Cutting to the point
Hard drive maker Seagate announced today that it is cutting the length of the warranty on its bare drives sold through the channel - as opposed to directly to tier one OEMs - from five to three years. Apparently there are special warranty arrangements in place with OEMs as they cover parts under their own warranties.
Here's the official statement we received from Seagate:
Our current 5-year limited warranty will remain in place for consumer retail products as well as for enterprise-class hard drives, and we will now provide our distributor customers with a 3-year limited warranty for all other hard drives.
Based on our data, we know that 95% of all returns take place during the first three years, so by offering a 3-year warranty - which is in line with the rest of the industry - we can make other aspects of our customer support and warranty programs more attractive with negligible impact to customer product return needs.
The 3-year limited warranty on notebook, desktop and consumer electronics bare drives offers new advantages and enhancements to the business proposition for our channel customers while improving cost efficiencies for Seagate. We expect little, if any change for consumers since hard drives used in computer systems and other devices are covered by the individual manufacturer's warranty.
