[plug] WD drives coming formatted as NTFS?

[Ari]

jlmiller at mmtnetworks.com.au wrote:
> I would agree with you in wanting the business to do the right thing. Proper route to take. Keep records of the entire transaction you may need it later.
> Sent via BlackBerry® from Vodafone
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ari <sothisistheinternet at gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:18:40 
> To: <plug at plug.org.au>
> Subject: Re: [plug] WD drives coming formatted as NTFS?
>
> Ari wrote:
>   
>> Kevin Shackleton wrote:
>>     
>>> Might not these drives have been recovered stock from a batch of drives
>>> set up for PC installation that never made it in the run.  Therefore
>>> they would have been bulk copied but never actually used.  They would
>>> have been sold off cheap and presumably bought cheap, with free mounting
>>> brackets.
>>>
>>> I don't see anything wrong with that, so long as there wasn't deceptive
>>> practice.
>>>
>>> Kevin
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> There was nothing to mention that the drives were not absolutely brand 
>> new. Certainly no mounting brackets. I thought it odd that they 
>> weren't in static bags, but I've had some manufacturers do that in the 
>> past with drives that were brand new. This is well known retailer with 
>> a range of drives from a variety of manufacturers.
>>     
> I've had a few private requests for the name of this company. I am going 
> to wait until I hear back to from the owner who I have emailed. I'm 
> pretty pissed at this point because of the amount of time I've lost and 
> the extra two days of downtime, but just because an employee screwed up 
> I want to give the owner a chance to make it right and provide an 
> assurance that it won't happen again - to anyone. I think I'm being as 
> fair in this. Please don't think I'm snubbing the requests for the name, 
> I just want to give the owner a chance to fix things first. I think we'd 
> all like that chance if we were in that situation.
>
> That said, I've learned quite a lot about drives and accessing data 
> contained on them. For example, smartmontools is installed by default in 
> FC11 and the smartctl command (with the appropriate options) allows one 
> to examine the information stored by the drive. For example, my 'new' 
> drives have had double the number of power cycles as I have given them...
>   
Response from the shop today - not from the owner but from two separate 
staff members. Each was forwarded a different email I sent - the first 
with my query regarding the drives, the second with the followup I sent 
after determining the drives were not truly new. I was offered either 
store credit (person 1) or a swap (person 2). Both acknowledged the 
drives probably came from cancelled builds. The second said that this 
would only have happened if there was no stock other than these 
semi-used drives. According to their website the drives are well and 
truly in stock, with at least 31 drives between their locations, and at 
least 20 at the location I purchased these from. I've asked if all their 
stock of these drives are semi-used. This might not have been an issue 
had I just been warned! With notice two things may have resulted - 1) I 
would have been okay with it and there would have been no hassle, 
frustration, or downtime with a loss of days of productivity on my end 
or 2) I'd have purchased more expensive truly NEW drives! There's no 
loss for them in that scenario, so why not tell the customer?

I've had days of downtime now because of this lack of notice. Somehow a 
swap or store credit just doesn't cut it especially when I will have to 
take more of my time to travel back their to get it to happen. The very 
least they could offer is a refund and an apology. I've asked for a 
refund. If that isn't forthcoming this afternoon I'll let you all know 
which business this is and you can decide for yourself if it's worth the 
risk.

Ari