I bought them from amazon, shipped from amazon but third party… What are my options ?
Dear nx2l:
Welcome to Seagate Support. My name is Samuel and my goal is to make you a very satisfied customer today by finding a solution for you. As I understand it, your hard drive is making unusual noises. I will be more than happy to help you further and sincerely apologize for all the problems this may have caused, but let’s continue to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
Unusual noises (such as clicks, grinding, whining, etc) are the most common indicators of physical drive failure, especially if the drive has started malfunctioning or causing logical errors. Please keep your drive disconnected from the computer to prevent further damage to the disk or the information stored in it.
Our records, the unit with the serial number ZL2xxxxx is an OEM. Some Seagate drives carry the Seagate name and logo, but are actually owned by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), such as Dell or Hewlett-Packard (HP), and may have specialized firmware. These drives are sold as part of a larger piece of equipment such as a server, a PC, or notebook computer. However, sometimes, these servers or computers are disassembled and the hard drives end up being sold separately from third-party resellers or online vendors such as eBay. Therefore, it is common that the drives are not recognized or work properly in a computer or server other than the one where it originally was.
Likewise, if you would like to validate the warranty on the drive, we would like to let you know that OEM companies will generally purchase the warranty along with the drive, which means that Seagate no longer honors the product warranty, but the company that purchased it. I recommend contacting the place where you bought the unit or the manufacturer of the system it came from.
Providing standard firmware or support for OEM hard drives may violate the legal agreements Seagate has with OEM companies. For these reasons, Seagate does not offer technical support for OEM hard drives.
To ensure we provide the best possible support, we will rely on your feedback as confirmation of whether your issue has been resolved or assistance is still needed to find a solution.
Most manufacturers will only honor warranties if they are purchased through channels they approve, so if you want to have a warranty it’s always best to buy directly from a retailer, not from a storefront through a retailer.
I’d suggest returning them and finding another source if you’re still in the return window.
Nah, return and buy a different one. Preferably not from this seller if they didn’t mention that it’s an OEM drive. Can’t be trusted.
Yeah, that’s usually what I’m looking for when ordering from Amazon. It’s easier to deal with them (and often automated if it’s for a return) than with 3rd party sellers.
Had an HGST Deskstar NAS making suspicious clicking noises. Didn’t even contact HGST/WD and went straight for Amazon’s customer service. They didn’t have the model anymore so I got a refund and ordered a WD Red (luckily mine isn’t SMR).
Or from a dedicated pc hardware store if those are reliable (we don’t really have any here like Newegg).
Yes. Make sure it’s sold by those, not just fulfilled. You can filter for that on their websites.
Even when buying from Amazon and ensuring it’s sold specifically by Amazon there isn’t necessarily a guarantee of actually receiving a legitimate drive. Amazon is garbage (bias warning).
Even if you buy from Amazon direct, since Amazon store all products of the same models in the same bins it’s luck of the draw if you’ll get a legitimate or counterfeit product.
If you want to ensure you get a legitimate product with an actual warranty you’re much better off going to a reputable dealer outside of Amazon imo
They often times don’t know either because they buy in bulk and there may be some OEM drives in there.
Only way to know is the serial number and no seller in their right mind would check every single serial number they buy.
geizhals/skinflint/whatever is listing that on every single drive by now because it’s a known issue.
While I agree that Amazon is generally garbage, this thread isn’t about “fake” products.
It’s about legitimate products that were sold to an OEM, so the original manufacturer is not responsible for the warranty anymore. Those drives are registered by their serial number, but it’s way too much work to check every single serial number for the occasional OEM drive.
Second hand implies it has been used before, but that’s not necessarily the case. They can end up at a distributor and be bought by sellers without them even knowing.
To be fair though this can happen in any store. It is just massively more prominent on Amazon because they sell quite a bit more stuff then other shops. This can happen anywhere.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Amazon dump everything into the one bin. There’s no concept of company A’s stuff and company b’s stuff. Whatever a company sends them as product x gets dumped into the bin for product x. No matter if they’re second hand, counterfeit, or otherwise.
Yeah but it generally doesn’t. Amazon is a warehouse of tens of thousands of sellers crap and they just assume it is whatever they’re told it is. If I go to Amazon I may get someone else’s product because it’s all one bin.
If I go to scan, I deal with scan, I get scans product not someone else’s.
Of all the stuff I’ve ordered, the idea that a different product has worked its way into the logistics has never happened outside of these market place sellers like Amazon.
You might be considering a mistake in logistics that bundled a product like wrong? But this isn’t the issue with Amazon, it’s a fundamental problem that Amazon has basically no oversight over products.
That’s not true.
External seller’s products get a separate ASIN (starting with an X) that is separate from the ASIN Amazon uses for their own stuff.
I agree they are still a mess, but that’s not how it works there. What can happen is that different products get the same ASIN, but that is a whole different can of worms.
On a sidenote: There is no such thing as a “bin” where things are stored (except when they get a whole pallet of things, then pallet = bin). The Amazon warehouse software sends products wherever there is space for it, so the same product can (and will) end up in 20 different places in the warehouse. The only thing they have in common is their ASIN.
I know but it makes for an easy description over explaining the technology
To guarantee then you should only buy self by and shipped by Amazon products? This is what I’ve generally done in the past until I was done with Amazon.
Of course you can still get a bad product every once in a while because there was a mixup when they were received, for example when an external seller didn’t label their shit properly - happens all the time, it then gets assigned by a staff person manually who believe it or not can make mistakes.
Or (and that was what I was referring to earlier) the “wrong” (here: OEM) stuff gets sent by the distributor without amazon (which I meant with seller earlier) even knowing. In this case there is no way for Amazon to know it is a “wrong” (i.e. OEM) unit they received (because from the outside it is still the exact same product, the only difference is the serial number, not the EAN or UPC) unless they check every single unit, and that is way too much work to go through. You could say “amazon has tons of money they could do it” and yeah they could, but honestly as much as I dislike amazon for what they’re doing, that is unreasonable for any business (for a start, they would have to open every single unit, how do you explain that to customers?).
Don’t get me wrong it’s best to avoid Amazon alltogether and support local businesses or smaller shops instead, but lets face it most people won’t do that because muh frie schibbing
I suppose that’s one of the issues with letting others sell in your house, you have to hope you can separate your stock from the plebs well enough. I can to the conclusion as you mention, it’s best to try and look elsewhere. Not even because it’s more local (though it helps), I’ve been having great success with superior service from other providers.
It depends what you need (RMA process is super nice with Amazon usually for example), but yeah, Amazon has had better days regarding support. They dropped a lot over the years.
If you want my take on the matter just phone Amazon and just require for them to do something about it because if in the original listing wasn’t stated that the drives were OEM and they allowed a seller to sell on their platform they take the responsibility of having a seller that “scams” buyers.
And if the seller is not active anymore, like in this case, they know how to get in touch with the owner of the company that used to sell those drives and something can be worked out.
