WDC site. I am interested in what the replacement would be, and also concerned about the hassle - although VERY slow, WD RMAs are pretty easy.

I will now be checking all drives I purchase immediately to ensure they are not grey!

To be clear are you saying that you've purchased a further drive that has the normal WD warranty?

[Zak33]

just for the record, I think you'll find that WD warranty's are NOT tranferable to a second owner anyway.

WD will have no liability for any Product returned if WD determines that:

* The product was stolen from WD.
* The asserted defect:
o is not present,
o cannot reasonably be fixed because of damage occurring when the Product is in the possession of someone other than WD, or
o is attributable to misuse, improper installation, alteration (including removing or obliterating labels and opening or removing external covers (unless authorized to do so by Western Digital or an authorized Service Center)), accident or mishandling while in the possession of someone other than WD.
* The Product was not sold to you as new.
* The product was not used in accordance with Western Digital specifications and instructions.
* The product was not used for its intended function (for example, desktop drives used in an Enterprise environment).

from this page
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/poli...pe=end&lang=en

I never purcahsed a WD drive expecting to be abe to sell it on second hand with warranty left over. I'm 99% sure it's only for the first owner.

[nickp8]

This is probably due to the same situation ebuyer had with the seagate drives. See: http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...-warranty.html Or SCAN may buy the OEM drives meant for system builders for the 3XS systems and the stock got mixed up.

[malfunction]

I never purcahsed a WD drive expecting to be abe to sell it on second hand with warranty left over. I'm 99% sure it's only for the first owner.

It's pretty common practice though and from first hand experience WD do not ask for proof of purchase on OEM drives - I've sent a couple of raptors back that I inherited from work PCs when they died (I originally bought them on behalf of my employer but that still *shouldn't* count if we're correct in assuming the warranty is non transferable).

This is probably due to the same situation ebuyer had with the seagate drives. See: http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...-warranty.html

That would be my guess too - a purchasing / supply error rather than anything intentional.

[IanAG]

I didn't realise that the WD warranties only applied to first owner, but it still doesn't really change the fact that the drives should have a warranty direct with WD.

I will put it down to experience and plan to check the drives first next time, if they are not supplied with direct warranty I will return them under the distance selling act.

I can confirm that I have bought the same model since from Scan (and numerous other models before) and they had the full warranty direct with WDC, so its not common practice for Scan.

[malfunction]

Thanks for the follow up post - I wasn't 100% clear before but yes, given that this seems to be isolated I imagine this is a mixup but definitely worth checking just in case