Q I refer to your Iomega Zip drive article (Zip drive death click is for real, June 98, p176) and the statement therein that "the company will replace defective Zip drivesàor disks under the limited lifetime warranty". Here briefly is my experience.

A Unfortunately, John's experience of being "bounced" from one vendor to another is all too common. Have you ever phoned a software company's technical support line and been told to contact your hardware vendor? And then called the hardware company and been assured your software is at fault? If so, you are sure to sympathise with John's predicament. Where exactly does the buck stop?

According to spokesperson Manoj Murugan, "Gateway generally doesn't replace faulty damaged storage media such as FDs, Zip, Jaz etc, especially in cases such as this when a third party's equipment has caused the problem."

Well, in most cases we don't expect system vendors to replace damaged media. But in this case, the disk shipped with the system and was therefore part of the package purchased by the consumer. In these circumstances it seems reasonable to expect the disk to be covered by the system warranty.

We raised the matter with Gateway and Iomega, and both companies promptly offered to replace the damaged disk. We also received a statement from Peter Dawson, Iomega's country manager for Australia and New Zealand. "Our goal has always been, and continues to be, to delight our customers in each of our encounters with them, and to deliver high-quality, reliable and affordable products," he wrote.

Any reader who is less than delighted with his or her Iomega product should contact Iomega technical support by e-mail at custsvc@iomega.com or by phone on (02) 9955 2455.