Stay away from Sandisk

[KevinWeatherly]

I changed over to Sandisk after the debacle with Lexar and Canon 1 Series cameras a while back, even though Lexar Tech Support were contactable in the UK, they didn't know about the problems of missing images and I had to direct them to the old Rob Galbraith forum to get up to speed. I agree that Ridata cards are good but they aren't as common here. I'm afraid that the outsourcing of help desks is common these days and your frustration is mirrored in many other sectors.

[Richard_Coyle]

Kevin (Carter)
I agree with Kevin Weatherly. Although I've found it's slightly more difficult to deal with Sandisk tech support than Lexar, I've had more success with Sandisk's products than Lexar's. But that said, they're both excellent products overall and have decent tech support, particularly compared to many other tech companies. And from a data recovery standpoint, I've had much more success with Sandisk's RescuePro recovery software than any other, at least for their cards. My only attempt to have Lexar recover data on a corrupted card failed. They couldn't do it.

As for problems with support, it's possible you haven't had as much experience dealing with the "new" paradigm of tech support from large multinational companies in today's environment. It takes some finesse to get around the system. If I find a tech support individual that I have trouble understanding, or we have trouble in communicating, I ask to be connected to their center in the US. If they can't or won't do that, I simply redial and work the system to find a location that is good for me. Takes a little effort, but is much more successful in the long run.

[captionsoflife]

Customer service can really cloud our visions of a company when it seems no one cares - though the customer service experience sounds horrible - the cards are excellant. I think even if I had a bad customer service experience - I would still purchase the cards. If its s recovery program you need - most of the sandisk cards comes with recovery software you can install on your computer... 99% of the time your images will be recovered once accidentially deleted - what the don't tell you - DO NOT TAKE MORE PICTURES WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU ERASED EVERYTHING. Formatting a card is like mixing everything up so nothing makes sense anymore and new data can be written over it. If you catch yourself as the problem happens - stop using the card and run the recoverary software that Sandisk provides... it should find your pictures and piece them back together. If you start taking pictures again - it will be too jumbleded and much harder to recover. If you don't have the software from sandisk - do a search online, I am sure there are some listed for free or nearly free. Another tid bit of information - XD cards are known for erroring out and losing everything AND can not be formatted anymore - cause - usually sharing the card between multiple devices (IE: camera, printer, computer tower, mp3 player) It's just the card... SD, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, etc.. rarely have that problem. XD cards are the only ones I know of that once you have that card error - its done.

Sorry if I got off topic - just sounds like some of the issue here was not having recovery software or just bad memory cards. Other then a good company outsourcing to people that are sometimes hard to understand.

[KevinCarter]

Is this werid? I finally got the replacement card, and it came unsealed, loose, just in the little cf plastic thing that you pop open? thanks.

In other words it could be used for all I know.

[Dennis_Vied]

Originally Posted by KevinCarter

In other words it could be used for all I know.

And probably is used. But, does it work, and is it a satisfactory replacement? If not, send it back.