Liability for faulty harddrive - retailer or manufacturer?

[daddy cool]

Wasn't sure whether to post this in the computer section, but my ultimate question is a legal one, so...

In Oct 2019 I bought four Western Digital 4TB hard drives from Ebuyer UK to go in my QNAP NAS (they are NAS-specific drives, and on the compatibility list for my NAS, and come with a 3 year warranty).
All worked fine in a RAID configuration since then (ie, 1 of the 4 drives can fail, and my data remains safe). Well 1 of the drives has just failed, so I need it replaced with a new drive asap in case a 2nd fails (then I would lose my data).

Contacted Ebuyer expecting a hassle-free replacement drive would be sent to me once I had sent them the dead one, but customer service have replied with:

"Thanks for your email, I’m sorry to hear this.
The warranty is now redeemable directly with the manufacturer I’m afraid.
Please contact them on the below for assistance raising a warranty claim –
https://support.wdc.com/contact.aspx
I have emailed you a copy of your invoice, this will act as your proof of purchase."

Ive registered with WD Support, but not yet put a claim in - on reflection, im not sure I want to deal with WD directly, and think im within my rights for the retailer I bought from to replace the hardrive. Ive been using Ebuyer for years and im sure ive had hassle-free RMA's before.

Before I reply to Ebuyer, can someone confirm I have a right for them to sort the issue (ideally, send me a replacement, rather than refund)? If so, which particular law should I be quoting - "Sale of Goods Act 1979"?

[Heartworm]

sales of goods act has been superceeded by the consumer rights act,

[daddy cool]

Heartworm said:

sales of goods act has been superceeded by the consumer rights act,

Ok, cheers. So does that give me the right for the retailer to sort the issue?

[syl]

Ebuyer are responsible under the various laws, but if you send it them all they will do is send it to the manufacturer, wait for it to return and then send it to you.

The manufacturer’s warranty is in addition to those rights.

You will be waiting much longer if you insist on sending it back to EBuyer and have twice the risk of a problem during postage.

[daddy cool]

syl said:

Ebuyer are responsible under the various laws, but if you send it them all they will do is send it to the manufacturer, wait for it to return and then send it to you.

The manufacturer’s warranty is in addition to those rights.

You will be waiting much longer if you insist on sending it back to EBuyer and have twice the risk of a problem during postage.

Well, its a harddrive - its not going to be "repaired"? Surely Ebuyer will just test it, see that there is a read/write error, send me a new drive from their stock (same risk of transport as when I bought the 4 previous, and the same risk whether it ships from Ebuyer or WD) and then they'll sort out their loss with WD separately. Or am I missing something?

[syl]

They will send it back to WD without even testing it. WD will repair it (well, they’ll remanufacture it) and they’ll send a (different) remanufactured drive back.

You won’t just get a new one off the shelf, from WD or EBuyer.

Edited by syl on Sunday 12th April 23:07

[S0updr4g0n]

For what it's worth, dealing with WD for a replacement is painless and quick in my experience. I've done this for many many years and never had an issue whatsoever. I would rather do the WD replacement than deal with a third party distributor every time.

[CarbonV12V]

S0updr4g0n said:

For what it's worth, dealing with WD for a replacement is painless and quick in my experience. I've done this for many many years and never had an issue whatsoever. I would rather do the WD replacement than deal with a third party distributor every time.

Same here - quicker and easier to deal with WD direct.

[hersh]

CarbonV12V said:

S0updr4g0n said:

For what it's worth, dealing with WD for a replacement is painless and quick in my experience. I've done this for many many years and never had an issue whatsoever. I would rather do the WD replacement than deal with a third party distributor every time.

Same here - quicker and easier to deal with WD direct.

And again, faster and less painful. Yes you are right its ebuyers problem but take the easier route

[daddy cool]

hersh said:

CarbonV12V said:

S0updr4g0n said:

For what it's worth, dealing with WD for a replacement is painless and quick in my experience. I've done this for many many years and never had an issue whatsoever. I would rather do the WD replacement than deal with a third party distributor every time.

Same here - quicker and easier to deal with WD direct.

And again, faster and less painful. Yes you are right its ebuyers problem but take the easier route

Ok, cheers chaps.

[Swern1]

BertBert said:

Can't comment on the legals, but from previous experience WD's warranty replacement service is very good.

