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Don't Buy LaCie
- Thread starter surfmadison
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Bought one many years ago, died on me 1 year later. Never buying again. Great aluminium cases that i personally find ugly but where ever they source their drives from is not a good one. Tonnes of people with bad drives, avoid at all costs.
I bought one of their SSD RAIDs and the fan was unbearably loud, it was pathetic, it's hard to believe they were selling such a thing with such a loud fan. I don't think I'll be buying another product from them again, G-Technology has always proven to do the best drives IMO.
For a school setup we had a dual drive LaCie with 2x3TB drives and worked well with thunderbolt. Still has yet to fail 
I took the drive back to where I had bought it to try and get a refund and change to another drive as I had then read about how unreliable this particular drive was.
The company weren't interested in either a refund or supplying another drive, the comment from the manager was that 'you get what you pay for' and that my only recourse was to contact LaCie direct which I did and predictably had zero response to the half dozen e-mails I sent to technical support/customer support. Even when I phoned all you get is an automated response to a phone that is never picked up.
By this time I was so irritated by the whole charade that I just bit the bullet and bought a WD 4TB drive which has been everything the LaCie wasn't.
Experiences like this tend to leave a very nasty taste so these days I tend to buy all my hardware via Amazon as so far I have had zero problems and superb customer service.
It's no wonder that some retail shops are dying on their feet the way they treat people.
The company weren't interested in either a refund or supplying another drive, the comment from the manager was that 'you get what you pay for' and that my only recourse was to contact LaCie direct which I did and predictably had zero response to the half dozen e-mails I sent to technical support/customer support. Even when I phoned all you get is an automated response to a phone that is never picked up.
By this time I was so irritated by the whole charade that I just bit the bullet and bought a WD 4TB drive which has been everything the LaCie wasn't.
Experiences like this tend to leave a very nasty taste so these days I tend to buy all my hardware via Amazon as so far I have had zero problems and superb customer service.
It's no wonder that some retail shops are dying on their feet the way they treat people.
I'm reluctantly going to have to agree here...I've had too many dead Lacie products to ever trust them again, This may not have been entirely the fault of the company, more due to poor packing, but the fact remains that I had 2 DOA 4TB Porsche units when I really needed them. No knocking the company that supplied them, the refund was fast and complete, but I had to go out in a taxi to grab a 7200 Seagate Backup Plus...not the product I wanted, not even the brand, but I have to say that it's performing perfectly and was stock clearance so got it cheap...I like Lacie design, but if the stuff won't work, then I'm out.
Unrelated question...
Sorry to jump in here, but I can't create a new thread, and it seems like there are a lot of people active in this thread who might be able to answer my question (and it seems like the original issue has been beaten to death...)
One of my children seems to have a talent for manipulation of digital files (audio/photo/video), and is exploring the idea of a career in that direction. The problem is that nobody around us has any idea what that entails, where to go, what to do, who to talk to, etc.
I am looking for some advice, specific places to look (Google isn't helpful as it is a bit of information overload until I have more direction), and anything else that he might need to know.
Private message is fine
Thanks
Sorry to jump in here, but I can't create a new thread, and it seems like there are a lot of people active in this thread who might be able to answer my question (and it seems like the original issue has been beaten to death...)
One of my children seems to have a talent for manipulation of digital files (audio/photo/video), and is exploring the idea of a career in that direction. The problem is that nobody around us has any idea what that entails, where to go, what to do, who to talk to, etc.
I am looking for some advice, specific places to look (Google isn't helpful as it is a bit of information overload until I have more direction), and anything else that he might need to know.
Private message is fine
Thanks
Hi Doc - If the talent is there, go for it, but I will say this - it is a crowded field, particularly if you are talking about graphic design and that sort of thing. As the sort of career that is obviously appealing to a teenager figuring out what they want to be, you end up with an oversaturated market and way less jobs than people. For most of the people I know that went into these fields, it did not pan out.
People in the visual arts will tend to go through art school for a BFA, (if you're serious about it, skip the two year schools). People looking for careers in audio and video would be in a different curriculum I think. Perhaps you can get a better handle on the possibilities by requesting books and curriculums from an art school like Rhode Island School of Design, and an audio/video school like Emerson. This will open your eyes to the career possibilities.
Thanks.
I will look into those schools. I have requested info from Berklee as well. The three of them have been working with professional (local) musicians for a couple of years now, and I was guided to that school. I wasn't sure how far I could take the information, though, as one's perspective is always biased by the local context.
It's weird. Everybody on both sides of the family for as far back as I can tell is pure science without a lick of art or sports talent, and now here are three kids who are almost purely artistic and athletic. They are also the only three lefties. If they didn't all look like me (poor kids), I would start to wonder...
Lacie doesn't make drives. They buy other manufacturer's drives and put them in a case with the Lacie name. Moreover, there are only 4-5 drive manufacturers in the world, so, the "Lacie" drive that failed might have been a Seagate drive.
My bad experience with LaCie
I wanted to share my recent experience of LaCie and their products with everyone, and I just found this thread.
Like many folks who work in design, Im a sucker for a great looking piece of hardware, and LaCie can certainly churn out some pretty good looking products. Ive been using their drives since the 90s and have always believed that they were a cut above the rest in terms of design and quality.
