Stay away from Sandisk

[kevs]

I'm a professional photographers for 20 years. I 've had lots of customer service issues. I find Sandisk to be the worst of the batch. I recommend everyone not buy more from them.

[dalethorn]

Interesting - I started with the ATA cards when the 10 mb first became available in the early 90's.  Since then I've had ATA cards up to 440 mb, and only had one problem - timing errors on a Seagate 40 mb card, and only then on certain apps.  On to many, many CF cards of many brands and sizes up to 8 gb (Sandisk extreme).  No problems.  Have now had a dozen SD and SDHC cards, most of which are/were Sandisk.  Still no problems.  If you're using SD, it's a naked card (exposed terminals), so my advice is *always* transfer over the wire, so your card doesn't get static-zapped.

[kevs]

The cards are fine, except the last one. On whole though they are fine cards.

But I called them, you get a horrid wait, some goofballs with heavy Indian accents who say they will call and e mail back with your RMA ( because of computer problems) -- and then never call back or e mail back.

You e mail support 2x and they don't e mail back. Ever. They also wont do data recovery. And their techs are generally morons.

In contrast to Lexar support it's night and day. I will never buy Sandisk again. Such a garbage company.

[Andy M]

I've never had a single failure of a Sandisk card.

[BernardLanguillier]

Same thing here, I am not sure why anyone would expect a CF company to deliver support...

But neither do I understand why anyone would still buy Sandisk when Transent is so much cheaper with large capacities and good quality as well.

Cheers,
Bernard

[kal]

The cards are fine, except the last one. On whole though they are fine cards.

But I called them, you get a horrid wait, some goofballs with heavy Indian accents who say they will call and e mail back with your RMA ( because of computer problems) -- and then never call back or e mail back.

You e mail support 2x and they don't e mail back. Ever. They also wont do data recovery. And their techs are generally morons.

In contrast to Lexar support it's night and day. I will never buy Sandisk again. Such a garbage company.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201296\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

(I have no interest in defending Sandisk) I work in an IT dept. and can tell horror stories on customer service from every major manufacturer in the world. If we discarded each one that at least once provided us with bad support or no support at all we would have  to perform number-crunching by hand...

[mcfoto]

Hi
I use both Sandisk & DANE-ELEC & have had no problems with both. At Adorama DANE-ELEC is way cheaper for the same speed. The real difference is Sandisk spends way more on advertising.
Denis

[dalethorn]

Most mfr's are scum when it comes to how they treat their customers, but the worst are those who flood the market with inferior product and then coerce the reviewers to pass on their failures.  Sony and HP are the very worst.  Apple used to be the worst, and I don't know how their computers are today, but their iPods have been 100 pct. reliable for me, albeit with some software problems.

[Robert Roaldi]

We live in a world where getting the absolute lowest price on everything is the first thing on everyone's mind. We largely gave up quality and good service a long time ago. No point worrying about it now.

[geotzo]

We live in a world where getting the absolute lowest price on everything is the first thing on everyone's mind. We largely gave up quality and good service a long time ago. No point worrying about it now.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201329\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That was wisely spoken Robert  

[BernardLanguillier]

We live in a world where getting the absolute lowest price on everything is the first thing on everyone's mind. We largely gave up quality and good service a long time ago. No point worrying about it now.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201329\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That might be the case in some countries, but not everywhere. I can tell you that the quality of the service in many Asian countries, starting with Japan and Korea, is still at least as good than it was in the past. This is simply the result of them focussing on having societies that are very equalitarian.

Besides, I would say that there is in fact a lot more emphasis on quality for many products now than 10 or 20 years ago. Here again, Asian countries mostly lead the pack.

This obvious fact of life leads a few friends to put forward the theory that developping countries are in fact to be found in the West...

