Storage Solutions Western Digital RMA information

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Khimera

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Well, the story begins with me buying a WD Caviar green 1.5TB disk from Theitwares. Unfortunately, the disk is DOA. Theitwares guy says he is not in mumbai, so wants me to contact WD. I went to their site, filed for RMA and now it looks like i will have to ship the drive. The packing information on their site says "packing has to be WD approved packing" which means the internal hard disk has to be placed in a electrostatic box wrapped in bubble wrap etc. Have couple of questions regarding this is

1. If the product is DOA, should not the dealer (in my case Theitwares) replace it?

2. Where the hell on earth can i find electro static discharge bag as found here

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapacking.asp#approvedpackaging

3. In past i have heard that i can schedule pickups from the company directly, can i do that?

4. The drive i get, will it be refurbished or replaced by the new one?

Till date i have 2 Samsung HDs and 4 Seagate HDs. This is my first WD product and its not going too well. Not too happy about the dealer response too (though he was extremely fast in shipping the product and packing was excellent and i can understands products can go bad from time to time, but good response is something that i was looking for)

TIA for all the responses
 
1. Yes but since he's OOS he's requesting you to have it replaced through WD. Ideally almost all DOA products are replaced by the dealer himself but it's at the sole discretion of the dealer to do so. IINM.

2. Wasn't your drive shipped inside an anti-static bag? Almost all hard drives (and any electronic component subjected to static discharge such as motherboard, gfx cards, audio cards etc) are shipped that way.

3. IINM this depends on where you are located. Register a RMA request at their website and see if your location is displayed under the pickup facility offered for the RMA service. WD should send a person from the courier facility (Gati/Blue Dart) to have the defective drive picked up and they'd do the shipping to WD, Delhi. The replacement drive follows a similar route back to you.

4. WD should ideally give you a new drive. Seagate is known to send refurbs and is clearly indicated as a 'Certified Repaired' drive on the label.

If you are lucky enough you may end up getting a better drive in terms of capacity or performance or both!

If you have not been following the forums offlately, WD's recent batch of Caviar Green 15EARS has turned out to be lemons.
 
2. Grey colour antistatic cover that came with HDD is enough. Just put two sheets of thermcol on either side of HDD(cut to same size), wrap it with a cellotape, cover with a bubble wrap

Or better, if you have any cardboard box of little bigger size, wrap the HDD with bubble wrap, put it inside the box (tight) and tape it

3. Log a RMA ticket here --> WD Support > Warranty Services > Warranty Services for End User Customers

It will come up with a barcoded RMA number after you generate the ticket with issue info and your address

Print that sheet, cur the bar coded info and paste it on the parcel

Call WD hotline in the contact number given on that printout and schedule a courier pickup. Stress to the CC person that its a DOA and you want only a brand new replacement

They will pickup the HDD mostly the next business day, you wil get replacement after 8-9 working days from shipped date

Once you hit that RMA link, everything else is well guided there :)
 
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@Khimera - You can send the HDD back to me but i will have to do the same thing that your doing it'll just be on your behalf ... DOA replacement is there for 3 Days from the Date of Purchase which i get from my supplier i cannot give u the same coz sending it to you and back will be more than 3 days. Plus if u send it to me you'l anyways have to pack it so instead just pack it for WD guys and send it to them you'll at least save on shipping cost coz anyways its gonna reach the same place instead of doing it via via through me.

I am back in Mumbai just reached home i was typing from my cell phone so couldn't type a big message hence just requested you to claim RMA through WD
 
If you have given 1.5 TB chances are you might get 2 TB.. atleast thatz what happened to my friend sent 1 TB and got back 2 TB.. I am in pure state of shock and jealous . dont blame me..

eBRo
 
Ok good news is that they themselves called me. It has been outsourced to some RT Outsourcing Services limited in Langford Rd in Bangalore. Scheduled a time and they picked up the WD disk. Now for a long wait till i can receive the HD back
 
iyengar said:
If you have given 1.5 TB chances are you might get 2 TB.. atleast thatz what happened to my friend sent 1 TB and got back 2 TB.. I am in pure state of shock and jealous . dont blame me..

eBRo
Click to expand...
Ya same thing happened to me, gave a 1.5 TB drive and got a 2 TB :D
 
AFAIK, its RT Outsourcing @ Delhi. The barcode would have had the address

unless they opened a branch in Blore recently
Khimera said:
Ok good news is that they themselves called me. It has been outsourced to some RT Outsourcing Services limited in Langford Rd in Bangalore. Scheduled a time and they picked up the WD disk. Now for a long wait till i can receive the HD back
Click to expand...
 
If you do get certified repaired then do not accept it... Specifically ask for a new drive 'coz you got a DOA... WD will happily comply...
 
if you live in a big metro where courier coverage is good enough then you don't even need to pack.

WD has tie ups with courier people and if any unpacked drives are there then these courier people have the material (the HDD box) for packaging...you must have the anti-static bag though.

when i used WD RMA for the 1st time ever..i was not sure how to pack it well... i had all bubble wrap etc at hand and was just waiting for courier guy to arrive..

the courier guy took the hdd + bag + rma print lable and used the HDD box..

im talking about the HDD box that you get your replacement hdd in... that is what i use now to send HDDs for rma whenever i have to use WD RMA.

but dont count on your courier guy.

have a look at this...http://www.wdc.com/en/library/2579-001038.pdf

the box looks similar to that being used for single pack.

or you can call WD CC and confirm.

WD CC:

1800 11 93 93
Click to expand...
 
The box used by WD to send back replacements + foam that holds the drive intact in the box are the best for packing the HDDs again . Even Ive kept 1-2 of those boxes for future RMA purposes :D

-OT- Till date I had collected a lot of bubble-wrap from all my online purchases etc for shipping out stuff but now Ive ran out of it and can't find it any stationery stores. Tried like 4-5 of them .Any idea where can I get a good quantity of bubble-wrap at reasonable price. ?
 
^ Look for wholesale stationery market in Mumbai, there would be some location like that. It will be surely available there and for cheap rates

for Chennai peeps, its available @ Bunder street
 
FaH33m said:
The box used by WD to send back replacements + foam that holds the drive intact in the box are the best for packing the HDDs again . Even Ive kept 1-2 of those boxes for future RMA purposes :D

-OT- Till date I had collected a lot of bubble-wrap from all my online purchases etc for shipping out stuff but now Ive ran out of it and can't find it any stationery stores. Tried like 4-5 of them .Any idea where can I get a good quantity of bubble-wrap at reasonable price. ?
Click to expand...
Try APMC Market...


plenty of stationary shops in the area market with black pen.
im sure you would be familiar with the map attached :) :P
 
Ok, Just bumping this thread that i had started to keep the things updated with you folks, so that ppl who are dealing with Western Digital can have my experience. The drive was picked up on 1st of June promptly by the RT outsourcing guy. And according to their records (and WD records) the hard disk was shipped to WD. Ever since, i have made 5 phone calls to WD and 2 phone calls to RT Outsourcing and wrote an email to WD. RT Outsourcing washed their hands off saying they have shipped the hard disk, so they are done with their work. WD says, Ddisk not in stock (which is quite a shame, because in 15 days, we could have probably got the disk from any remote part of the world). Today is the 18th day (almost 20 days after i paid rahul(ITwares) money for 1.5TB. And I am yet to see the hard disk. No matter what ppl say, since this was my first WD experience, it is bad. + the fact that the hard disk was Dead on Arrival is much more frustrating
 
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