Western Digital was founded in 1970 by Motorola employee Alvin B. Phillips as General Digital. In 1971, the name Western Digital was adopted and the WD1402A was released.
The company 0riginally produced microchips for calculators. By 1975, they were the largest calculator microchip producer in the world.
In 1976, the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after their largest customer went out of business.
The company recovered by switching from calculators to hard drives. In 1983, they won a contract with IBM to produce all their hard drive controllers.
In 1991, the hard drive controller market began to slow as ATA and SCSI became standards. WD released their Caviar hard drive line this year. The Caviar drives sold so well that the company began to shut down other divisions to focus solely on hard drive production.
In 2009, the company entered the solid state hard drive sector.
Today, Western Digital is one of the world’s largest hard disk drive manufacturers.
Western Digital
Western Digital was founded in 1970 by Motorola employee Alvin B. Phillips as General Digital. In 1971, the name Western Digital was adopted and the WD1402A was released.
The company 0riginally produced microchips for calculators. By 1975, they were the largest calculator microchip producer in the world.
In 1976, the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after their largest customer went out of business.
History
The company recovered by switching from calculators to hard drives. In 1983, they won a contract with IBM to produce all their hard drive controllers.
In 1991, the hard drive controller market began to slow as ATA and SCSI became standards. WD released their Caviar hard drive line this year. The Caviar drives sold so well that the company began to shut down other divisions to focus solely on hard drive production.
In 2009, the company entered the solid state hard drive sector.
Today, Western Digital is one of the world’s largest hard disk drive manufacturers.
Dear Western Digital,
Asking customers to jump through hoops to have you honor the replacement of a failed SanDisk product which is under 5-year warranty, and which has a current retail price of $11 in both counter-productive, and very poor customer service.
Here is a copy of a message to your SanDisk division regarding such an incident.
I see here that I am not alone in my outrage over this ill-conceived corporate policy.
Please take immediate actions to correct such nonsense.
Thank you.
ONLINE RMA SUBMISSION [Incident: 190610-001969]
Dear Jose G,
As requested here is are photos of the front, back, product packaging, and original receipt for the SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive:
FRONT:
(PHOTO)
BACK:
(PHOTO)
ORIGINAL TARGET RECEIPT:
(PHOTO)
PRODUCT PACKAGING – BACK:
(PHOTO)
PRODUCT PACKAGING – FRONT:
(PHOTO)
Please note that this is the THIRD (3rd) SanDisk Flash drive which has failed: SanDisk Cruzer 128GB (twice), and SanDisk Ultra (the current incident).
In my view, a proper support response, which would satisfy me COMPLETELY, would be an IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT of the current unit, including a prepaid shipping envelope to return the failed product.
That’s the sort of service that I am accustomed to experiencing from AMAZON, MICROSOFT, HP, and other customer centric vendors.
Anything else would negatively impact my opinion and future purchasing of SanDisk and Western Digital products.
Please escalate this incident to your Corporate Offices.
Thank you for your help.
Cheers,
Joel
I purchased a 4TB My Book external hard drive in July 2015. I use it for my Karaoke business. I have 2TB of music on it. Has worked fine up until last week. (1/27/2017) I purchased replacement power cord / ac adapter, and USB cord. Light on hard drive now blinks, but my laptop(s) do not recognize WD external unit.
After registering my unit online with serial #, got prompt stating was out of warranty period. Based on WD’s manufacture date. I emailed WD customer service copy of receipt from Best Buy purchased on 7/8/2015, and received reply “We are currently submitting the proof of purchase you provided to the RMA department for Revision and warranty update if applicable.”
After reading 3 complaints about WD, I’m not feeling very confident on their product and/or customer service procedures.
I rely on this WD external hd for my business.
Will keep ya’ll posted on how it all comes out.
Returns are a nightmare, as is Certifying refurbished/reconditioned External Hard drives.
Sending replacement Hard Drives ( 6TB instead of 8TB ) shows how much some people care about their work or job. Will not let you speak to a manager ( “he does not have a phone” ) then admitting that he does. Refusing to give the Managers Name. Telling a customer to call Corporate. WD should review telephone conversations for quality control, honesty to a customer and low level policy makers ( Managers ) who exist but do not exist.
I bought this Western Digital passport book hard drive off another co-worker while in Afghanistan. The first month when it was plug-in my laptop work. Now last couple months stop working. S/N WCAZA 4116299 P/N WDBACW0020HBK-003611D . My question is there any waranty on this product? I can’t not get any of my movies from this hard drive. I wnet out bought new 3.0 cable for it.
Gerry R. Brown
XXXXX Dixon Street
Fredericksburg, VA
February 6, 2014
Steven D. Milligan
Western Digital
3355 Michelson Drive
Suite 100
Irvine, California
Dear Western Digital
I have been a loyal customer of yours for some years now, at least 10 of them. As I sit looking at my current 6 drive inventory of your hard drives, I feel I’ve been a loyal customer to you. Until recently my most favorite choice of hard drive has been you Caviar Black (now just Black) drive. As a gamer and producer of audio I need my hard drives to perform at a high level and not use any on-board power saving features. Even when there were more choices in my local Best Buy, I chose your drives.
I had to RMA a 1 TB Caviar Black that failed on my last March. The drive itself was not that old to me, although it may have been deemed old by you guys. I added information because I notice that your drives have a birth date on them. A person can purchase one your drives today, but its creation date could be a year or more old. I noticed this because I just, sadly broke down and purchased a “new’ (say it loosely) 2 TB black just last night. I had to do so because of an issue with which started at the drive sent to me as an RMA replacement for the 1 TB hard drive that failed (RMA #85074224).
In a nutshell I RMA’d a 1 TB drive purchased and while waiting I purchased a replacement (1 TB Caviar Black). When I got the RMA drive, I left it in the box until I decided I could use more space. Upon installing the replacement drive, having various problems with it, and testing I found out the drive was bad (had over 100 or more bad sectors). When I went to do an RMA on it I found that the “recertified” replacement drive was out of its 6 month warranty and of course I was highly pissed.
How could the replacement drive’s warranty be up before the warranty of the drive I purchased, outside of you guys knowing that your recertified drives are really crap and that one will have problems with it I can’t see a reason for this. Through complaining I was told “we will do a onetime replacement for your pain, however this drive will basically have no warranty.” This would be a cool enough process if not for the fact that you send your customer the same recertified garbage.
Every single recertified drive I’ve received from you through the RMA process has had to be replaced; this includes the crap I was just sent in the above RMA process. That drive was not only ran 6 degrees hotter than every other drive of yours I have, but it moved like a 5400 RPM snail. I could have saved my time, effort, and money shipping the initial problem drive back to you. You would think that you would have at least said “let’s send him a new drive like he requested and not a recertified one”, but no you just take advantage of your customers and send the refurbished garbage AKA someone else’s RMA’d drive that we slapped a new logic board or head in, like that’s all find and dandy. Your drives have a 3 year warranty on them new, to think that I one could be 6 month into that period, RMA a drive, and be sent a recertified drive that only has a 6 month warranty on it is some bull.
If not for the fact that Best Buy only carries your drives and the bottom of the barrel Seagate drive my new purchase would have been from someone else.
Thanks again for nothing,
Gerry Brown