I wanted to make this suggestion to Sandisk and its RMA department.
I recieved a Sansa View for Christmas and have been extremely satisfied with the functionality and quality of this product. A month ago white lines started to appear on the display and would not go away. Formats and firmware updates did nothing to remedy this problem, but the unit still worked fine aside from the faulty display. I now have an RMA set up with Sandisk to return it and recieve a new unit.
The RMA department was courteous and helpful, however it troubles me that they are not able to take down credit card information so that I could recieve a new unit BEFORE sending my old one back as my unit still provides its main function of playing music. This is very much a pain, because I use my View daily, and I will not be able to use it for some THREE WEEKS before I recieve my new unit. This is just simply a poor method of allowing RMA. It would be much more convenient to record a valid credit card, send out a new unit, and then charge the credit card if the old unit is not returned in a proper amount of time or the unit returned is damaged in a manner not covered by warranty.
I would very much like to hear from a manager in the RMA department regarding this. I am in the Marine Corps and the mission I’m taking out into the Pacific will be without my Sansa, and flights into the Pacific on a KC-130 can be quite long due to the slow airspeed we cruise at. I don’t want to judge the quality of this product yet, as I’m understanding in that there are inevitably bad units that make it past quality control, but if I have to use the RMA again in a short amount of time, I will consider other brands due to the very slow turnaround on warranty repairs.
Thanks for your help in this matter.
