Lexar Compact Flash Incident

My wife bought a used camera from a friend last month. It uses Compact Flash storage, and all the extra CF cards were on the icebreaker where her friend works.

I was near Wal-Mart one day, and so I grabbed a Lexar Platinum II Compact Flash. We threw away the packaging after opening, but my wife didn’t get a chance to use the CF for a week. It failed miserably, producing weird horizontal bars and stripes.

Back to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wouldn’t replace it, even with a receipt, without the packaging.

I sent an e-mail to Lexar customer service. Got a lame e-mail back from a computer, not a person.

I called customer service and explained the problem. They admitted that it had failed. All I had to do was go to their website, register, and request a replacement. They asked for my e-mail so they could send instructions.

I went to the website the next day and tried to register. The instructions had little relationship to the Website. When I tried to register with what is my very unique e-mail name, the server said that name was already taken. There was no password in the e-mail.

I asked for the server to send me a new password. Never heard back.

Now I suppose I could call them up, wait for 20 min. like last time,
explain all this, and maybe wade through their customer service mess.
Or just start a new registration. The point was, they made the process very, very difficult – for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, I bought another 512MB CF, this time from SanDisk. It
works perfectly. It’s still working perfectly.

There is no lesson here. Well maybe one. Hang onto storage packaging until you test. Otherwise, I invite you to draw your own conclusions about Lexar customer support.