Okay, so, this is not going to be a rant about how terrible AI art is, or how LLMs have stolen all our creative output (though I’m still waiting for thousands of dollars from the Anthropic settlement, given how Anthropic bootlegged several of my books to feed the gaping maw of their LLMs).
No, I’m talking about another kind of AI enshittification: Price-grouging.
I just this moment filed a formal complaint with the California attorney general against a company called GoHardDrive. I am hopeful this becomes some kind of class-action thing. A similar case is currently grinding through the gears of justice against Samsung, for doing the same shitty thing.
So.
In August of 2024, I bought a hard drive from GoHardDrive. It came with a 2-year warranty. In May of 2026, it failed, under warranty. No problem, I thought, I’ll file a warranty claim and get it replaced.
I didn’t count on the AI boom.
The hard drive in question
Thanks to the AI boom, computer RAM and hard drive prices have shot up, anywhere from triple to quintuple their old prices, as demand for memory and storage outstrips the world’s entire supply. People are signing purchase orders for entire manufacturing runs through 2032-2034.
That means what was once an $89 hard drive now sells for $299 (or more!). So by replacing my hard drive under warranty, GoHardDrive is losing the immense profit in selling it to an AI datacenter...and it’s not like they can just make more because the world’s manufacturing capacity is completely saturated. Hard drives are being sold at enormous markups that literally haven’t been manufactured yet.
Faced with that, hard drive companies (including big, well-known companies like Samsung) are now routinely refusing to honor their warranties. Why should they? Every warranty replacement is costing them an extra $200 in profit, and what are you gonna do? Refuse to buy a hard drive from them again? They’ve already sold every hard drive they will make from now to 2034, why on earth would they care?
This is a big, big problem. It’s a double whammy for anyone buying computers, hard drives, SSDs, or smartphones right now. Not only are you paying through the nose for your kit, but if it fails, what are you gonna do? If the vendor says “nah, bruh, I’m not gonna replace that,” now what? A warranty is only worthwhile if it’s honored.
In my case, what I did was file a formal complaint with the California Attorney General, since GoHardDrive is in California. The California government is taking a pretty dim view of AI profiteering right now, so I have some small measure of hope they’ll be invested in this.
If you’ve run into problems like this, I’d love to hear from you!