Amazon's returns policy

I've found Amazon to be excellent with returns and missing goods. It has been a very satisfactory response to the few issues I've had. One of the reason I use them a lot.

Having said that, I agree that this issue with box sets outside of standard return periods is potentially a (small) problem.

I've posted the same grumble in avforums. It would seem that I have been a bit confused. The 30 day bit is for refunds (changed your mind etc), otherwise standard warranty applies - usually 1 year for faulty items.

I have found Amazon returns to be the best by far of anyone.

I have had a number of occasions where they have not even asked for the item back just refunded me.

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Originally posted by garyi:
I have found Amazon returns to be the best by far of anyone.

I have had a number of occasions where they have not even asked for the item back just refunded me.

I had to send faulty item (CD in a book set) back within 30 days, otherwise they would charge me twice.

Amazon have refunded me in full every time for faulty goods, right up to the end of warranty periods (a hard drive).
I am fairly sure the 30 days is just for "changed my mind" returns.

Sod's Law is working well ATM. I've just had to return a duff Seagate 500GB Portable HD, which was obviously faulty as soon as I tried to load stuff on it. I've recently had 2 other identical drives from them which function perfectly (oh, the demands of HD video storage from the camcorder ...)

Went through the usual malarky on the Amazon website, asked for a refund, and have packed up the faulty one for return.

Later last night I checked my email, and found that Amazon were out of stock of the item and there would be a delay. As there is some urgency about the portable HD (can't risk losing our digital photos and the current backup has failed), I cancelled the already generated (by Amazon returns) new order for the replacement and ordered a slightly more expensive alternative.

I just hope that I will now receive the refund on the original return, or do I have to email them to make sure?

Did you buy it direct from Amazon or from a seller? I've occasionally found communication between Ammazon and sellers to be less than perfect. If it's only Amazon involved it should be straightforward but it wouldn't harm to confirm everything by email.

Last time I had a problem with a Seagate drive the warranty was directly with Seagate. I had to return the drive to an address in Derby and received a replacement from The Netherlands.

So check the info that came with the Seagate drive

quote:

Did you buy it direct from Amazon or from a seller? I've occasionally found communication between Ammazon and sellers to be less than perfect. If it's only Amazon involved it should be straightforward but it wouldn't harm to confirm everything by email.

Derek Wright
Senior Member
Posted Fri 30 April 2010 13:19 Hide PostLast time I had a problem with a Seagate drive the warranty was directly with Seagate. I had to return the drive to an address in Derby and received a replacement from The Netherlands.

So check the info that came with the Seagate drive

The Seagate was bought direct from Amazon, and they were happy for me to return it to them. After all, I had only had it in my possession for 12 hours!

I will email Amazon to check that they are going to refund me. My own fault really, I should have read what it said on screen before clicking on "replacement"

A bit late in. I can also confirm that they are reasonable to a fault. We bought two boxed TV series sets and of course, after several weeks the last disk of the second set played up. No problems. One of the reasons I always look on Amazon first is it's so painless. Even an item I ended up not wanting from an Associate was easy to lob back, although I paid the return postage to the third party seller, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

I must be having an "unlucky spell" with Amazon returns. I ordered a WD passport 500gb external portable drive as an alternative to a previously purchased faulty Seagate item as the Seagate was out of stock.

The WD arrived this morning, and although working, is IMO virtually unusable! It has a non-standard micro-usb connection port, which means keeping its lead with it, it insists on loading its own software and pretending it is a CD drive, meaning you HAVE to use the supplied software. I can't find any way of just deleting all the crap on it and using it a simple external hard drive.

Me? I like to just plug in an external drive, delete any supplied software, reformat to NTSC (if necessary) and just use my own, nature supplied "software/hardware" (My own common sense).

Needless to say it's already been repacked and will be wending its way back to Amazon for a refund. Luckily, the Seagate drive is back in stock, and I have ordered another one of those.

So, a warning to you all : DON'T buy one of these WD drives.

I've got a couple of those drives and they work fine. Can't remember if I had to do anything special to get them working.
And sorry but the "non-standard micro-usb connection port" is actually quite standard. Every portable usb hard drive I've seen has the same. I personally have a couple of WDs and a Seagate and that's what they have.
And finally, even sorrier as I am to be the one to say this, but NTFS is what you meant. NTSC is the TV standard used predominantly in the US and Japan. Sorry if it was a simple typo.
Sorry.

quote:

I've got a couple of those drives and they work fine. Can't remember if I had to do anything special to get them working.
And sorry but the "non-standard micro-usb connection port" is actually quite standard. Every portable usb hard drive I've seen has the same. I personally have a couple of WDs and a Seagate and that's what they have.
And finally, even sorrier as I am to be the one to say this, but NTFS is what you meant. NTSC is the TV standard used predominantly in the US and Japan. Sorry if it was a simple typo.

It was a moments aberration. Of course I know the difference betweed NTSC and NTFS.

My main complaint about this external drive is the supplied software which you can't delete! I have 2 other WD drives which function fine. My preferred method of use of external drives is just use like any other hard drive (or partition). Copy file/delete file/drag and drop. I do not need my hand holding and I suspect the great majority of other users don't either. Unless WD ditch this awful compulsory/undeletable interface I will never purchase another one of their drives.

Why so many external drives? Well, I like to have at least 2 copies of all our photos/videos etc as backup. The only reason for recent purchases is that a couple of my older backup drives have "died", and 2 others were almost full.

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Originally posted by Dr John William Martin:

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I've got a couple of those drives and they work fine.

Unless WD ditch this awful compulsory/undeletable interface I will never purchase another one of their drives.

My latest drive is a 2TB WD (USB, not NAS) and it had nothing in the way of software on it that I noticed. It just plugged in, and was usable right away. Not that that helps you...

quote:

My latest drive is a 2TB WD (USB, not NAS) and it had nothing in the way of software on it that I noticed. It just plugged in, and was usable right away. Not that that helps you...

Apart from one remaining full-size external HD, I have opted for the small laptop versions. Much easier for when I want to take one with me!


It seems to be the fashion for hardware/software companies to make interfaces steadily (often needlessly) more complicated, with lots of totally unnecessary "features". As I've said elsewhere, Sony are a great offender here with their increasingly less friendly DVD recorder interface (IMO)