21 ms·

Newegg has a bit of a scandal on its hands

392 points by gautamcgoel 5y ago

jeffwask 5y ago
They are also doing shit like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ6LsloQ7K4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ6LsloQ7K4
wildrhythms 5y ago
The story that GamersNexus shares here of dealing with Newegg's support is so painfully realistic. Support reps have no idea what's going on. There is little to no escalation process. The support folks probably receive no training about the RMA process, how damaged hardware is assessed, or even what 'thermal pate' is. For companies like Newegg, there is no value anymore in quality support reps with expertise... companies only focus on quantity and trimming the budget: hiring the smallest team possible at the lowest price. This transcends so much of the tech industry. I used to work in IT support, started at $65k which was amazing for where I was living at the time. Everyone on the support team took pride in our work, and we shared a culture of expertise and owning the issue; of quality over quantity. Everyone suffers- the customer, the company, the support staff- when the goal is sheer throughput and 'cost efficiency'.
- aksss 5y ago
  > transcends so much of the tech industry Pervades might be better, but fully agree with your comment/experience.
  - bcrl 5y ago
    It's sad that "at scale" has become synonymous with "without human oversight". It used to be that businesses tried to scale up while providing a level of support for their customers that showed they were valued. As a user today it is so hard to get bug reports directed to someone that can effect change in the right part of the system. As a software developer, I absolutely love getting bug reports for something I can fix, and I know how to file a good bug report. I see this universally across virtually every online product I interact with, from online accounting software to online mapping products and various large tech company's email services. I'm a powerless, unimportant user, not worth listening to because my statistics are not those generated by millions of other people.
    - svachalek 5y ago
      The easiest way to "scale" is set your base value to 0. If you don't do it at all, it's easy to double it, triple it, increase it by orders of magnitude.
      - 10000truths 5y ago
        If your base value is 0, then the value to your customers is also 0. In theory, a company with good customer support should have a competitive advantage over a company with poor customer support. But in B2C industries, customer support always seems to be a race to the bottom.
        esyir 5y ago
        That seems like an expected outcome if you consider support requirements a relatively rare event though.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Because customers will almost always choose to buy from cheapest, or 2nd cheapest vendor.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      The thing that boggles my mind is the lack of formal escalation in modern support departments. It existed because it was a good model: it worked, while managing headcount and cost. Your front line people aren't trained or paid to know everything, but for God's sake have someone backstopping them up with deeper knowledge and access!
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Spoiler: there is no such thing as “escalation” most of the time. CSRs at the same level escalate to each other just to make you feel good. My wife use to work as a CSR at Verizon.
        5y ago
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  I once had a lengthy chat interaction with a Google Store CSA about charging me 12 times for an order that ended in them saying "I'm sorry, it's all automated and I can't do anything." It was sort of a profound summation of the state of customer service today.
  - kioleanu 5y ago
    I had to cancel a credit card because of Google. I tried buying 4 pixel phones from them. They cancelled the order 3 times after exactly 7 days, but didn't cancel the transactions on my card. I obviously didn't have that much money on my card (meaning the limit was lower than the amount). Increasing the limit would've released the money to Google automatically. So I cancelled the card and reopoened. I bought the phones from a local dealer afterwards.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      It is the nature of the credit card system that refunds may take 5-10 business days to show up on your statement. That isn't the fault of the merchant. (though, canceling orders is)
- gurchik 5y ago
  Not just customer service but also their media liaisons. It's a long video[1] but another Youtuber called Brett from UFD Tech has been talking about Newegg recently too. Newegg agreed to sponsor a fan giveaway by providing an Intel CPU to a winner, but after receiving photos and marketing from Brett did not respond to inquiries about the CPU for five months. They also didn't pay for two product review videos that Brett had made for them. Like with GamersNexus, they didn't respond to inquiries about fixing the situation until Brett posted about it on Twitter. Another small but interesting detail about this is that Brett never revealed the identity of his liaison with Newegg, but after making the video he received a photo from someone he's keeping anonymous that knows the liaison. In the photo, the anonymous person asks the liaison what is going on with the UFD Tech issue, and the liaison explains what happened but blames the lack of communication on him losing emails and not having Brett's contact information to make it right. A lie considering Brett was emailing the liaison during all of this. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_rKnK-uAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_rKnK-uAM
- Roritharr 5y ago
  We recently got aquired by a larger SaaS based in Canada. All their employees, including me now, go through a 3 week introduction program which includes 1 week in support. I have to say I'm stunned by the level of quality and attention they put into their support. So there are counter examples still.
