ConsumerWatch: Memory Card Glitch Resolved
SAN JOSE (CBS 5) - A San Jose woman's flash memory card failure recently forced her into paying up to retrieve her valuable photos.
Memory cards are supposed to store hundreds of photos. But when Sue Butler bought a new SanDisk memory card she said it suddenly stopped working. But the worse was when Butler tried to look at the photos she had taken Christmas morning. According to Butler the pictures were nowhere to be found.
Hoping to recover more than 100 photos, Butler called SanDisk which walked through an online recovery process. When that didn't work, Butler tried putting the memory card in the printer, then the computer.
After several attempts, Butler called SanDisk once again only to be referred to a Florida company. According to Butler she paid $150 to restore all the photos. "I was so happy, you don't even know," she said. "I was probably ready to cry."
When Butler asked SanDisk to share some of the cost, she was told it was against company policy. "For something to work for 112 pictures and then to just shut down, I thought SanDisk had some type of responsibility," she said.
But the Milpitas-based company tells CBS 5 in a statement: "As the inventor of flash mass storage cards more than 20 years ago, SanDisk has always focused on quality and customer service. However, like other media storage companies, SanDisk's warranty applies to the product itself and the company is not liable for loss of data."
As a gesture of goodwill SanDisk sent Butler a 16 gig memory card. SanDisk also offered ways to protect your memory card:
- Avoid taking pictures when the battery is low. If the camera suddenly shuts down the pictures you took may not save onto the memory card.
- Never take the memory card out right after you take a photo. Instead wait a few minutes to make sure pictures have transferred onto the memory card.
- Don't remove the card any time your camera's indicator light is flashing.
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