[comp.sys.atari.st] MEI Floppies

covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (02/15/90)

> In article <2013@moscom.UUCP>, tmb@moscom.UUCP (Tom Bellucco) writes...
> "Help!!  For the past couple years, I've been buying bulk 3.5" DSDD disks from
> "MEI/MicroCenter.  I've bought THOUSANDS of disks from them, starting when they
> "were $1 per disk.  Now they are $.45 per disk and they are shit.  Out of each
> "200 I buy, at least 50-75 of them won't format DS.  I figure they are just
> "using SS disks (because the SS disks are the same price).  Back when the
> "disks were from $.70 - $1 each, they were great disks and it was a great deal.
> "Now it sucks having to return disks only to get more bad ones.  Some of these
> "disks have "marks" (look like scratches) across the media that I just wonder
> "is doing to my drive.

We buy hundreds of the MEI floppies each year to seel at our PHAST Club
meetings. We have had very low (less than 1%) failures with these floppies.
These floppies are used on all sorts of STs, with all kinds of floppy drives.

If you are having that large a failure rate I would suggest that you have your
floppy drive checked out. I t may need alignment, or have a bad head, or
something.

I have never seen scratch marks on our floppies. I just bought 200 for our PHAST
club last week and we used about 40 of them for pd disks. They all formatted fine
on my STs at home.

Good luck!!


-- 
 Richard E. Covert, Lead Engineer of Software Tools Group
 AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ   (602) - 581-4652
 TCP/IP: covertr@gtephx
 UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!covertr

mccarty@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (James E. McCarty) (02/15/90)

I live in Columbus, Ohio, the home of MEI and MicroCenter and
have purchased many diskettes from them over the years. Several
of us would get together and by 500-1000 at a time.  Most of the
time we had very good experience (less than 1% bad with the
people at the store always ready to make replacements).  However,
last year wee got a bunch of diskettes that were trash.  35-40%
failures.  There were obvious scratches of the surfaces.
We carted most of them back and got a refund on some and replacements
on others.  The next batch was better, but not as good as in the
past.

I refuse to bitch about the experience for several reasons:

 - MicroCenter has always done the "right thing" by either
   replacing the diskettes or refunding my money.

 - By buying at such a cheap price, I feel I also am taking a bit
   of risk for the better price.

 - As competition as driven the price for diskettes down, they have
   become a strictly price commodity.  I am sure MicroCenter focuses
   on price and occasionally will have a bad batch of diskettes.
   They move such a quantity that they can not test every batch.


BTW - MicroCenter (MEI's retail arm) does not sell Atari.  They are
   all IBM and Apple.  While most of the sales people are good;
   they do have a few that go out of their way to bad mouth the
   ST.  (As if we don't do well enough here B^) ).

I am not a MicroCenter employee; just a reasonably pleased customer.

Jim McCarty - OSU            (Insert clever stuff here)