  - nickpeterson 5y ago
    One of the huge issues in industry today is that internal promotion isn’t the default, so people don’t work their way up the chain in companies anymore. Starting at a service desk, mailroom, or as a page used to be a rite of passage that let you learn a lot about the business and informed the rest of your tenure. Now people get hired into a mid level job and have to reverse engineer what the business does. It hurts IT because you have a bunch of capable people who seemingly are clueless as to how the business makes money.
dpifke 5y ago
Issues with Newegg returns have only been an issue since... well, forever. Especially the bit about stonewalling customers until the issue appears in a public forum, and then suddenly backpedaling. I've avoided them since 2012 or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108456
- na85 5y ago
  >Especially the bit about stonewalling customers until the issue appears in a public forum, and then suddenly backpedaling. That's standard practice for pretty much all of Big Tech. Official support channels? You can go fuck yourself. Get lucky and frontpage reddit or HN? They'll finally honor their commitments and put out a press release about how $BigCo is committed to $generic_ideals.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    Amazon is a pleasant exception from this rule.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Apple is also very easy to get in person support from, you can even schedule it.
  - User23 5y ago
    I miss Perl.
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    Yep... You need to have a personal army on the scale of Brad's Wife to get real help sometimes...
- AceyMan 5y ago
  Y'all stuck it out longer than I did. I bailed on Newegg not long after they became a marketplace and not a sole supplier. It just took too long to use the site to be even close to feeling assured that I was ordering (and likely to receive) the parts I actually needed. I do less PC building these days, but I, too, shop with B&H if they have what I'm looking for (which is nearly always).
anm89 5y ago
Insanity. Hope this gets higher up so more people see it and never purchase from new egg again.
smrtinsert 5y ago
After waiting an abnormally long time for parts with them more than a decade ago I've preferred microcenter ever since. Microcenters guys aren't perfect but they're good enough to bounce ideas off of.
- jgalentine007 5y ago
  Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever had a negative experience at Micro Center, but I've only been to a couple of them.
aksss 5y ago
For posterity, here's the actual Gamer's Nexus video about NewEgg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  They have made several follow up videos.
threshold 5y ago
This is damning. They’ll never again have my business.
abracadaniel 5y ago
What are the best alternatives aside from Amazon to buy PC hardware?
- joecot 5y ago
  I've never had an issue with B&H Photo Video
- kadoban 5y ago
  B&H, Microcenter has some online presence. If you're really stuck, Bestbuy has some things (they're ~fine these days, their selection just sucks).
- threshold 5y ago
  Amazon. Also, Amazon. If that fails try Amazon.
- lmm 5y ago
  Last time I resorted to walking into John Lewis. I probably paid more than elsewhere, but life's too short to buy from somewhere that doesn't stand firmly behind their products.
- PolygonSheep 5y ago
  I built my last desktop with parts from Best Buy (except the SSDs which I was carrying over to the new one). They don't have a huge selection so you won't be able to build anything very high or low end but it was very competitively priced and I was able to get it all same day pickup. Their case selection is pretty much limited to the glass side panel/RGB LED stuff though. This was in very early 2020 just right before everything got crazy so I'm not sure how it is now.
- trissylegs 5y ago
  In Australia we have PCCaseGear and MWave. (And a bunch of others but I tend to just compare those two)
  - Jedd 5y ago
barney54 5y ago
This is one reason I’m happy I live near a Microcenter. I haven’t bought anything from Newegg since they changed owners a few years ago and don’t plan on buying anything from them now.
roombarampage 5y ago
I buy new computer parts somewhat infrequently these days, but in the 2ish decades I’ve been buying from Newegg I’ve never had a problem. Once, when I royally screwed up an order (I double bought a whole desktop worth of parts) they took everything back without any problem at all. Additionally, they have been one of the most prominent companies fighting patent trolls. I’m sure they have screwed up in big and small ways over the years, but they’ve also been serving the tech community well for a long time. Companies are large and difficult to manage. Hopefully they learn lessons from this and improve.
- FullyFunctional 5y ago
  I've been a (fairly loyal) Newegg customer for at least 20 years, but past history is irrelevant and your flawless experience doesn't mean that there aren't countless people being royally screwed over with no means of recourse. I literally just today finally got reimbursed from defective RAM (2 out of 8 sticks were DOA) I sent back on the _24th_ and it only happened because I contacted them every other day (I kept records). Old Newegg was great. It's gone. I'm done. EDIT: English are not my bestest
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    You mean they took 3 weeks to give you a refund on something you sent in during peak return season... And that's old Newegg is gone? You also badgered them every other day... which probably took a bunch of your time but didn't accelerate things.
