First post, by shamino
- Rank
- l33t
I just received a 3TB drive from Amazon. It was laying in the corner of a box with air pillows on top. I suppose at the time of packing, the drive might have been in the middle of the pillows. Things move. It won't stay there, it will end up in the bottom. Especially when they aren't even packed tight. The drive was sliding around in the box before I even opened it.
I decided to at least try the drive, but of course it was acting a bit funny. The problems weren't immediately obvious, but the surface scan eventually started freezing up at some points and it detected one bad sector. I didn't wait for it to finish, because at the rate of all the freezups it might have taken a week.
At least Amazon makes it easy to return stuff. I printed the label, boxed it back up exactly the way it was and sent it back today. I wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or amused when the lady at the UPS Store took the box and dropped it with a thud. I'm sure the drive got lots of thuds on it's way to reaching me, now it will be getting more on the way back.
Amazon and NewEgg both have boxes that were specifically designed to hold hard drives. NewEgg's is better, Amazon's is okay. But the problem is they don't use them consistently. I have no idea how their fulfillment centers are organized, but it seems to me that all the hard drives would be in the same place, and whoever works in that area would know how to box them correctly. But they don't, it's a coin toss whether they use the box they're supposed to. This isn't the first time I've lost the packaging lottery, and it's an annoying waste of time when this happens.
Fortunately there is a reasonably priced retail boxed drive I can order to replace it. Retail boxes were designed to transport single drives to the consumer, they exist for a reason. Retailers got the bright idea that bare drives would be cheaper. Cheaper because they don't come with packaging. After all these years, they still can't comprehend the fact that by selling bare drives, they become responsible for providing appropriate packaging.
I don't know whether the problem is organizational or a result of careless employees, but you'd think these RMAs would be a significant expense that they'd crack down on. Apparently not, they enjoy getting these things back.
