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It’s a cold, crisp Black Friday morning here in Knoxville, and I make my way to Office Depot to purchase a replacement 2TB internal hard drive for my computer. They’ve got a GREAT sale on it and I thought I would stop in and pick one up. I get there and, of course, they’re sold out. On the shelf, however, is a Seagate GoFlex Home 3TB unit. It’s not what I came for and it’s considerably more expensive, but I figured I’d spring for it. It sounds like EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for.

A little background information – I’m setting up a home theater system. I have a TV and a Sony Blu-Ray unit that has Wi-Fi apps. It’s a beautiful little machine and comes with DLNA support. DLNA is a system by which all electronic components can “talk” to each other in essence. So all I needed to do was attach a DLNA supported hard drive to my network and the blu-ray player would be able to stream movies and music from it. I’ve worked for about a year migrating my DVD’s to my hard drive in order to set this system up, and this was the final piece of the puzzle.

I get it home and set it up. The directions are simple, concise and don’t wear me down with details that might be helpful should problems arise. I install their ridiculous software “Seagate Dashboard” and proceed per their instructions. The software creates three share drives on your computer (Backup, Personal and Public), however in this case it only installed two. In order for the Blu-Ray player to be able to read from the hard drive, the hard drive needs to be viewable from the network. So, of the three shares that the GoFlex provided, there was only one share that I needed – the Public share. Guess which one didn’t install? You got it.

I read through the documentation and go onto their website to check out the forums. Maybe I’ve done something wrong and surely I’ll find the answer to my problem at the Seagate Support site. I pour through their website reading everything that sounds like it could remotely be the problem and I try it. Nothing. So, after dealing with the problem for the better part of 4 hours, I decide I’m going to call the Seagate Support line. Problem – their support help line is only open Monday through Friday from 8 am to 6 pm. Now, since calling any support line usually involves having to having to be at the computer to troubleshoot, this means I’m going to have to take a day off of work in order to be at home. It’s December and I’m busy, and this just isn’t possible. So, I continue to investigate.

A week goes by and nothing. I post on their forum and get no response back. I got on Twitter and sent them a message, and they replied with a link to their website that had absolutely NOTHING to do with my problem. I posted a terrible review on Amazon about the product and outlined what my problem was exactly, and they replied with the exact same page link.

One day I managed to get out of work early and get home in time to give them a call before they close. I call, get bounced around from person to person until I finally reach a live body. I spend about an hour on the phone with him, doing every ridiculous thing he asks me to do (“Is the hard drive plugged in?”) until he reaches the conclusion that the drive base is defective. Seriously? I could have told you that. Anyway, he says I have three options – #1) take it back to the store and get a replacement (we’ve long since thrown the box and receipt away, so this isn’t an option), #2) send them back the drive (at my expense) and wait up to 14 days for a replacement, for #3) pay them $10, they’ll immediately send a replacement drive and I send back my unit. Since I’m already pissed and have no desire to wait, I spring for the $10 and wait.

Four days later the replacement drive arrives in the mail. The first thing I notice before I open the box is that it’s sealed with tape that has the word “Refurbished” on it. Since I bought my drive brand new the last thing I want is a refurbished unit, but I assume that it was an old box and that the brand new drive will be inside. You can imagine my joy when, across the bottom of both the drive and the base unit is a sticker that reads “Seagate Certified Repair”. Let me get this straight – I buy a BRAND NEW defective drive and they replace it with a REFURBISHED drive? My blood pressure is through the rough, but I decide to just go ahead and set it up. Again, I follow their instructions to the letter. This time my computer isn’t able to see ANY of the shares. Not a one of them. This drive is even more defective than the one that I purchased originally!

So, it’s now almost a month later and I’m at home for the day. I decide to give them one more shot and I call their support line again. All I want is to replace the base unit with one that supports USB. If I can get that I can at least salvage this drive. Again I get bounced around to 5 different departments before I get someone who can “help” me. I speak with her for about 20 minutes and she responds “I’ll get you one sent out. Let me check my inventory.” I’m put on hold for about 5 minutes before she comes back and tells me that they don’t have anymore USB base units in, and that she would need to send me out an ENTIRE NEW UNIT! I would need to return my unit to her! I’m just done.

So that’s it for Seagate for me. I’ve had used Seagate drives MANY times in the past, but no more. Is my drive a fluke? Maybe, and I accept that, but the hoops that this company has made me jump through up to this point (which ultimately resulted in having to hang on to a defective unit) are unacceptable, and it’s a shame. There have been no apologies. There have been no “We’ll make this right”. They don’t care about me or the insane amount of time I’ve put into getting this to function. They got my money and that’s where their interest in me ends. Well, one thing that I can assure you is that they won’t be receiving any more of my money again. There are plenty of hard drive manufacturers to choose from and I won’t be going back to them again.