Seagate's fraudulent hard drives scandal deepens as clues point at Chinese Chia mining farms
Do not buy from unofficial resellers
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25341367
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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”.
Yeah, vote with your wallet !! This has way more impact than those stupid presidential ballot! Good call staying behind your belief for so long !!!
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.
Chia is grown, not mined.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chia_Network
Edit:
FWIW, site says you can check the FARM values with smartctl -l farm /dev/sda if you do have a Seagate drive.
I came here to say. If so this is huge.
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.
