Its all about the warranty.

posted: 2017-07-01
Its all about the warranty. - Courchevel Enquirer
As most electronics nowadays aren’t repairable when they break it’s usually a one way trip to the bin.
However when you purchase a new gadget in the collection of all the paperwork is usually a registration document, which if you fill out online it helps when you have to make a warranty claim. I should note for all the products mentioned I only registered them when I made the warranty claim but I have the original email proof of purchase.

The first piece to stop working was a Western Digital external hard drive (which I use for my time machine backups). After the usual troubleshooting questions they send me a UPS note, collected and replaced the item in 1-2 weeks. As a bonus they replaced the 1GB drive with a 2GB model. If this had been by first purchase of a WD drive, which is definitely isn’t (over time we have purchase multiple drives from WD) it would reassure me to re-purchase them in the future. Overall 11/10.

A week before the end of the vlog the Tomtom bandit I had been using to record my skiing started to play up. It would stop recording anywhere from a couple of minutes to 20 seconds with an SD error. Again, after endlessly troubleshooting the problem, I returned the camera. Just over a week later a brand new unit was returned. Overall 10/10.

Finally the SD card used inside the aforementioned action camera still was playing up, not as badly in the new camera but not prefect. Sandisk, who I later found out were owned by Western Digital, provided the same level of service as WD did. Unfortuntely they didn’t upgrade the card. Overall again 10/10.

So the moral of the story is if you gadget flips out while still under warranty don’t bin it, but challenge the customer service of the respect companies. I think you’ll be surprised. (in a good way)