WD extends HDD warranty to 5 years, launches reseller program

Western Digital joined the hard disk drive (HDD) warranty race by extending
its to five year due to 'competitive issue'. David Rawcliffe, Marketing
Director, Asia-Pacific, said, "Indian customers give a lot of importance to
the warranty provided on HDD and it has become a competitive issue. We are quite
comfortable providing a extended warranty as our HDDs are of superior
quality."

The HDD, by default will come with a three-year warranty, however, on
purchase of the HDD, the SI or the end-user will have to register the serial
number on the WD website to activate the five-year warranty.

The company also announced the 'SelectWD' partner program, extending the
warranty on HDD for 5 years. The core of this program is to motivate and
encourage sales among channel partners, which is achieved through a multi-level
cash incentive program. SelectWD members are awarded at the end of each quarter,
once they meet the target purchase from local WD authorized distributors. The
awards are based on multipliers of quantity and product mix. Resellers are
encouraged not just to sell more but also the latest and higher capacity
products.

The key benefits of the program to resellers are the convenience of an online
system and availability of prompt information from WD. Its going online
facilitates online registration, invoice submission for tracking of purchases,
checking accumulated payout, access to information on latest WD products and WD
developments, easy access to marketing collateral and dedicated marketing
support.

Commenting on the launch, Hafeez Khawaja, Senior Regional Director- Middle
East/Africa and South Asia, WD said, "This is to know our reseller partners
better and offer incentives, information and rewards directly from us. The
relationship will enable us to listen and react in a timely fashion to our
market needs."

WD conducted a SelectWD pilot program in the second half of 2004 via road
shows for selected partners and resellers across India. It is now ready to make
the program available to a wider market in A, B and C class cities.

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