"We've rigorously tested up to 8 drives" - bullshit. An 8-bay synology will fail a RAID rebuild every single time. If you're lucky, it'll work after the 3rd retry - which will be about 2 weeks later because of how slow it is.
This is a money grab, plain and simple. Had they substituted SMR drives at a lower price they might have a leg to stand on. But as others have mentioned, they didn't - they lied until they got caught and are now pretending like they were up-front. Talk about making a bad situation worse. The headline should've been "We're sorry, here's what we're doing to fix it" - instead it's "there's nothing wrong, it's YOUR fault you caught me cheating".
This is a money grab, plain and simple. Had they substituted SMR drives at a lower price they might have a leg to stand on. But as others have mentioned, they didn't - they lied until they got caught and are now pretending like they were up-front. Talk about making a bad situation worse. The headline should've been "We're sorry, here's what we're doing to fix it" - instead it's "there's nothing wrong, it's YOUR fault you caught me cheating".