However, I recently became involved in a dispute with them over a faulty drive, and this got me thinking. Heres a list of my last four LaCie drives and what became of them:
Previously my experience had been good. Id had an assortment of Pocket Drives (remember those?), Rugged Drives etc, some of which had survived until I sold them, others had died after a few years of abuse as is reasonable for a hard drive. I got my moneys worth out of them.
So what happened? Did LaCie start using poor quality components? Is it the third party drives they use or the enclosures they build themselves? Bad design or sloppy quality control? Probably none of the above, probably just bad luck, and I could forgive all of it if the customer service made up for it.
But sadly that isn't the case. I bought the aforementioned Porsche Design P9233 Desktop Drive as a factory refurb from the LaCie store, and it died straight away, so I decided to send the drive back and opt for a refund. I dealt with three different customer service agents, none of whom seemed sympathetic, one of whom promised to refund my postage, which was good until the others reneged on it because I didn't follow the correct procedure or something. (Which was apparently buried somewhere in the small print on their website).
My drive sat in their depot for a week and they denied having received it, only changing their minds after I showed them proof in the form of a signature of receipt, provided for me by Royal Mail. Now they tell me I have to wait a further 15 days to get my money back (for the drive, not for the postage of course). How it is acceptable to sit on a customer's money for so long?
Nothing but bureaucracy and lame excuses from a company who don't care enough to bend the rules and go the extra mile for a loyal customer.
Call me vindictive, but the main point of this post is simply to demonstrate the power of bad publicity. Whilst Im sure some of you will have had better luck than me and will continue to be satisfied LaCie customers, I'm also sure there will be a few who perhaps might have become customers, but who will now think twice after reading this.
LaCie could have dealt with my claim promptly, paid my postage and retained my future business. But they didn't, and now I feel sure it'll cost them more than the £6.70 they refused to pay me.
I wanted to share my recent experience of LaCie and their products with everyone, and I just found this thread.
Like many folks who work in design, Im a sucker for a great looking piece of hardware, and LaCie can certainly churn out some pretty good looking products. Ive been using their drives since the 90s and have always believed that they were a cut above the rest in terms of design and quality.
However, I recently became involved in a dispute with them over a faulty drive, and this got me thinking. Heres a list of my last four LaCie drives and what became of them:
- Rugged Drive Triple Interface: My 7200rpm unit was prone to overheating and would stop working unless I pointed a desktop fan at it.
- Rikiki USB 3.0: Died after one year of use as a Time Machine backup.
- Porsche Design P9233 Desktop Drive: Died after just 20 mins of use!
- Porsche Design P9223 Portable Drive: Works but periodically disconnects itself for no apparent reason.
Previously my experience had been good. Id had an assortment of Pocket Drives (remember those?), Rugged Drives etc, some of which had survived until I sold them, others had died after a few years of abuse as is reasonable for a hard drive. I got my moneys worth out of them.
So what happened? Did LaCie start using poor quality components? Is it the third party drives they use or the enclosures they build themselves? Bad design or sloppy quality control? Probably none of the above, probably just bad luck, and I could forgive all of it if the customer service made up for it.
But sadly that isn't the case. I bought the aforementioned Porsche Design P9233 Desktop Drive as a factory refurb from the LaCie store, and it died straight away, so I decided to send the drive back and opt for a refund. I dealt with three different customer service agents, none of whom seemed sympathetic, one of whom promised to refund my postage, which was good until the others reneged on it because I didn't follow the correct procedure or something. (Which was apparently buried somewhere in the small print on their website).
My drive sat in their depot for a week and they denied having received it, only changing their minds after I showed them proof in the form of a signature of receipt, provided for me by Royal Mail. Now they tell me I have to wait a further 15 days to get my money back (for the drive, not for the postage of course). How it is acceptable to sit on a customer's money for so long?
Nothing but bureaucracy and lame excuses from a company who don't care enough to bend the rules and go the extra mile for a loyal customer.
Call me vindictive, but the main point of this post is simply to demonstrate the power of bad publicity. Whilst Im sure some of you will have had better luck than me and will continue to be satisfied LaCie customers, I'm also sure there will be a few who perhaps might have become customers, but who will now think twice after reading this.
LaCie could have dealt with my claim promptly, paid my postage and retained my future business. But they didn't, and now I feel sure it'll cost them more than the £6.70 they refused to pay me.
Lacie at Walmart...
I agree with the post on page 1 of this thread about the quality at Walmart, and it is bad, the quality, not sure Walmart even knows that word exists...
Example, I bought a "brand new" laptop in 2013...I thought it was brand new, looked and acted brand new, keys untouched, the screen clean, no scratches...Only it had a pentium processor that was obselete in 2011...So my brand new laptop was brand new, just older than the hills of New Hampshire!!!
Talk about feeling ripped off....
I agree with the post on page 1 of this thread about the quality at Walmart, and it is bad, the quality, not sure Walmart even knows that word exists...
Example, I bought a "brand new" laptop in 2013...I thought it was brand new, looked and acted brand new, keys untouched, the screen clean, no scratches...Only it had a pentium processor that was obselete in 2011...So my brand new laptop was brand new, just older than the hills of New Hampshire!!!
Talk about feeling ripped off....