LACIE Support is Poor Anyone Any Better?

[dwmreg]

The worst possible thing to worry about with a company selling storage devices that we depend on is poor technical support. Lacie is such a company. A recent repair (under warranty) took over two weeks to complete. Leaving my data on their device vulnerable to loss, etc. Luckily I had more than one additional copy of that data both locally and in the cloud.

However there is zero excuse for poor customer service when it comes to storage in my opinion. So what do the rest of you think?

Are there any companies that are any better? Do they sell service agreements reasonably priced for a home user or small business?

Lacie will not receive any more of my business. Ever. They cannot even take credit cards now due to their data breach many many months ago.

 

[calderone]

I am actually in a similar boat. I convinced them to give me an advance replacement. The device died before I could push my stuff to the cloud so I need something that will work in the meantime.

I am looking at Synology right now, support seems good and their software is way ahead of Lacie.

 

[dwmreg]

Considering Synology...

I am actually in a similar boat. I convinced them to give me an advance replacement. The device died before I could push my stuff to the cloud so I need something that will work in the meantime.

I am looking at Synology right now, support seems good and their software is way ahead of Lacie.

I'm considering a Synology NAS with four drives to replace the Lacie drive. I'll definitely be selling the Lacie one I have it up and running again. I'll probably clear everything out and get another Synology NAS to match the first one.

 

[matreya]

So what do the rest of you think?

I think a couple of weeks to repair a storage device is pretty good for a consumer-grade product.

You should keep backups all the time and NEVER expect storage companies to restore the data from defective hard drives..

 

[MCAsan]

No problems with our two LaCie 2Big 6TB and d2 6TB thunderbolt enclosures.

 

[ColdCase]

I don't think the OPs experience is unusual, actually perhaps better than the average. My experience with warranty repair this year on devices I owned more than a couple months:

Synology: 4 weeks; I paid return shipping

HGST (WD): Two weeks, replacement dead on arrival, another two weeks (four weeks total). I paid return shipping on the initial failure.

Orico: Two days and they paid all shipping. I think these are the only guys that sent out a replacement before they received the failed unit.

Startec: One week, they paid all shipping.

OWC: 1 1/2 weeks; I paid return shipping

OCZ: One week on one SSD, still waiting on another; I paid return shipping.

Belkin: its been four months

My LaCie and Seagate devices have not had a failure in years.



Most of the above time is in ground shipping. For consumers, count on two week turn around for any brand unless you pay for overnight which may save a week or so. You should be prepared for it. If you don't like, you need an enterprise like service contract or enterprise product account. They overnight a replacement. Or purchase at a local outlet where you can return and exchange (rare)

 

[marzer]

Excellent LaCie customer service

I just had a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt enclosure repaired under warranty last week. They were very considerate and fast in their responses. I didn't want to send my drives in because the issue seemed clearly to be the enclosure; the status light burned out. So they agreed I didn't have to send in my drives, thus preventing risk to my data. The day they received the unit, it was repaired and shipped back that same day. The repaired unit was back up and running by the end of that week.

Last year another LaCie unit experienced a repeated fault after they had performed an in house repair on it. When I called to get an RMA to send the unit back for another repair they didn't even hesitate in offering me a brand new replacement unit instead of repair. They shipped out the replacement first, of course, so I could move my data over at me leisure. I think it was a 30 day turned around for me to return the old unit.

LaCie has excellent warranties, at least on their larger units. I've used their customer service several times and would rate the service "excellent" and recommend their products to anyone.

 

[calderone]

I think a couple of weeks to repair a storage device is pretty good for a consumer-grade product.

You should keep backups all the time and NEVER expect storage companies to restore the data from defective hard drives..

In my case, I had a backup in progress when the my LaCie decided to die. Which is why I have been fighting with them for an advance replacement. So I can copy data over to while it still works.

 

[g4cube]

Drives are so inexpensive these days, its a wonder that people don't keep spares on hand.

I find that having extra drives on hand, actually assures that the original drives are mostly trouble free.

Its only when I don't have a backup, that the problems are more troublesome.

The OP have it right. Unless you have a service contract spelling out response time for repairs, expect weeks for repair turnaround.

 

[Ray2]

Drives are so inexpensive these days, its a wonder that people don't keep spares on hand.

I find that having extra drives on hand, actually assures that the original drives are mostly trouble free.

Its only when I don't have a backup, that the problems are more troublesome.

The OP have it right. Unless you have a service contract spelling out response time for repairs, expect weeks for repair turnaround.

With the size of drives these days, spares are almost mandatory. Think about repartitioning a 3tb drive. As I cycled through "smaller" drives in the past I always had a few large drives and an old enclosure in the closet. With any external, spare power supplies are also desirable. The bane of my since abandoned use of Lacie's.

 

[dwmreg]

Less than a month later drive 2 fails

Well less than a month after the first drive failed and it was replaced drive #2 has failed today.

I really really don't like Seagate drives. I've heard all kinds of complaints about these and frankly I like Western Digital myself.

I'm going to buy something and add my own drives. I'm using a Western Digital raid array in parallel with this one and it's still going a lot longer than the Lacie did.

I'm wondering if the enclosure itself is to blame. The drive was fairly warm when I removed it.

Anyhow waiting again for a replacement drive.

 

[LS417]

Should check out glyph drives.. a bit pricier but their warranty includes data recovery if a drive was to fail.

 

[MCAsan]

After 2.5 years of no problems, I had a 2Big enclosure go bad. The drives insider were fine. The enclosure would suddenly take the drives off line. The Thunderbolt interface and passthrough part continued to work just time. A restart would put the drives back on line. No fault found by Disk Utility.

I filed a trouble report, got a return authorization and shipped the enclosure and drives to LaCie in OR. The day they received it, they diagnosed it, determined the enclosure needed to be replaced, and shipped me a complete 2Big via Fedex 2day. I got the replacement yesterday and retored if last night from another set of drives. Always have a good TM backup and also another set of drives and a HDD toaster dock for USB3 or Thunderbolt....just in case.

While I am not happy that the enclosure went out, I am happy with the support and replacement.

 

[yukyuklee]

one of my drives broke in the LaCie 2big 6tb. I called up LaCie and they gave me a whole list of things to do than tried to charge me $180 or something for a replacement drive. I just ordered the same Seagate hdd and replaced it for under $100 I was still under the limited warranty.

 

[g4cube]

If still under warranty, why not get a replacement from LaCie?