Seagate five year warranties not all they seem

A US USER who bought a number of Seagate hard drives has discovered that the five year warranty the firm is offering is not all its seems.

Bob S., from St Paul Minnesota, said he bought his boxes through CDW for the business he worked for, and went to the Seagate site to enter the serial numbers to confirm the warranty dates.

But, he said, when he'd entered the information, including the unique serial numbers, he got the following message:

Component
The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service. Seagate sells many drives to direct OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) customers. These products are usually configured for the OEMs only, as components for their systems. You must contact your place of purchase for any warranty support on these drives.

If you purchased this unit directly from Seagate, please return to the previous page and verify your Seagate customer number, because the customer number you entered () does not match our records.

Concerned about the problem, he contacted Seagate by email to receive the following reply:

Dear Bob,

Regarding your request, without serial numbers we are unable to trace the details. Also inform the place of purchase that these drives' warranty status shows 'component'.

All the drives shipped to OEM are not exactly sold as a system component. Those drives are manufactured exclusively for the requirement of the distributors and it is not the normal manufacturing by Seagate. So even they come in retail package, these drives show 'component'. The warranty for these products' serial# are only applicable to the buyer who purchased the unit directly from Seagate for the stated warranty period.

The warranty period for a drive starts right from the time it is being shipped out of Seagate. All distribution drives sold on and after June 1st 2004 to distribution channels carry a 5 year warranty. Kindly confirm this with the place of purchase and also mail us the serial numbers.

Regards
Seagate Warranty Support

He told the INQ: "Instead of having a new drive with coverage by Seagate of five years, or even the original one year as printed on the box, I am only covered by CDW for an undisclosed amount of time? Also, why would any warranty start before a customer even purchased the product?"

We're attempting to get a clarification from Seagate about exactly how its warranty periods work. µ

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