9 ms·

I recently had a bout or two with Amazon over a relatively trivial issue. Simply that sold me a USB stick (Corsair Survivor) that fell to bits. Asked for a repl

by setq 10y ago

I recently had a bout or two with Amazon over a relatively trivial issue. Simply that sold me a USB stick (Corsair Survivor) that fell to bits. Asked for a replacement to be sent out. They wanted me to send the old one back. I refused unless I can destroy the ICs on the board first for obvious reasons. Took 45 minutes of explaining to someone who didn't really care. Eventually they agreed to replace it and told me to dispose of the original. Then about two weeks later I got an email saying that I was going to be charged £31 for the replacement. Contacted Amazon again and was told that it was policy to take a payment for it and they wouldn't budge. They also had no record of agreement before either. I lost my shit. Another 45 minutes later, eventually I have a resolution, I think. I'll only know when they take or do not take the money. Three lessons from the above and the original post: 1. Get everything in writing. Use Amazon's chat facility when you contact them and make sure you get a transcript emailed to you. 2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I wouldn't trust them to solely run my infrastructure or my business fulfillment. You don't really matter in the scale of things so they can afford to do a shitty job sometimes. 3. Cheap isn't necessarily a good deal. I'd genuinely rather pay more these days for something and get it from Argos here in the UK. Or bytemark etc.

discreditable 10y ago
This kind of thing is standard for storage device returns. When your Western Digital drive fails under warranty they expect you to send it to them whether you are able to scrub the bits or not. Some of vendors allow you to pay a "media retention fee" to avoid sending the failed drive. I know that HPE does.
amyboyd 10y ago
+1 for Argos. I've started using them wherever I can, after Amazon failed to deliver 3 orders this year. The first 2 orders were refunded, the third wasn't, because the package was signed for (but by someone with a completely different name, and they didn't record the house number it was delivered to). Emailed them many times. They won't even reply to the emails or call me now.
dkrich 10y ago
3. Cheap isn't necessarily a good deal. Can't agree with this more and I learn that it's truer and truer the more interactions I have with Amazon. I recently purchased a pair of boots on Amazon that were marketed as authentic and selling for half the cost of the originals, and they were listed as "shipped from and sold by Amazon" so I figured they must be real. The thing is that I own the authentic pair, so was able to compare when they arrived and the Amazon pair was obviously fake. I no longer have any faith whatsoever in the authenticity or quality control of Amazon's products and wouldn't trust them for any major purchases, and never for clothing or anything that is relatively easy to imitate. I'm quite sure that they are getting away with straight up copyright and trademark infringement hundreds of thousands of times a day, just because nobody can afford to challenge them.
- deckar01 10y ago
  I have noticed this happen with retailers like Kohl's too. I bought dress pants in the store with a 2 hook + button waistband. I ordered the same brand and model from their website, but it only had one hook and no button. No way to tell the difference from the photos. They weren't even cheaper, they were just a lower quality run from the real manufacturer.
witty_username 10y ago
Is the obvious reason securely erasing data from a flash drive? I did not know that that is not possible.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx bs=1024 count=(size of drive in K) Do it for as many times as you want.
  - teddyh 10y ago
    That does not really work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Data_on_solid-state_drives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Data_on_solid-s...
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      > Second, overwriting the entire visible address space of an SSD twice is usually, but not always, sufficient to sanitize the drive. Overwrite you whole SSD 10 times I doubt anyone but the most serious attacker can find anything, and even then.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Even ignoring that substantial problem, dd also tends not to work when the hardware is broken. (And you can't be sure it's sufficiently broken to prevent data recovery.)
      - setq 10y ago
        Yes. Incidentally when you get a nice fresh SAN for example, you can dd 20TiB volumes in a couple of seconds. Doesn't mean they have been written to.
  - michaelt 10y ago
    As flash drives do automatic wear levelling and remapping of bad sectors, some people worry that their data might remain on the flash, in sectors they can't read or write because of those features.
CPLX 10y ago
Could you toss it in the microwave for a bit before sending it back?
- setq 10y ago
  I actually used mole grips to powder the FLASH ICs.

by setq 10y ago

discreditable 10y ago

This kind of thing is standard for storage device returns. When your Western Digital drive fails under warranty they expect you to send it to them whether you are able to scrub the bits or not. Some of vendors allow you to pay a "media retention fee" to avoid sending the failed drive. I know that HPE does.

amyboyd 10y ago

+1 for Argos. I've started using them wherever I can, after Amazon failed to deliver 3 orders this year. The first 2 orders were refunded, the third wasn't, because the package was signed for (but by someone with a completely different name, and they didn't record the house number it was delivered to). Emailed them many times. They won't even reply to the emails or call me now.

dkrich 10y ago

3. Cheap isn't necessarily a good deal. Can't agree with this more and I learn that it's truer and truer the more interactions I have with Amazon. I recently purchased a pair of boots on Amazon that were marketed as authentic and selling for half the cost of the originals, and they were listed as "shipped from and sold by Amazon" so I figured they must be real. The thing is that I own the authentic pair, so was able to compare when they arrived and the Amazon pair was obviously fake. I no longer have any faith whatsoever in the authenticity or quality control of Amazon's products and wouldn't trust them for any major purchases, and never for clothing or anything that is relatively easy to imitate. I'm quite sure that they are getting away with straight up copyright and trademark infringement hundreds of thousands of times a day, just because nobody can afford to challenge them.

deckar01 10y ago
I have noticed this happen with retailers like Kohl's too. I bought dress pants in the store with a 2 hook + button waistband. I ordered the same brand and model from their website, but it only had one hook and no button. No way to tell the difference from the photos. They weren't even cheaper, they were just a lower quality run from the real manufacturer.

witty_username 10y ago

Is the obvious reason securely erasing data from a flash drive? I did not know that that is not possible.

raverbashing 10y ago
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx bs=1024 count=(size of drive in K) Do it for as many times as you want.
- teddyh 10y ago
  That does not really work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Data_on_solid-state_drives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Data_on_solid-s...
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    > Second, overwriting the entire visible address space of an SSD twice is usually, but not always, sufficient to sanitize the drive. Overwrite you whole SSD 10 times I doubt anyone but the most serious attacker can find anything, and even then.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Even ignoring that substantial problem, dd also tends not to work when the hardware is broken. (And you can't be sure it's sufficiently broken to prevent data recovery.)
    - setq 10y ago
      Yes. Incidentally when you get a nice fresh SAN for example, you can dd 20TiB volumes in a couple of seconds. Doesn't mean they have been written to.
- michaelt 10y ago
  As flash drives do automatic wear levelling and remapping of bad sectors, some people worry that their data might remain on the flash, in sectors they can't read or write because of those features.

CPLX 10y ago

Could you toss it in the microwave for a bit before sending it back?

setq 10y ago
I actually used mole grips to powder the FLASH ICs.