3 ms·

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 dr

by 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.
        brokensegue 7y ago
        When the GTX 970 was released and it turned out that 500MB of its 4GB memory ran at a much slower speed they were sued. They settled the suit and paid out $30/card. I think WD ought to offer some compensation for everyone who bought drives with worse performance than advertised. Likely they will be sued and be forced to pay something like that anyways.
- 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.

by gowld 7y ago

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.
      - brokensegue 7y ago
        When the GTX 970 was released and it turned out that 500MB of its 4GB memory ran at a much slower speed they were sued. They settled the suit and paid out $30/card. I think WD ought to offer some compensation for everyone who bought drives with worse performance than advertised. Likely they will be sued and be forced to pay something like that anyways.
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.