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Technology Stocks : Western Digital (WDC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (8710)	2/7/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Findit	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 11057

To All - I am just starting to take a look at WDC. Would appreciate opinions of their product reliability and customer service. I've copied a newsgroup complaint below. How typical are the problems mentioned? Is WDC aware and working on a turn-around of these problems? Do you feel the complaints are totally false and maybe placed by someone out to put down WDC. TIA Jim >>WESTERN DIGITAL COMPLAINTS MOUNT Crusty was wondering why his already groaning e-mail box was filled to overflowing this morning. It seems that customers of Western Digital, a big-time maker of add-on hard disk drives (as any Best Buy or Circuit City maven can attest), are having problems with the company's technical support operation (or lack thereof, as one correspondent complained). The complaints center around delays or inability to reach Western's customer support staff, with respect to claims of defective drives. They're also filling up the public message board at Western's Web site. Two examples of the hundreds of complaints recently posted: "Help, please, my drive is down and can't get back up. I have tried to call tech support for the last three days and I can't get through. I downloaded wddiag and it reported an unrecoverable error with a code 0258. The serial number on the drive is WD-WT3611040913. The firmware is 10.07H11. The build date is 6-DEC-96. Can I get an RMA# by email or do I need to get through on the phone? " "I have submitted, count them, one, two, three forms requesting an RMA for a master drive that crashed. Thank God it's a workstation drive and not a server drive, or I would be in a really bad position. I have a serious problem with the speed and efficiency that you have displayed in answering support/RMA requests and I believe that many people here share the same opinion." Crusty contacted Western's tech support operation to find out what was happening, but suffered the same fate as Western's frustrated users. Calls either did not go through, were put on indefinite hold, or were dropped as they moved from one response layer to another. Not a good sign, says the Argumentative Arthropod. It's an especially troubling sign given the new low-cost, high-performance SCSI drives coming out and on the horizon from Western Digital, like the WD Enterprise 9.1 GB Ultra SCSI 3.5-Inch/Low Profile Hard Drive--a drive that Your Watery Wayfarer was set to buy when available. Given the troubled tech support at this key hard drive vendor, the Crustacean believes he will wait a while!<<