    - FullyFunctional 5y ago
      I really didn't want to expose the whole ordeal, but that didn't stop you from assuming you knew the situation. That's really impressive! I had to badger them every other day because the return label they gave me was wrong and UPS couldn't deliver and kept waiting for an update from them. It sat for ~ 4 days with nothing happening before being returned. I can guarantee you nothing would have happened as every time I spoke with a representative, they were discovering everything anew. I even had to teach them how to use their own tracking tools. Frustratingly, the official UPS site didn't have the same information as their internal site.
kop316 5y ago
Heh, I rememeber the last time I bought from Newegg, I bought a Motherboard + RAM combo, and when I went to assemble my PC, it would not boot. After a long time searching, it turned out the RAM + Motherboard combo I had was the reason. When I brought this up to Newegg, they actually told me they do not test their Motherboard + RAM combos to make sure they actually work. I think it took me two months to get my money back as well.
dang 5y ago
Hmm. I bought my nephew some parts to build his own computer with for Christmas (entice kid with new gaming rig, secretly inculcate with tech skills). The CPU/motherboard combo didn't work, so after much ado we returned the CPU, and Newegg said it was damaged and wouldn't accept the return. I just thought he might have accidentally damaged it. It never crossed my mind that it might be fraud.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Did you buy an open box combo?... Newegg had an incredibly generous RMA program for a while. They even took back a water damaged laptop from me back in the day after a manufacturer refused to repair it. They got hammered by people trying to force returns on parts of their GPU combos, but they still do pretty well even if they're a bit slow. - What happened here is tangential to what 99% of people are talking about, an open box product really was damaged... It just wasn't damaged by GN. So Newegg clearly didn't inspect it well enough (probably not unrelated to the spike in RMAs they're likely dealing with) Now Newegg is saying all open box products can be returned no questions asked, so even that's not an issue. Also not sure about how I feel about GN's theatrics here. They could have used their without games like "we're flying across the country to knock on your doorstep whether you like it or not!!!". Feels like a content-first, results-second approach.
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    > It just wasn't damaged by GN. So Newegg clearly didn't inspect it well enough (probably not unrelated to the spike in RMAs they're likely dealing with) Newegg did inspect it when it was returned initially. They then sent it off to Gigabyte for RMA. Gigabyte quoted a repair fee which newegg declined, instead deciding to sell the product again to GN. The giant gigabyte RMA sticker could not have been missed when inspecting it again for GN's RMA.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      So you're saying Newegg didn't inspect it well enough... but with more words. "Giant gigabyte RMA sticker" wouldn't mean anything off to the someone reviewing an open-box RMA without a deeper inspection... in fact it likely gave them the false impression it had been repaired (which again explains why there was so much push back) - Everyone's using this as a springboard to harp on Newegg RMAs in general, but this is an issue with their open box program, not their RMA department. RMA department could have dug deeper, but clearly they didn't expect a manufacturer RMA sticker to mean it was not already fixed... But alas, apparently precious few people read the article all the way so now "Newegg RMAs are fraudulent" will be the new tune. I guess it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but you'd expect better from this crowd.
loeg 5y ago
This seems like a singular, shitty example of customer service, but I also don't really expect Newegg to manually verify every open box motherboard is functional before shipping it to customers. Not sure this paints a picture of a broader problem with Newegg, other than the usual problem of being in a race to the bottom with other big retailers.
- abracadaniel 5y ago
  It wasn’t just a defective board. Newegg tried to RMA it and was told it was damaged. They declined to fix it, took it back and then resold it, with the RMA service ticket from the manufacturer still on it. They knew it was damaged when the sold it. Even if it had been a mixup and resold accidentally, they would’ve seen the RMA sticker when it was returned again, and they still tried to pin it on the 2nd buyer.
  - bobcostas55 5y ago
    Not only that. If they had simply sold it by mistake it would be bad, but somewhat understandable as a simple mistake. The worst thing is they refused the return, even though they knew from the RMA sticker that it was broken at the time of (re)sale.