As an aside, I don't run raid for the very reason you have found. You have to have a spare disk on hand to replace a faulty one.

Bert

Your logic seems a little flawed.
Drives do three things, they read they write and they fail.
RAID gives you a degree or protection over the latter (depending on RAID type), which seems to have worked in this case.
Without it he’d have to recover from back up to a new / spare drive ...

[Farmerpalmer]

A few years ago I had exactly the same problem, with the same retailer. HD was in warranty and failed.
I expected a replacement or a full refund.
Ebuyer refused both, and instead I got a partial refund. They initially offered a voucher, even though their own refund policy stated clearly that a refund wound be paid to the original card.
I was really not happy with this, as they had not honoured the warranty, and I still had to purchase another HD.
Having used Ebuyer for many years prior to this incident, I have not used them since ( and never will).
(Same customer service level as a certain kitchen manufactuturer, named after a bird)

[BertBert]

Swern1 said:

Your logic seems a little flawed.
Drives do three things, they read they write and they fail.
RAID gives you a degree or protection over the latter (depending on RAID type), which seems to have worked in this case.
Without it he’d have to recover from back up to a new / spare drive ...

Yes, I find that most home raid users don't think they need a backup. Then they lose a disk on their raid array and have to run at risk. Also they often buy their drives at the same time which then fail quite close to each other. And can also fail when rebuilding the array.
People don't understand that raid gives high availability, it doesn't back the data up.

So on the basis that you should backup anyway, I prefer to do that rather than have raid. No big deal really, just personal choice.
Bert

[liquidfox]

BertBert said:

So on the basis that you should backup anyway, I prefer to do that rather than have raid.

Ideally you should do both, replacing a failed disk is less time consuming than restoring a backup. You're also up and running during the interim too. It's why all servers in businesses run RAID & varying levels of backup. It's all well and good having a backup, but if you're down for 8 hours when you could have just paid for 2 drives instead of 1, you'll be kicking yourself.

[Sheepshanks]

syl said:

They will send it back to WD without even testing it. WD will repair it (well, they’ll remanufacture it) and they’ll send a (different) remanufactured drive back.

You won’t just get a new one off the shelf, from WD or EBuyer.

Refurbishing HDDs baffles me - I know they are available, but for WD to do it, it's hard to know how it can make sense as it must cost them buttons to make new drives.

I had a complete WD NAS fail and sent it back to them and they sent me a brand new one. I'd opened it to try and recover the drive contents so I'd broken the warranty sticker but they either didn't care or didn't even look at it (I suspect the latter). I'd rather have my money back though - after discovering it used a unique file system so the drive was unrecoverable (it thankfully didn't matter) I bought a Synology and the WD unit is still in a cupboard.

[BertBert]

liquidfox said:

Ideally you should do both, replacing a failed disk is less time consuming than restoring a backup. You're also up and running during the interim too. It's why all servers in businesses run RAID & varying levels of backup. It's all well and good having a backup, but if you're down for 8 hours when you could have just paid for 2 drives instead of 1, you'll be kicking yourself.

I don't go down for 8 hours when I lose a drive (only happened once so far). I just use the backed up version.
Bert

[hutchst]

Farmerpalmer said:

< snip>
Having used Ebuyer for many years prior to this incident, I have not used them since ( and never will).
(Same customer service level as a certain kitchen manufactuturer, named after a bird)

Sharon?

[hutchst]

BertBert said:

I don't go down for 8 hours when I lose a drive (only happened once so far). I just use the backed up version.
Bert

I'll be building a new 4xdrive network storage unit later this year (RAID 5) It never crossed my mind only to buy 4 drives. I will buy 5, and always have a spare on hand. If my data was more critical I would use RAID 1.

[anonymous-user]

Heartworm said:

sales of goods act has been superceeded by the consumer rights act,

This is a common misperception. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 has been partly but not completely replaced by the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

[Swerni]

hutchst said:

BertBert said:

I don't go down for 8 hours when I lose a drive (only happened once so far). I just use the backed up version.
Bert

I'll be building a new 4xdrive network storage unit later this year (RAID 5) It never crossed my mind only to buy 4 drives. I will buy 5, and always have a spare on hand. If my data was more critical I would use RAID 1.

What benefit does 1 give over 5 for more critical data?