Customer installed Hard Drives

The following is not official.

Rob has always said that the warranty stickers are not the only thing they consider when working on warrantied units. They know how the players get damaged from misuse.

As an example. The display on my Mark2 actually went bad recently, and they replaced it free of charge, even though it went bad immediately after I added a second hard disk. The problem with the display was a known issue that affected only a handful of units. They knew the disk drive wasn't a factor, and were very kind about replacing the display.

The fact remains, though, that a hard disk replacement on an Empeg is more tricky and more dangerous than it would be with a desktop or laptop computer. So don't do it unless you're sure you can do it right.

Even if you do everything right, there are things that can go wrong that are totally out of your control, and Empeg would prefer not to have to spend support time helping you if this happens. For instance, someone on the BBS (was that "ynot"?) recently had his second disk go bad because the slave jumper fell off. He was able to resolve the problem himself, but what if he couldn't? He'd be forced to send his Empeg in and have them solve the problem for him. Sure, they'd be able to charge him for the repair time, but that's really a no-win situation because everyone is unhappy at that point.

With the expected increase in sales volume after the Rio purchase, I'm guessing that they're going to frown on user-upgrades even more. They need to be able to keep support costs down, and if they encouraged everyone to install their own hard disks, scenarios like the one above would become far too frequent.

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Tony Fabris

I was going to cite my own example from last week but you beat me to it. I will add that until I noticed the missing Master/Slave jumper, I was in quite a state of panic as to whether I had goofed something more serious up during my HD installation. I was mentally preparing myself for sending my Empeg back to the UK and paying some hefty cheese to fix it.

I have installed many a component in desktop systems, and that, along with my other electronics experience, made me feel perfectly competent to do the install, but I also knew the risk was that my warranty is gone. It's only a year warranty anyway, which is what most electronics get nowadays.

I don't feel Empeg should be responsible to PAY for the repairs once the cover's been taken off, because you know people out there are going to take advantage of it, and open it up without knowing what they're doing (possibly without reading this BBS, lord help them.)

Now, if SonicBlue endorsed user upgrades of the hard drive on the RioCar, then you've got a different ballgame. I'm not sure how likely that is... I mean really there's not a terrible risk of breaking anything inside unless you bash the display or the larger capacitors with the shock mount cradle. Everything else about the install is roughly equivalent to installing in a desktop system. But for them to actually endorse it means they are probably going to have to be more lenient about installation-related damages to the product.

Larger component manufacturers usually have a much more flexible interpretation of "neglect." Chances are if you put a screwdriver through your hard drives at home, you can probably get a new one shipped next day if you RMA it. When you're dealing with a company the size of Empeg, and a market as small as they're working with, I think that would be suicide.



-Tony
MkII #554

I don't think any compny would continue a service contract after the product had been knowingly altered by the user. Consider repairs to your car: the service depot makes the adjustments to the engine, you get it home and replace the cams and the engine doesn't go well anymore. Should the repair shop be responsible for the changes?

No matter how careful you were, no-one should underestimate the spoon factor.

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Murray 06000047