I can see that quite a number of people here have been RMAing their drives not only one but even up to 4 times.

I seriously hope that this is NOT gona become a very serious problem for BenQ.

I also hope that the drives got damaged only because of delivery and can be fixed and not because of BenQ. I use to think that drive failure due to delivery was very rare too but I am starting to think otherwise...

Nevertheless, continue to bring good support to your customers!

-> Is it a better idea to buy the drive from the shop and bring home myself?

CoolieCool

I don't think it has much to do with shipping. Remember to buy from a shop that has a good return/replacement policy.

I agree, this new problem on the read has nothing to do with shipping. It is probably just a bad batch of drives from China. I have found from talking other people on muliple forums that the Malaysian drives are not as prone to defects.

I agree. You want one made in Malaysia... you are less likely to have to RMA your drive with one of these batches.

I'll bet that a lot of these RMAs are due to bad CD-DVD Quality Score scans
I'll also bet that a lot of excellent burners are being returned because most people don't have a reliable reader.
All of my burners are capable of burning at the same quality, but one out of the three absolutely SUCKS for scanning. I probably threw out 50 discs because my shitty scanner had problems FTR, it burns incredibly well with WOPC turned off. Even on this incredible disc, it gave me pretty bad PIE. On lesser discs, it claims they have POF.
Here are scans of the same disc on three different burners:

@riggits: what about the people who are using the BenQ1640 to read and write. Don't they deserve a working drive that does what is says? I agree, I like most of the people on this forum have multiple drives that are used for different media, scanning, and a variety of things. But the 1640 is a readerand a writer and it doesn't read properly for alot of the people that bought them.

true but when a shitty reader is such a nice writer, it'd be a shame to RMA it lol!
I get some pretty nice burns as long as WOPC is off. That seems to be the distinguishing characteristic: if it downgrades excellent media to 4x, then it's probably the reading mechanism at fault..

I RMA'd my OEM 1640 drive and received a RETAIL 1640 MADE IN CHINA....check this thread: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....=2#post1108284

My first drive had loud clunking noises which progressively got worse....I'm a happy camper with a my REPLACEMENT drive which is a RETAIL 1640 drive from Newegg.com. I'm because Newegg.com doesn't have any RETAIL drives listed on their site......The retail drive has no clunking noises and it burns well....The OEM drives don't have the BENQ name on the front plate but the one they sent me does!!!! Go figure!!!!

While you may be right for some RMAs, the vast majority of returns I read about here have been DOA, total dead drives within a short time frame, and weird problems such as clunking, refusal to open/close, spin up and down trouble.

I actually never have read of a person who sent an RMA because of a bad scan and the one (out of three) RMA I sent due to poor burn quality was scanned on my Liteon.

I just feel that BenQ has had to cut cost so much that the consumer winds up being the final quality inspector. Not to beat up BenQ as everyone has cut costs. It just seems to be more of a problem with BenQ right now.

Mine was replaced because the drive spinning up and down during ripping or encoding. That is normal with some bad discs but mine did it consistantly with any Pressed DL and I take care of my movies. Think I might have got DVD ADDICT's return though the tray on this drive definitly makes a clunk when closing. Almost sounds like something inside is hitting the drivecase. Hopefully it will break in and get quieter. If not I think I can live with it. (Maybe).

Well said chase.

This time my vote goes with riggits and I have to agree with him on this issue, so many of have been so preoccupied with "Quality Scan" the way that not even satisfied with %99 Quality scan. This type phobia about scanning take us no were. He also right that we might previously RMAed a good or even excellent writer because of poor reader that gives us bad quality scan on the writer burned disc. I am absolutely satisfied with my 1640 and it does exactly what its spect claim.

Other then M'sia, I'm not sure where the other manufactoring industries are, care to tell me?

lolzzz...

Since i'm living in SG, most probably I'll find mine that is made in M'sia. Is it true that those that are made in June are better then those made in April?

CoolieCool