CDW Shipped Cheaper OEM Substitute Parts for FULL Retail Price :(

Last week, I purchased two hard drives from them...
Seagate Momentus 160GB SATA 2.5" Notebook Hard Drive (Part No: 1029738)
Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive (Part No: 974698)

Both hard drives were described to have a full 5-Year warranty (and thus were supposed to be retail packaged drives). I just received them today, and both were in too cheap of packaging for me to consider them safe while shipping. They were not in retail packages, and at least one was clearly marked as OEM and will thus not have the full warranty.

I contacted their sales staff 10 minutes ago and was told to call my sales manager tomorrow in the morning. I promptly told him that as these drives were clearly not sold as advertised if the problem is not promptly corrected they can expect me to file for a full refund ASAP.

Not acceptable...and I just wanted to tell all you guys to be wary of them when purchasing hardware.

OEM drives are cheaper and have no warranty, which means they made quite the dollar in charging for a full retail part and shipping only OEM.

 

actually oem drives have full warranty...just type the serial to check on seagate website.... never had a problem with a oem drive warranty.

don't think it is false advertising...cdw is just way more expensive that pretty much any one else.

 

Hmmm...I'll double check but thanks for the heads up!

The desktop drive was actually cheaper than NewEgg if I remember correctly (but not by more than a few dollars), but the laptop drive was about $30 more. When I emailed NewEgg before the purchase they said their OEM drives did not come with a warranty unless an extended warranty was also purchased.

EDIT: You were definitely right...they do have a warranty. OK, yet another dumb question from your friendly Super Mod!

 

Really?

Here, retail products, like Hard Drives, have 1-2 year limited warrantys while OEM have a full 4-5 year warranty, depending on brands. This also goes for RAM, MoBos, etc.

 

Well, I checked the serial numbers:
The desktop drive has a warranty through 01/2012 and the notebook drive through 12/2011. That is definitely going to be longer than I keep them (well, probably)...

 

Hmm...I got some Western Digital HDs that were OEM and I actually returned one that wasn't working through an advanced RMA with WD and they didn't fuss about it.