Amazon Market Place rant

Be wary when buying anything from a Market Place seller on Amazon, any guarantee or warranty they offer is potentially worthless.

I bought a replacement laptop HDD, a 500 Gb HGST one , after 2 failed Seagates in the same laptop, hoping that HGST might be slightly more reliable, and I was swayed by the 3 year warranty being advertised.

Having failed after less than 1 year, I contacted the seller only to find my email ignored, and it looks like they have gone out of business. Amazon offer an "A-to-z" guarantee but that only applies for the first 90 days and only covers you if goods fail to arrive, are incorrect or don't work. My credit card company aren't interested either, since the item was working when it arrived. Any warranty claim through HGST is likely to fail since the seller did not appear to be an authorised seller.

It was only £35 that's gone down the drain, along with stuff on the disk that hadn't been backed up, but it's more the principle, you're no better off than buying on eBay, despite the reassuring Amazon name appearing to be behind the seller.

You can still check for warranty by the serial number and return it direct if it's covered:

https://www2.hgst.com/portal/site/en/support/warranty/

I've had Seagate drives that I bought used from ebay replaced under the 5 year warranty by dealing with the manufacturer direct.

Thanks, but that comes back with "invalid serial", most likely because the date on the HDD label is 26May13 even though I bought it in November 2016 (didn't notice it was "old stock" until it failed, didn't think I would even need to check on a "brand new" HDD).

And anyway I've cracked it open to see if the heads were stuck (they weren't) so I'm about to get a big hammer out and smash it to pieces, along with the other two, and the 2 x 3Tb NAS drives that crashed spectacularly, if I can find them.

Well that was great fun

On a slightly different subject I had Amazon prime for the first series of the GT cancelled it 02/07 checked my bank account this month 12/17 only to find they have taken a payment, phoned them and they say nothing we can do as we can't recognisge your email address told me to
cancel my bank account. Got to like there (ex)customer service!

I clicked on something and discovered I was now a member of Amazon Prime - tried immediately to cancel but found I had a month's membership, wanted or not. Since then they've been sticking 'your membership is about to expire' every time I go near Amazon... hopefully it stops before they start charging.

Yes same here, when making a purchase and checking out you get a bewildering choice of "free" postage, some are really truly free and others are free only if you sign up to Prime. Despite selecting the real free service I was still enrolled in Prime. I guess they work on the assumption that people can't be bothered to find out how to cancel. Still, whilst I have it, I might as well get free next day delivery on stuff and binge watch the Grand Tour (actually it is generally awful, I'm not sure I'll make it to the end if the first series let alone start the second...)

Same happened to me last year. I always make a point of carefully *not* selecting to sign up for prime but was signed up anyway. I had to mail them to get it removed from my account.

As Tom Waits said, "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away".

I signed up for a Prime trial a few days ago- watched a handful of Grand Tour episodes (2 from each series) and I’d have to say that Series 2 is a huge improvement over Series 1

The bloody American race driver is annoying me already - thankfully replaced by someone altogether more photogenic....

Really? I didn't see any of the first series, but the current one is awful

did you notice that the HDD says refurbished at the top of the label? Was it sold as such?

That's the last time I park next to you Dave

Yes, the one on the left was sold as refurbed, lasted about as long as the non-refurbed one. The one I was getting particularly annoyed about was the HGST one on the right.

Amazon is turning notorious the way they treat everyone not amazon-addicted. The same politics here in Spain regarding clients and sellers, especially with the prime subscription.

Result! An email to the Amazon UK CEO has produced a satisfactory result (an offer of £35 Amazon "vouchers" as a "goodwill gesture, without admission of liability and in full and final settlement").

But the original rant/warning still applies: Amazon Market Place sellers are no better than eBay or Gumtree sellers, or even local (real) market traders - there's likely to be no backup once the 90 days are up, and it pays to check the goods very carefully.

I will have another go with that mallet at what's left of those HDDs in celebration...

Well done for persevering!