From: albert@tornado.seas.ucla.edu (Albert E. Chou)
Subject: Re: Good APS experience
Organization: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, UCLA
Lines: 31

I thought I'd share a good experience, too.  I bought the APS Quantum 240 zero
footprint drive in May '92 (back when they still used two separate LEDs on the
front panel and the case was metal).  While traveling with it (it was in my
SE/30 Mac bag, on top of the Mac) this past winter, one of the plastic tabs
holding the front panel on broke, so that the right side of the front panel
was coming forward away from the rest of the drive.  I lived with this situation
until it became completely intolerable (which more or less coincided with a
network shutdown at school and a trip out of town I had to take, which gave me
some dead time during which to have the drive sent out).

I called APS for an RMA # and got one, with no questions asked about how the
tab got broken (it was handled a little roughly by airline baggage handlers --
though nothing else was damaged [well, except for the internal speaker in my
modem, which wasn't that well glued down to begin with] -- yeah, yeah, I'm
never flying with my SE/30 again).  And when I called back to ask whether I
could send it in a little later rather than right away, they had no problem
with that -- even when I exceeded the normal valid period for an RMA # by a
day (they're usually good for 10 days).  The front panel was replaced under
warranty, and the drive was shipped back quickly (I mailed it first class
insured on a Saturday by noon from L.A. to Missouri, and it came back by Fed
Ex by Friday [I don't know exactly what day it came back because I was
traveling that week from Wednesday afternoon to Sunday afternoon]).

The only thing that could've been bad was that the first service rep I talked
to, in an attempt to prevent jeopardizing my data, suggested that I take the
drive mechanism out and send just the case.  Unfortunately, I discovered the
day I was mailing the thing, that would necessitate breaking the little
seal and thus voiding the warranty!  Oh, well.

Al
albert@seas.ucla.edu
