Buyer Beware !

[idata]

After waiting for four months, i finally got my 1.8" form factor 320 series drive installed. However, I was getting ready to order the two additional drives for the two other machines that are due for an upgrade ( from 80 GB G2 to 160 GB G3) when I realized that the 1.8" drives I bought are the OEM variety and do not qualify for the 5 year extended warranty that is standard on the retail packs of the 2.5" drives. Now we all know that Intel has yet to release retail versions of the 1.8" form factor. In fact INTEL kept people like me waiting an inordinate amount of time for the 1.8" form factor and then this ! I paid retail price and yet it is not my fault that the ony drives avialble in this form factor anywhere on this planet are only OEM versions . Why do I care ? Why should my drives not be covered under the same warranty as the retail versions that are available in the 2.5" form factor. I demand that INTEL extende the 5 year warranty to the drive I bought , since really I am a retail customer and I paid retail price to purchase my drive from a reseller/online retailer. So why this discrimination ?

[DSilv11]

Have you asked the reseller/online retailer for a warranty since he is the one who charged you retail after he bought the OEM drive wholesale with the limited warranty?

[idata]

Warranty is not offered by the resellers or retailers. Warranty on the drives is offered by the manufacturer - Intel. Also , it appears you are not well informed on the topic at hand. If you did you would have known that the price difference between the OEM pack & the retail pack on Intel SSD drives is not more than 5-7 bucks , clearly not enough to account for the huge difference in warranty !

[DSilv11]

Good Evening and Welcome to ECON 101

Extended Warranty = Insurance.

He cost of a warranty is directly related to the probability a device might fail.

Most electronic devices that have any kind of a warranty related issue are going to fail in the first year (usually in the first 30 days) so these early life failures are not a factor.

The cost to extend the warranty then becomes a trade of between expected life of a product and expected failure rate.

If the expected life is long (2x to 3x the warranty), it is not a factor is the cost.

Expected failure rates can vary, but usually 1% failure rate between 1 year and 5 years could be considered "normal". (More than that and the factory quality people will be all over it.)

Some products expected failure rates are much higher or the life expectancy is shorter and your extended warranty price will go way up. (You should have seen what the cell phone company wants for an extended warranty since they expect phone to last about two years, the 2 year warranty was almost the price of the phone.)

So if you that a theoretical device that cost $300.00 with an expected failure rate of 1%, the manufacture's warranty cost are $3.

No one works for cost, so add a 100% mark-up and you get a $6 to cover a product extended warranty.

But back to the OEM who can do the math as easily as the next person and knows that if they pay $6 for the warranty, the real expected cost is about $3. If the OEM plans on selling 100,000 units, he would prefer to not have the $600,000 cost of an extended warranty when he can just plan on being self-insured and spending $300.000 later to cover the cost of the "expected" failures and pocket the other $300,000.

Not being an OEM with large numbers to look at, the retail consumer is willing to pay the extra $6 for the added insurance.

Intel try's to please both by offering retail packaged material and OEM packaged material, but if you don't pay the premium, you don't get the insurance.

Warranties are offer by OEM (http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/my_systems_info/details http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/my_systems_info/details )

, retailers (http://www.bestbuy.com/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat61200050033&type=category http://www.bestbuy.com/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat61200050033&type=category )

and manufacturer's http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/warranty http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/warranty

as well as other insurance companies that specialize in extended warranties.(http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/ http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/)

Each level tend to charge more than a manufacture, because they have a higher base cost, sell less, have higher overhead and generally offer a more generic warranty. (i.e $300 Computer hard drive warranty for $50)

I do like your title. A buyer should be aware of what they are buying and a big part of that is checking warranty information before you buy.

This concludes our ECON 101 class for today, please be prepared for a test on Friday.

[idata]

I do agree with the thesis and the theory. The problem is ( as is the case with most theories) that it fails to address the practical needs of users like myself. Perhaps I'd done a poor job of stating my problem in the first place, so I'll try again and see what new theory comes flying out to address this one :

Background & Problem Statement:

1. User has a need to upgrade three (3), T410s laptops that came with 80GB, 1.8 " Intel G2 SSD drives to 160 GB, 1.8 " G3 SSD drives.
2. The release of the G3 drives in the 1.8 " form factor trailed that of the 2.5 " by 4 months.
3. Additionally the 1.8 " drives are only available in the OEM pack anywhere you lookand I mean all retailers , resellers, OEMs- online , brick and mortar stores you name it. I have scoured the entire web and haven't been able to find a single source advertising the retail pack anywhere.
4. As an individual I am willing to pay the extra $ 6 to get the extended 5 warranty as I have determined that it is a small price to pay forthe extra peace of mind.

My question si why wouldn't Intel release the retail packs at the same time it releases the OEM pack and it seems unfair that we have had to wait this long to get the G3 in the 1.8" form factor in the first place and now this ?