Amazon should take a closer look at how they’re shipping hard drives, because the current plan just isn’t working.
I live in California and my best friend lives in Connecticut. For Christmas I sent him a 500GB Western Digital drive, from Amazon.com.
When he received the package, the drive had been damaged and was not usable. Most likely because it was packed without any protective padding at all! (See attached picture). Aside from the single plastic bubble, there was nothing to prevent the drive from being damaged.
My friend had the drive RMA’d from Amazon, and told the Amazon representative what had happened. When the second drive arrived, he was astonished to discover that it was packed exactly the same way! Once again, no protective wrapping/padding, and the drive was again damage in transit.
On his second call to Amazon, he was told by the rep that “we can not guarantee” that it would ship safely, and was offered a store credit. Which makes me wonder, what’s the point of store credit if you can’t get undamaged products!
Shortly after his call, Amazon sent me an automated email requested feedback on their customer service. I replied with the following:
– This sensitive electronic device was shipped without protection, and arrived damaged. After being RMA’d, it was again shipped without protection!
An Amazon representative could not guarantee that if it was again RMA’d that it would be shipped correctly, and offered store credit. This is unacceptable. All I want is the drive to be shipped correctly. —
Hope this is of interest to you!
Cheers,
Joshua
Say what you will about annoying “packing peanuts,” in this case they would have saved the hard drive. Unless there’s something else you want from Amazon, we think you should ask for a refund, rather than store credit. That way you can buy the hard drive from a retailer that can figure out how to package it properly. Like you said, what’s the point of store credit from a place that can’t ship what you want without breaking it?
Amazon’s executive customer service email: ecr@amazon.com
(Photo: Joshua)
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Had to be a bare drive shipped by one of Amazon’s selling partners. Everything I’ve received from Amazon (electronics, books, or whatever) has been securely packaged and arrived safely.
I bought a monitor from them once. Great packing.
interesting,
i was doing a warranty repair on a gateway last week…
the client had 2 replacement drives sent to her, and both of them were bad.
i thought that was odd, until she told me how they arrived…
one came in a small fedex box with no cusioning at all. the second one came in a fedex slightly padded envelope.
the first one made great loud clicking noises when powered on, the second one was quiet, but when drive diagnostics were run on it, it failed because of handling!
this makes no sense at all to me.
I had the same issue when I ordered Star Trek on HD-DVD. I got my order in a lightly padded envelope. I thought that was pretty weird because most of my DVD order in the past have come in boxes. I opened up the package, and was disappointed to fine the plastic casing cracked and shattered. I promptly filled in an RMA request and another copy was shipped to me… in a box this time, and I was much happier.
Not an Amazon fan. I always buy my books, at least, from chapters.indigo.ca here in Canada-land.
Very reasonable shipping rates (7 bucks for SAME-DAY COURIER, anyone?) and always arrives packed in a sensible cardboard sleeve that fits just right.
This is definitely a case of bad Amazon packing. However, I have always had stuff arrive from Amazon packed properly with enough cushioning material. NewEgg, which has been recommended several times in this topic, has been rather poor based on my experience. I had a router arrive without any cushioning in the box and just recently I had an Asus Eee shipped from NewEgg in a box that was missing its corner. They pushed some brown paper into the corner and taped that corner of the box with some clear packing tape to seal it up. Can’t believe I thought about ordering a hard drive from them a while back. The only way I will buy a hard drive is by purchasing it locally at a big box or computer parts store. I don’t trust anyone to ship a hard drive properly.
Link to a pic of the box NewEgg sent my Eee in:
[www.flickr.com]
This may be fairly isolated, or only coming out of a certain shipping location. I had an Archos 605 shipped through Amazon (only place i could get it cheap) and it was packaged fine.