Back on CF cards, my personnal belief is that either they go wrong after a few days (and there might be more occurences of that with cheaper products) or they are OK for many years if treated reasonnably well. I am personnally super happy about the 256 GB of Transcent cards that I could buy for approximately the price of 20 GB of fast Sandisks bought one year before...

Cheers,
Bernard

[kevs]

Thanks Guys, the cards are fine, but the customer support is on par with with a bad government agency.  As bad as it gets.  I'm just saying if you can be happy buying your cards from another brand, and one day need to call for customer or techsupport, stay away from Sandisk.

I have found the support from Apple, Canon, NIken etc, and just about every other manufacture who deals with photographers to not be this horrendous.

[gss]

I'm a professional photographers for 20 years. I 've had lots of customer service issues. I find Sandisk to be the worst of the batch. I recommend everyone not buy more from them.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201271\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I recently tried to get a rebate from Sandisk.  They replied a month later saying that my rebate was void because I had not sent the original UPCs, and that I would need to send the originals.  This is a great scam; I had sent the originals and therefore had no way to comply.
The only reason I will continue to do business with this pack of liars is that there are so few CF manufacturers, and theirs are quick.  If I ever get a chance to dump them, I will do so in a heartbeat.

[Plekto]

There are two lines of Sandisk memory.  The cheap consumer stuff and the Extreme line.   The Extreme III line have worked flawlessly for me.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(10..._and_Video.aspx
Good stuff.  Comes with a very useful data recovery program as well for most of the models.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(11...iuse_Cards.aspx
Questionable cheaper stuff.  You get what you pay for.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

There are two lines of Sandisk memory.  The cheap consumer stuff and the Extreme line.   The Extreme III line have worked flawlessly for me.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(10..._and_Video.aspx
Good stuff.  Comes with a very useful data recovery program as well for most of the models.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(11...iuse_Cards.aspx
Questionable cheaper stuff.  You get what you pay for.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201410\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Note that the "Ultra II" CF cards appear on both lists. I have one Lexar CF card and about a dozen Sandisks of various sizes and speeds. Not one has ever given the least bit of trouble.

[peteh]

Note that the "Ultra II" CF cards appear on both lists. I have one Lexar CF card and about a dozen Sandisks of various sizes and speeds. Not one has ever given the least bit of trouble.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=201429\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've never had a single failure of a Sandisk card. Mostly from Lexar they ARE bad.In my experience, only.

[kevs]

Gss:
Lexar: they have a direct line into a competent tech. much better

[Hank]

Kind of reminds me of when I bought a Canon body and 4 lenses on the strength of their rebate program.  Added up to over $400 as I recall.  Except they wanted individual apps for each rebate and an original receipt for each, and each in a separate mailing.  Aside from the fact that I bought them all at once and they were on one receipt, the person I talked to at Canon was a snot.  I got a $50 rebate check out of the deal, perhaps only coincidentally the smallest rebate on the app.   I used that rebate check to blow my nose and sold off all the Canon gear.  NIB.

[Chris_Brown]

I've used Lexar, SanDisk and Viking. The SanDisk Extreme cards are the only ones still functioning. One must expect the cards to eventually fail, though, because NAND memory chips have a finite number of read/write cycles. See more here. (Is there a test for this?)

As for their lousy customer service, it probably costs less for SanDisk to employ ambivalent phone support than to send you another card. Strange, because a 4GB card is $120 list. Sandisk must be pretty cheap. Say, don't they have the patent on NAND memory?

[Hank]

Actually I just paid $54.50 each for three 4GB Extreme III's from B&H, if the III will meet your needs as well as the IV.  Deduct $80 for three of them using the current Sandisc rebate, and that's $83.50 for three or $27.93 each if my math is up to snuff.  Rebates for the IV are $30 each or $120 for three of them, if you need the extra speed of the IV.

Our biggest hassle with CF cards is losing them, BTW.  We've found it's a case of helping people help you.  Add your name, address and phone # to all cards, and odds are pretty good they'll be returned if you drop them.