RMA or not?

October 17, 2007 11:34 PM

Should I RMA a refurbished drive sent to me where the website didn't mention is was refurbished? I order a drive a few months ago with 1 year warranty, and it has just failed on me. I looked closer at the drive and it was a refurbish. Details inside.

The online retailer is a medium sized one (you've probably never heard of it, but it's not small either). They have refused to give me my money without me sending the drive back to them. Their policy is not to refund shipping back charges.

I tried to chargeback on my credit card, but the CC company rejected my chargeback, sending me a letter from the retailer saying the policy was to RMA it.

The reasons I don't want to RMA it back is
1) money out of my own pocket
2) I have to wait a while
3) they may even ship me another used drive back since it's an RMA
4) I have personal data on it

I feel it's their fault, since I didn't get what I paid for (a refurbished drive instead of a new one).

posted by lpctstr; to computers & internet (5 comments total)

I'm not saying you're entitled to a new drive or not, but "new" does not mean "won't fail before a refurb" when it comes to hard drives.

If it's got a warranty, and you're doing backups (which you should be), it really doesn't matter.
posted by Mikey-San at 11:49 PM on October 17, 2007

Clarification:

There's a difference between "used" and "refurbished". You MAY, however, want to stop shopping with that retailer if you feel the details of the product weren't properly disclosed to you. Your choice there. Money talks.
posted by Mikey-San at 11:50 PM on October 17, 2007

You're not going to be able to get the money back without sending them the drive. If you want the shipping charges back you can always sue them in small claims court for it but I doubt it is worth it.
posted by grouse at 1:26 AM on October 18, 2007

I'm assuming you are in the U.S. from your previous questions. You could also report them to your state's consumer protection office for sending incorrectly described items, probably part of the attorney general's office. Don't expect this to get your money back in a hurry.
posted by grouse at 1:28 AM on October 18, 2007

It sounds to me like you didn't use the right tack on your chargeback. You've contested their resolution method rather than the fact that what they sold you isn't what you were promised.

However, I don't know how you're going to deal with the personal data on the drive issue. Unfortunately life is not well set up to deal with this problem - it's not reasonable to expect you to hand over sensitive personal thing, but it's also not reasonable to ask them to refund your money without proof you have a problem / that the product is screwed.

I'd certainly revisit that issue of new vs refurb with the chargeback and, if I were you, simply accept the risk of sending back the drive. If it is in fact dead then just reassure yourself that you are just not so interesting that it's worth anyone's while to do data recovery on the brick.

If you are that interesting then hit it with a hammer, throw it in the trash, and never do business with those clowns again.
posted by phearlez at 2:16 PM on October 18, 2007