The Raiders of the Lost Walmart is a recurring series here at Consumerist, where the brave explorers who read this site excavate their local discount stores, finding ancient treasures along the way. What we mean is that readers send us pictures of overpriced electronics that are obsolete or even unusable, and that will probably never leave the clearance shelves. [More]
seagate
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Unearth $150 Camera From 2006, Ancient Overpriced Hard Drive
By 1.13.17
The Raiders of the Lost Walmart are the brave band of retail archaeologists who comb through the electronics sections of big-box stores to find gadgets that are obsolete or just plain old, and also comically overpriced. In this week’s field reports: an external hard drive and a digital camera that are over a decade old, yet priced as if they’re new. [More]
Seagate Employee Falls For CEO W-2 Scam, Sends Everyone’s Personal Information
By 3.7.16
Snapchat isn’t the only technology company that has fallen victim to the tax-season variation on the classic CEO e-mail scam, where a scammer impersonating the boss asks for all employees’ tax information. An employee at hard drive company Seagate fell into the same trap, sending 2015 tax information for thousands of current and former employees to unknown scammers. [More]
This Walmart Is Apparently Stuck In 2011
By 9.21.15
Reader Knah is one of the bravest explorers who form the Raiders of the Lost Walmart: retail archaeologists who comb the nation’s big-box stores for retail antiquities that have somehow stayed on the shelves even though they’re now obsolete, sometimes comically so. Here are his three latest finds: all of which are out of date, if not useless, yet are locked up in security equipment. Why? [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Uncover 11-Year-Old External Hard Drive
By 3.5.15
The Raiders of the Lost Walmart are a bold group of retail archaeologists who comb the big-box stores of the world for whatever the exact opposite of treasure is. They find obsolete technology available at prices so high that it deeply confuses savvy shoppers. While knocking $20 off the price of a 4-year-old blender and putting it in the “clearance” section is a decent strategy to move some housewares, it works less well for external hard drives. [More]
LaCie Admits Customer Data Was Breached For A Year
By 4.15.14
You may be familiar with LaCie, a French company that makes computer hard drives. They’re now owned by Seagate, and maintain their own online storefront, which was one of many hit by hackers in a recent credit card data breach. This time, the baddies exploited vulnerabilities in the Web application platform ColdFusion. This breach has been ongoing for almost an entire year. [More]
Decade-Old Hard Drives Languish On Walmart Store Shelves, Make Us Sad
By 8.14.13 — Updated: 8.15.13
If you’re in need of some vintage “high-capacity mobile storage,” get yourself over to the Walmart stores of Massachusetts. You can get some nice mint in package USB hard drives dating back to the early ’00s at comically high prices. [More]
Introducing The First Ever Warranty Shrink Ray
By 8.1.12 — Updated: 9.29.14
We’ve seen many different variations on the Grocery Shrink Ray over the years, but somehow never anticipated this: a Warranty Shrink Ray. A sneaky tipster who works at Best Buy noticed that the same product, a Seagate hard drive for notebook computers, had a lovely redesigned box. And a few years lopped off the warranty. Much like how other products change the size of an item just a tiny bit rather than raising the price, Seagate cut back on the warranty. [More]
Seagate Replaces Suspiciously Sparking Power Plug
By 1.6.11
It’s a common theme in “above and beyond” posts: a customer contacts a company asking where he or she can buy a certain small part for their widget, and the company sends the part for free–or a new widget entirely. Today, we honor Seagate, which sent globe-trotting academic Donna a new power cord and international plug thingies for her external hard drive when her American plug began to misbehave. [More]
Write On Your Hard Drive, Kill The Warranty
By 9.8.10
Scott warns you to use stickers rather than Sharpies to label your hard drives, because a pen mark is apparently all it takes to invalidate your warranty. [More]
Join The Latest And Greatest Class Action Lawsuits
By 4.1.10
If you got some free time and want some cash and are cool with waiting a few months for it to arrive, here are some new class action lawsuits you can join. [More]
Seagate CSR: "Since You Know Better Then We Do, Im Sure You Dont Need Our Assistance"
By 6.14.09
If Seagate tells you to call Microsoft for technical support, don’t talk back or you’re going to get an earful. At least that’s what reader K. learned when he called to ask why his external drive worked well under Vista, but not XP. Seagate’s customer service representative immediately blamed the problem on Microsoft, and when K. tried explaining why the problem might lie with Seagate, the CSR responded: “Well since you know better then we do, Im sure you dont need our assistance.”
Seagate Censoring Posts About Barrucada 7200.11 500GB Drive Failures
By 1.29.09
A number of consumers are complaining about their Seagate Barrucada 7200.11 500GB hard drive failures, and the company is censoring them. While Seagate has issued a firmware upgrade, it doesn’t work if your drive has already been affected, like reader Danny, who just lost all his research material and papers for school. According to some posts on MSFN, moderators on the official Seagate forums are deleting user posts about the issue, and even going so far as to disabling links made on the Seagate forums to posts on other forums about the issue. Danny’s letter, inside…
Secret Phone Numbers And Email Addresses To Reach Executives At 101+ Companies
By 11.7.08
Inside, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses for over 100 different companies to inject your customer service complaints into their corporate executive offices, and get it well on the way to success.
Apple Replaces Hundreds Of Dollars In iTunes Purchases After Hard Drive Crashes
By 4.25.08
Like any responsible computer user, Benny regularly backs up his data. Unfortunately for him, the three Seagate external hard drives he used failed, and he lost about $500 in iTunes purchases. Seagate wanted $1700 to recover the data. Fortunately, Apple saved the day.
