4 ms·

This looks like another non-apology from a PR person, just a slightly more competent PR person than whoever wrote the epic failure that was their previous blog

This looks like another non-apology from a PR person, just a slightly more competent PR person than whoever wrote the epic failure that was their previous blog post on this subject. If someone tries to steal your car and gets caught, then says they only meant to steal your TV, and then when challenged says they understand that they should have been more upfront with you that they were going to try to harm you, they are not a good person. Sadly, I don't perceive any more legitimate remorse or sincerity about fixing the root cause here than there was last time. The fact is that right now, several days after this all kicked off, if you go to WD's site and choose Products and then NAS internal drives from the menu, it still links to Reds and says (in very big letters, repeatedly) things like: "Designed and Optimized for NAS Compatibility" and "WD Red Provides Storage Compatible with Leading NAS Systems" Based on that, it appears that they are still selling drives that are not fit for their stated purpose. Everything else is just spin.

gowld 7y ago
All I want to see is "WD recalls SMR drives for all customers who affirm that the drive gave them trouble, gives full retail price credit toward any other WD drive purchase". A percentage bonus for our trouble would be nice but unlikely. It's not perfect, but it's a compromise. People who care get new drives; WD pays a cost for their mistake.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  They wrote: > If you have purchased a drive, please call our customer care if you are experiencing performance or any other technical issues. We will have options for you. We are here to help.
  - noncoml 7y ago
    Which is just smoke and mirrors. I bet you they will push back hard. If they were here to help they would have done so already. It’s just a distraction.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Shouldn't we wait and see what reports are before jumping to that conclusion? I'm generally willing to assume good faith until a company gives me reason to believe otherwise. Expecting them to proactively contact customers and to recall all existing drives seems like an unreasonable ask.
      - noncoml 7y ago
        We have seen their reaction so far. Why keep having faith on then given their behavior so far?
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        I'm generally willing to assume good faith until a company gives me reason to believe otherwise. I think the point is that in this case, WD have already given us plenty of reason to believe otherwise. There isn't much doubt left now to give them its benefit.
        Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        What would you expect a sufficient response to look like? As I said above, I don't think it's reasonable to ask WD to proactively contact everyone who bought one of these drives, so a message on their official corporate blog which reads "please reach out to customer care if you're experiencing performance problems" seems like exactly the right action to take. So, that's the lens I'm looking through: what I'm seeing, versus what would I expect to see from a company reacting appropriately. Right now, they match. Now, if WD had a history of posting such explicit, official messages publicly and then refusing to help customers privately, I would no longer be willing to give WD the benefit of the doubt. As far as I'm aware, we're not there yet. I would present Facebook as an example of a company that has lost this trust. I unfortunately can no believe a single thing they say in any capacity. They have issued far, far too many apologies.
        Silhouette 7y ago
        What would you expect a sufficient response to look like? I'm not sure there is only one good answer to that, but I'm quite sure that any good answer would involve not still having the broken product and misleading presentation all over the WD website right now.
  - vleon42 7y ago
    I just attempted to call their customer service. The representative had no idea what SMR was. After I asked to be transferred to someone else, the representative told me that "WD has no official answer yet and to call again in a day or two", I pointed out the blog post that specifically directs customers to call their hotline, but then I got back into the loop of "WD has no official answer yet and to call again in a day or two"....
