Seagate ST3000DM001 7200.14 Compatibility and Warranty

I agree it depends on pricing, but you are both assuming that the company could make it an attractive proposition for a customer while getting the customer to pay for the entire cost to the company of being able to offer this.
It's not going to be as simple as you suggest. The defective drives are going to hold value and if the company can't realise this value by being able to refurbish and use for warranty replacement then it's lost value. The warranty model we are talking about only involves going up a grade of drive so there is going to be a cost related to lower grade drives returned under warranty that cannot be used. There will also be an issue related to insufficient refurbished drives of the higher grade being available for these enhanced warranty customers therefore new drives are going to be used - at higher cost to the company than refurbished drives.

Since none of us know the actual costs involved here, nor do we know what the demand would be, or for at matter the price point; perhaps we should just agree to disagree.