4. Tech Support Contacts Tech Support

From: Christopher Green

I work for a small computer repair store in Ohio where we deal with many broken laptops. We buy all our replacement parts from online retailers and guarantee all parts sold for a year. We now sell only Western Digital hard drives, but in the past have sold Toshibas.

One day a young student who had had her hard drive replaced 11 months prior returned to us claiming the same problems were occurring with the replacement Toshiba drive we had sold to her almost a year before. After running a diagnostic on the drive we confirmed that it was failing.

I was given the task of processing the RMA for the Toshiba hard drive which I assumed, wrongly, would be routine. I ran the serial number of the OEM drive through Toshiba's website and determined it was still under warranty, which I had already known.

After digging for awhile I found a 1-800 support number which I promptly dialed. The first operator seemed to be confused as to why I was calling her in regard to support, so she transferred me to "someone who could help".

The next operator asked me for the serial number of the laptop which the drive came out of. By shear coincidence, the student's laptop was indeed a Toshiba and we had sold her a Toshiba drive, so I inquired why I would need to give the serial number for the laptop when it was the hard drive that had failed. The operator explained to me that the hard drive was covered under the laptop's warranty.

At this point it became clear that she didn't understand that this was an OEM replacement drive. I tried to explain that this was an aftermarket drive at which point the operator transferred me to another operator. Thinking I was going to talk to someone who knew what they were doing, I had high hopes when the next tech supporter picked up the line.

I explained my dilemma again, "I purchased this drive... it failed... it's under warranty... I need an RMA number." Of course the first question I was asked was, "What's the serial number of your laptop sir?" I tried, and tried, and tried to explain myself but I eventually just gave the operator the serial number off the laptop. "I'm sorry sir, but that laptop isn't under warranty," to which I replied "Yes ma'am, I know, this hard drive isn't from that laptop. I bought the drive online, aftermarket. Toshiba sells standalone hard drives." I was flabbergasted when she replied "We do?"

At that point I asked to be transferred to someone else and luckily got someone at the Storage Media Division. After that it took about 2 minutes to get my RMA number and the drive was shipped off the next day.

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