I’ve sorta made a habit of ranting about horrible customer service here. So, today I’d like to take a moment and reflect on what so far has been an excellent process. At work, I recently built a new computer and sent it to a branch office. Not even a month later, the hard drive failed. This had me quite upset, but I know these things do fail every so often, and I’ve probably used 20 – 30 of these same identical drives in the past year without trouble. Well, rather than go through the company where the drive was purchased, I decided to check directly with Western Digital. I entered the drive serial number and was immediately told it was under warranty. Enter my name, address, phone number, and there is my RMA number. Ship the drive in and they ship back a repaired or new drive. Sweet! I just sent it out yesterday, so I am curious to see how long the turnaround is.

Now it gets better though. This actually prompted me to go digging in my closet of “dead” hardware and I discovered a 40GB drive that was manufactured in February of 2002. Went online and sure enough – still under warranty. Entered my phone number and last name and was then presented with all the other personal info that I had entered the other day. This drive is going out today and I’m about to go start digging and see what else I can find to get replaced.