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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Amazon seems to have no clue about shipping HDDs. Especially OEM HDDs. They have come loose, in a huge box, in just thin plastic "cases", embedded in air pockets. Which had been pounded flat in transit. New Egg, in contrast, shipped HDDs with molded cardboard padding (as I recall).

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I've rarely buy from NewEgg, so I don't know how their return policy works, but for Amazon, if I ordered a hard drive and it was DOA, I tell them and they send me a new one before I even ship the first one back. No RMA numbers, no warranty problems, no "it was fine when it shipped, so that's UPS' fault". A simple "defective or doesn't work" and a new one is shipped that day.

This, this and so much this. This is why the majority of my electronics and parts come from Amazon. All other vendors are a morass of justificational cowdung compared to Amazon.

Dear vendor: You can take your RMAs, your restocking fees and your lame-ass excuses for shirking responsibility and shove it where the sun don't shine. Because, Amazon.

Sure, Amazon does make returns effortless. But there are two complications. First, DOA is not really a problem. Second, it seems that Amazon nukes accounts that return too much stuff. Or so I've read. So if you order many HDDs from Amazon, you're faced with many decisions about borderline poor packaging.

Sure their packaging could be better, but in my anecdotal evidence, it's generally enough. I've order dozens of "fragile" items from Amazon, including two hard drives and a graphics card, and none of them were DOA or showed any signs of damage. Regarding them nuking accounts, if you're returning so much that they nuke you, you're probably return an obscene amount.

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