- parsimo2010 7y ago
  It shouldn't be that I have to affirm that a drive has already given me trouble. I should just have to show that I'm using a drive in an application where I would have problems in the future. Product safety recalls don't require you to get food poisoning or take shrapnel in your face from a bad airbag before fixing the issue. I don't want to wait until my RAID fails a rebuild and I lose data.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Are SMR drives actually more likely to loose data than CMR drives? I was under the impression they had performance issues, but were reliable with regard to data integrity.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      That depends on your situation. If you have a single redundant drive in your storage system and you lose a drive, and if a rebuild takes you multiple weeks instead of hours and during that time a second drive fails, you are going to lose the whole system and need to restore everything from backups. That's a pretty serious flaw in a drive advertised specifically for use in these systems, when reducing the risk of that downtime is the purpose of having the system in the first place.
jschwartzi 7y ago
I think it's a little disingenuous to compare it to theft. They left some information out of their datasheet that was relevant to people. They said some really stupid stuff when they got called out on it. And I bet if you had access to the internal communications of WD after that blog post you'd see a bunch of big direct customers threatening to pull blanket POs for WD Reds unless WD added some information to their data sheets. All I see is a company playing fast and loose with the specs, and their marketing people not understanding why SMR would not be fit for purpose. I would bet WD doesn't have a US-based tech team making those low-level decisions. They probably outsource all of it to their contract manufacturers that make the actual drives. And since the CM isn't responsible for marketing, they were like "you can save $5.00 per drive if you use this new recording technology." The marketing people have no idea what the trade offs are and the CM doesn't care. Then 2 years later when the first batch of these drives start failing, the marketing person who made the original decision isn't there, the CM doesn't have any record of any of the conversations, and nobody has any idea what's going on. So in a bid to try to manage the conversation without actually knowing anything their marketing people release that first blog article. Then the customer outcry happens, people threaten to pull blanket POs, and finally the marketer realizes they have to do some real work because it's not just the angry grognard brigade making noise. Most modern companies that sell commodity electronics work this way.
- xadhominemx 7y ago
  Of course any major end customer or OEM are definitely going to know if the drives are SMR. Do you really think they’re going to slip that by EMC or AWS? Those customers are intimately familiar with the technologies used in these drives as well as technology development.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  To clarify, I wasn't intending to equate what WD are doing with theft. I was looking for analogy to illustrate the failure in trying to do something bad, trying to do essentially the same bad thing but to a slightly lesser degree, and then pretending that admitting to this makes it somehow better while you're still in fact doing the bad thing. I think "left some information out of their datasheet that is relevant" is being rather kind here. They were advertising these products for one specific purpose, and the change in spec makes them unsuitable for that purpose. They then tried to upsell to a more expensive product that retained the original spec and was still presumably suitable for that purpose in their initial non-apology apology. I understand the mechanics of how this can happen, but the fact is that this isn't the customer's fault. It's a failure of basic management and leadership skills, and criticising the company for that is entirely fair.

gowld 7y ago

All I want to see is "WD recalls SMR drives for all customers who affirm that the drive gave them trouble, gives full retail price credit toward any other WD drive purchase". A percentage bonus for our trouble would be nice but unlikely. It's not perfect, but it's a compromise. People who care get new drives; WD pays a cost for their mistake.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
They wrote: > If you have purchased a drive, please call our customer care if you are experiencing performance or any other technical issues. We will have options for you. We are here to help.
- noncoml 7y ago
  Which is just smoke and mirrors. I bet you they will push back hard. If they were here to help they would have done so already. It’s just a distraction.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Shouldn't we wait and see what reports are before jumping to that conclusion? I'm generally willing to assume good faith until a company gives me reason to believe otherwise. Expecting them to proactively contact customers and to recall all existing drives seems like an unreasonable ask.
    - noncoml 7y ago
      We have seen their reaction so far. Why keep having faith on then given their behavior so far?
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      I'm generally willing to assume good faith until a company gives me reason to believe otherwise. I think the point is that in this case, WD have already given us plenty of reason to believe otherwise. There isn't much doubt left now to give them its benefit.
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        What would you expect a sufficient response to look like? As I said above, I don't think it's reasonable to ask WD to proactively contact everyone who bought one of these drives, so a message on their official corporate blog which reads "please reach out to customer care if you're experiencing performance problems" seems like exactly the right action to take. So, that's the lens I'm looking through: what I'm seeing, versus what would I expect to see from a company reacting appropriately. Right now, they match. Now, if WD had a history of posting such explicit, official messages publicly and then refusing to help customers privately, I would no longer be willing to give WD the benefit of the doubt. As far as I'm aware, we're not there yet. I would present Facebook as an example of a company that has lost this trust. I unfortunately can no believe a single thing they say in any capacity. They have issued far, far too many apologies.
        Silhouette 7y ago
        What would you expect a sufficient response to look like? I'm not sure there is only one good answer to that, but I'm quite sure that any good answer would involve not still having the broken product and misleading presentation all over the WD website right now.
- vleon42 7y ago
  I just attempted to call their customer service. The representative had no idea what SMR was. After I asked to be transferred to someone else, the representative told me that "WD has no official answer yet and to call again in a day or two", I pointed out the blog post that specifically directs customers to call their hotline, but then I got back into the loop of "WD has no official answer yet and to call again in a day or two"....
parsimo2010 7y ago
It shouldn't be that I have to affirm that a drive has already given me trouble. I should just have to show that I'm using a drive in an application where I would have problems in the future. Product safety recalls don't require you to get food poisoning or take shrapnel in your face from a bad airbag before fixing the issue. I don't want to wait until my RAID fails a rebuild and I lose data.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Are SMR drives actually more likely to loose data than CMR drives? I was under the impression they had performance issues, but were reliable with regard to data integrity.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    That depends on your situation. If you have a single redundant drive in your storage system and you lose a drive, and if a rebuild takes you multiple weeks instead of hours and during that time a second drive fails, you are going to lose the whole system and need to restore everything from backups. That's a pretty serious flaw in a drive advertised specifically for use in these systems, when reducing the risk of that downtime is the purpose of having the system in the first place.

jschwartzi 7y ago

I think it's a little disingenuous to compare it to theft. They left some information out of their datasheet that was relevant to people. They said some really stupid stuff when they got called out on it. And I bet if you had access to the internal communications of WD after that blog post you'd see a bunch of big direct customers threatening to pull blanket POs for WD Reds unless WD added some information to their data sheets. All I see is a company playing fast and loose with the specs, and their marketing people not understanding why SMR would not be fit for purpose. I would bet WD doesn't have a US-based tech team making those low-level decisions. They probably outsource all of it to their contract manufacturers that make the actual drives. And since the CM isn't responsible for marketing, they were like "you can save $5.00 per drive if you use this new recording technology." The marketing people have no idea what the trade offs are and the CM doesn't care. Then 2 years later when the first batch of these drives start failing, the marketing person who made the original decision isn't there, the CM doesn't have any record of any of the conversations, and nobody has any idea what's going on. So in a bid to try to manage the conversation without actually knowing anything their marketing people release that first blog article. Then the customer outcry happens, people threaten to pull blanket POs, and finally the marketer realizes they have to do some real work because it's not just the angry grognard brigade making noise. Most modern companies that sell commodity electronics work this way.

xadhominemx 7y ago
Of course any major end customer or OEM are definitely going to know if the drives are SMR. Do you really think they’re going to slip that by EMC or AWS? Those customers are intimately familiar with the technologies used in these drives as well as technology development.
Silhouette 7y ago
To clarify, I wasn't intending to equate what WD are doing with theft. I was looking for analogy to illustrate the failure in trying to do something bad, trying to do essentially the same bad thing but to a slightly lesser degree, and then pretending that admitting to this makes it somehow better while you're still in fact doing the bad thing. I think "left some information out of their datasheet that is relevant" is being rather kind here. They were advertising these products for one specific purpose, and the change in spec makes them unsuitable for that purpose. They then tried to upsell to a more expensive product that retained the original spec and was still presumably suitable for that purpose in their initial non-apology apology. I understand the mechanics of how this can happen, but the fact is that this isn't the customer's fault. It's a failure of basic management and leadership skills, and criticising the company for that is entirely fair.