HDD vendors reduce warranty period, channel fumes

Seagate has decided to follow the example set by Maxtor and Western Digital

to bring down the warranty on its HDDs from three to one year. Says Sharad

Srivastava, Country Manager, Seagate India, "The new warranty policy

continues to cover the vast majority of product returns, while improving our

business model to reflect today’s competitive environment."

Interestingly, Samsung has decided to continue offering three-year warranty for

its HDDs.

Partners feel that this move will backfire on the company and it will lose

ground to Samsung. Says Sanath Babu, MD, Sri Durga Enterprises, "Seagate

has a bad replacement cycle which is from 25 days to a month. It also has higher

failure rate and partners have to courier the defective products to Chennai

which is an additional cost." He points out that Samsung has attractive

schemes and a well-defined replacement policy and their failure rate is low.

Mumbai-based Sachidha Gangurde of Rite Systems has already started

recommending Samsung HDDs to customers after suffering from HDD problems with

Seagate.

Several quarters of the channel feel that Seagate will have to either reduce

its prices or go back to three-year warranty to stay competitive vis a vis

Samsung. However Umesh Modi of Abacus Peripherals points out that merely

reducing prices might not help Seagate. "Samsung is very aggressive on the

price front. If Seagate reduces its prices, Samsung will follow suit and offer

better warranty," he says.

VINITA BHATIA



With inputs from SUNILA PAUL