Seagate to Limit Warranty to Three Years

In July 2004, Seagate Technology decided to extend its warranty to five years for all its hard disk drives. But the company has just announced it will be limited to three years, not for its enterprise units, but for all its desktop and notebook units, this new limit going into effect on January 3, 2009.

Why is this change being made now? Seagate answers: "We have identified the opportunity to offer our customers warranty terms that we believe are in line with industry standard warranty offerings, and that better align to the requirements of our partners and customers." 

Isn’t this a step backward in terms of demonstrating the confidence in the quality of Seagate’s products? "Absolutely not," according to the HDD maker. "Our product quality remains excellent, and, as the worldwide leader in drive storage, Seagate is committed to providing our customers with the most reliable storage solutions available anywhere. Based on our data, we know that 95% of all returns take place during the first three years, so by going to a 3-year warranty period (which is more in line with the rest of the industry and the needs of our partners and customers) we can make other aspects of our customer and warranty support programs more attractive, with negligible impact on customer product return needs."

Are you convinced?

Here is its new Seagate’s product warranty matrix: