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Seagate's fraudulent hard drives scandal deepens as clues point at Chinese Chia mining farms
(www.tomshardware.com)
Chia is grown, not mined.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
161 points (98.8% liked)
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I wonder if this is why their store has been offline for over a month. Had an order cancelled, after sitting for 3 weeks. Got a voucher for 50% off “when the store open”. Still waiting…
Probably; these drives were being found sold by their official sellers. Seagate likely had to investigate the majority of their supply lines; shutting it all down in the meantime.
Do not buy from unofficial resellers
Good advice in general; but in this case many of the fraudulent drives were reportedly purchased from the official sellers listed on Seagates website.
Just a few weeks ago I made comments that I wouldn't be interested in buying seagate's latest 34 terabyte hard drive, or whatever it was.
My logic was that in 2008 when I bought a brand new seagate hard drive, and it was dead before I plugged it in, they refused to honor their warrenty.
Which to me, is them being an untruthful company. THEY wrote the terms of the warrenty. I fell within them. They refused to honor their warrenty.
Alright. Fine, you're on the blacklist. And I haven't bought a seagate product since.
And peoples response on lemmy to those comments was "it was 15+ years ago, they make better products now"
Which misses the point entirely. I'm not boycotting them to reduce risk of getting another junk product. I'm boycotting them because they don't stand behind their word.
I feel we as people need to stand up, and police the businesses. Ok, so McDonalds is supporting trump. Mcdonalds is supporting russia. Mcdonalds is doing all this shady shit? Well then STOP BUYING BIG MACS, ASSHOLE! If we, collectively as a society held dishonest businesses to the flame for shady practices, then these shady businesses would stop being shady.
It's a simple formula.
(Shady thing) - (lost sales from protests) + (completed purchases) = total dollars.
Now, if the lost sales from protests swallows the completed purchases, then that means that shady thing cost them money. When that happens, they will stop doing the thing that loses them money.
But if the shady thing boosts their sales more than the protests cost the sales, it becomes just a cost of doing business.
It seems like such a simple concept too. Don't buy from shitty companies, but yet Nestle is out here just thriving.
Except they did stop that shady practice, so your original boycott doesn’t make sense anymore.
This is a completely different issue of other companies trying to sell fraudulent Seagate drives used in crypto mining farms as new. They are responding by shutting down sales until they can root them out.
This is why actually reading the article is important instead of “brand I don’t like bad”.
The problem is the information asymmetry, there is always another person for a fraudulent company to exploit due to a dysfunctionally expensive court system. Its why we need market level regulations and public institutions that recover peoples money and fine the organisations for their breaches. This sort of thing works a lot better in the EU than in the US due to the sales laws, the ability to return within 2 weeks, default warranty on goods out to 12 months and expectations of goods to be as advertised forced onto the retailers. They work, they need more enforcement from regulatory bodies but retailers do follow them for the most part and quickly change tune when you go to take legal action when they don't because courts know these laws inside and out.
I'm skeptical the market is ever going to have principles, for every person that has gotten burned and become personally aware of shady practices, there are many more that aren't aware and don't have the incentive or ability to do research to find out. Seems like the sort of thing where the system is rigged in favor of scammers if consumer choice is the only regulation.
Oh no, it's worse than that. I've explained several times to several people the terrible business practices that nestle use.
I've named off some of the bigger products they make.
90% of people I've explained this to gave zero shits. The other 10% feigned interest but didn't change their behavior.
So, the people I've explained it to can't feign ignorance. It's apathy.
You hit the nail on the head.
Now you need to be able to counter the manipulation happening every day through media, other people, etc.
A decade ago I stopped watching TV. Everyone asked me why. I said I‘m not watching commercials. Guess what I do with platforms that push ads!
We really need to talk about outlawing commercials that arent pure product information. Good looking guy gets chased by beautiful women when using *** bodyspray? Cue moron: „but its sarcasm, duh!“ no its not. Not for your subconcious. It is manipulation.
Btw I was trained by a psychologist (a guy paid by the car company, who is a licensed therapist and has a licensed practice) to manipulate people into buying cars. Not through arguments or superior manufacturing but pure tone of voice, using familiar wording, analyzing their weak points. This stuff is dark. Needless to say I dont do that job anymore. No amount of money is worth manipulating people into buying stuff they dont need.
This shit needs to go if we want to live free at some point (let alone make it through fascism and a planet on fire).
I had a similar training selling stuff for a remodeling company.
I quit on the second day of training. It felt gross, and I told them I was really uncomfortable with their tactics and that’s 100% why I was quitting..
I also don’t watch tv and go out of my way to avoid ads :) pihole on the network, Plex and physical media for media needs.
We should hang out sometime. You sound pleasant! :)
I've read the article and I couldn't see any implication of Seagate. I'm not saying anything about your story, shame on Seagate, but I don't see what that has to do with the scandal in the article.
They should hold their resellers to a standard. It isnt entirely their fault but they should have QA working on how people receive their products.
It seems like that’s what they’re working on right now.
About 12 years ago, I promised an agent at Safeco (AKA Liberty Mutual) that they would never get another penny from me because they wouldn't honor the terms of my policy, refusing to pay the full amount on a vehicle collision claim. They're just another business that doesn't keep their word. But I absolutely plan to keep mine.
My logic was that in 2008 when I bought a brand new seagate hard drive, and it was dead before I plugged it in, they refused to honor their warrenty.
If it was a new drive bought from a retailer, why didn't you return it to the retailer?
I hadn't opened the package for about a month. Best buy had a 14 day return period, which is why I don't blame them. They offered their terms, I was outside of their return period, even if the package was unopened.
The seagate warrenty was 90 days. Which I was within.
What was Seagate's excuse for not honoring the warranty when you filed a claim?
They just said "for this particular issue, the hard drive is not working, and so there's nothing we can do about that".
I agree the hard drive wasn't working. So I asked them to point me to the claus in the warrenty that dismissed them if the hard drive wasn't working within the warrenty period. They just kept transfering me around.
It's decades later, and I'm still of the belief that I was right. It's also the reason I hold no grudge towards best buy.
Seagate defined their warrenty as 90 days, barring user defects (so like if I had spilled a drink on it, or did something on my end that would break it). Since nothing about the defect had anything to do with me, I'd say I fall into their warrenty.
If I had opened the box sooner, and gotten it back to best buy with the reciept, within 14 days, I'd expect them to have taken it back. I opened it a month or so in, so that part is on me. Best buy defined their terms before I purchased. I was outside those terms. Sucked for me, but you can't fault best buy for that.
I was just mad that seagate said "this is our warrenty, these are our terms", and then didn't honor it on a defective drive. At that point I DO fault the company that doesn't honor their own word.
Shit that can happen only in the us.
Over here (eu) 12months warranty is mandated by law and 24months warranty is a reality in most countries.
Okay, I agree with you that you're not wrong to be upset at Seagate customer service. Its also perfectly within your rights to stop using Seagate. I just want to point out that if you continue to follow your policy of "one and done", and the continued deteriorating customer service experience all companies are providing these days, you'll soon be left with very few places to do business with.
There are only 6 or 7 airlines that fly out of my local international airport. I've had disappointing customer service experiences of one degree or another from every single one of them. If I was following a "one and done" approach, I'd have no one to fly commercially with.
Specifically with magnetic hard drive manufacturers, there are only 3 left in existence: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba
If you've sworn off Seagate, that means all of your future purchase have to be accommodated by the remaining two. I hope that is enough.
Thankfully the other two haven’t fallen as hard as Seagate has.
Thankfully the other two haven’t fallen as hard as Seagate has.
If you want keep thinking that don't look too hard at Western Digital's scandals and catastrophic drive failures of the past. In my early working days I made good money swapping out hundreds of failing Western Digital hard drives.
Then we’re all screwed thanks to consolidation.
alwayshasbeen.jpg
The “crossed off the list for life“ strategy doesn’t much work for me either… but we’re best off keeping score somehow, for sure.
Could be boycotting companies most recently in the news for bad behavior, or who are doing the greatest harm
Long term boycottes are the best thing - IF you can get large numbers to follow. Large enough that management schools are forced to teach about how ever real reform won't be enough to save you from bad actions.
Large enough that management schools are forced to teach about how ever real reform won’t be enough to save you from bad actions.
Sadly, in the world of multinational business, that isn't how management schools perceive boycotts.
That means you haven't make them large enough yet.
Good luck getting people to care, but it is in the end your best counter.
Generally a company doing something bad enough to encourage a large enough boycott to affect the bottom line is making quite a bit of money. They calculate the loss of sales due to the boycott over time and can plot when the value of the bad business is lower than the boycott. Many times they continue with the bad behavior in spite of loss of business from the boycott because the business might be at the edge of viability anyway. So extracting the last bit of value out of the company is a net win before the rotting husk is sold off in pieces for the value of its assets or the brand is sold to the opposing group that actually likes the bad behavior that was being boycotted so it becomes an asset again.
Oh, I agree with that. Part of the cost of a product is how much bother the consumer will have to put forth to get their desired use out of it. That's part of what a brand is supposed to communicate to a buyer.
Sensible consumer. Why weren't there more of you when I was working retail?
Yeah, vote with your wallet !! This has way more impact than those stupid presidential ballot! Good call staying behind your belief for so long !!!
I’m guessing this is nothing to do with the plant that can grow on amusing terra cotta sculptures?
Proof-of-storage based cryptocurrency. The article says when it became non-profitable, the drives were reset so their smart stats would appear new, and sold them as such.
Seems like that should be illegal, like changing the odometer on a car, but what do I know.
Sure is, this would fall under fraud at the very least; but laws only stop those willing to obey them. Now it's a matter of figuring out who to punish.
I came here to say. If so this is huge.