- cjbprime 5y ago
  > I also don't really expect Newegg to manually verify every open box motherboard is functional before shipping it to customers There is more to this story which strongly suggests that Newegg was told by Gigabyte that this motherboard was broken before they resold it as open box, but even if they didn't: you can't have the "don't manually verify every return before reselling it" policy AND the "refuse returns for open box purchases if they're broken" policy, yet they did.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I fully expect them to have properly done same inspection before they sell open box item that they do after receiving one back. Anything else is pure intentional fraud. And for bonus, GN tells they never even opened either the product or shipping box.
minerva23 5y ago
Newegg doesn't limit their fraud to selling broken open-box items. I personally saw them try to pass off an expensive mouse that was crusty and scratched as "new" (I double checked and it was NOT marked as an "open box" on the product page or order page). Newegg support refused to process the return, so I had to contest it with the credit card company. Pro tip: the CC support rep told me to process it as "product never received." He said if you pay for a new item and you get a used item, then you never received the item you paid for. Hopefully I never have to use that again, but now I know (and now you do too).
- chrischen 5y ago
  Does the product not received work better? From the merchant side those seem to be easier to win since tracking is sufficient proof, and the case review probably doesn’t spend too much time looking into used versus new item.
  - minerva23 5y ago
    I only have that sample size of one, so I have zero confidence of whether it's better or not. All I can say is I had no problems with it that one time. Newegg didn't even try to contest (as far as I'm aware).
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Is it me, or are retailers and service providers suddenly getting less and less reasonable about returns and disputes? I’ve had to do more credit card chargebacks in the last three years than I had done in the previous 20 years. Fortunately, AMEX heavily sides with consumers against merchants, so this route has consistently worked for me. I’ve always considered a CC chargeback the tool of last resort, but companies are more and more slamming doors and dodging responsibility to the point where that tool has to be used all the time now.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Companies are betting that you'd prefer a continued tentative transactional relationship with them rather than ban yourself over a charge back. That's definitely how Airbnb works.
thewebcount 5y ago
Ugh. I had an equally infuriating transaction with them. I bought some obscure batteries for our wireless landline phone. I bought batteries for 2 handsets. They sent me the batteries for only 1 set. OK, mistakes happen. I contact them and tell them what happened. No problem, they say, they’ll send me the other set. An hour later my card is charged for another 2 sets of batteries, none of which ever ended up shipping to me. So I was charged for 4 sets of batteries and received 1 set. I’ve just stopped doing business with them now because it’s not worth my time or money to deal with them.
antisthenes 5y ago
Newegg had stellar reputation until around 2011-2012 and was the go-to for my hardware purchases. I think around that time they started doing shady things like what's described in the article, opened up a third-party marketplace of some kind (have to be careful not to order your stuff used from a 3rd party seller based in China), and generally went downhill as far as user-experience. Apparently they were acquired by a Chinese company in 2016. Their site also became much slower (why does it take 3 seconds for a sub-navigation to appear?) and now also sells a bunch of non-IT related crap. From now on, I tend to buy things at Best-Buy or even ebay.
- blable2 5y ago
  How has your eBay buying gone?
vmception 5y ago
> Gamers Nexus went public on his sizeable YouTube channel. As you might expect, this led to an immediate refund from Newegg top kek how predictable
consp 5y ago
Newegg isn't alone in shipping broken/used as new and doesn't just happen in the US. I ordered a usb-c dock recently at a medium sized hardware online store, got a used part with seals broken and replaced with the yellow anti-static stickers which look officialish to the uninitiated (so no accident here). After opening all protection plastic was missing as well as the usb-c cable. Fortunately for me this was in the EU and burden of proof is on them but shipping used/broken products off as new also happens here. One interesting thing is they also screwed up since they offered a discount to use the opened product after which my position was far stronger as I could reject any attempt to send me another product and I could just dissolve the purchase completely as it meant they had offered a compensation sum which I could rejectnif unreasonable and they always are. (There is a lot of difference in eu implementations per country about rights of dissolvement of purchase so watch out with your local laws.)
- balls187 5y ago
  I cut back on purchasing from Amazon for the same reason. One four separate occasions, items I purchased "New" appeared to be repackaged. It did not appear that the items had been used, but they had been removed from their original packaged state, and then repackaged.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Compensation sums are not always unreasonable. I got €100 off a fridge because the delivery guys noticed a large scratch on the back.
  - consp 5y ago
    True, but my experience is it usually is, they offered a 6% discount but wanted me to test the operation of the product as well which was impossible because of the missing cable and I had very little fate in it functioning as it should (which I why I called it unreasonable and they short of agreed). The customer service was quite good actually and they corrected it pretty nicely which is in stark contrast to the NewEgg example here. Nice exceptions are always welcome and worth mentioning.
astrange 5y ago
Here I thought Newegg was only guilty of wasting everyone's time by sending 10+ emails every time you ordered anything.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Jap2-0 5y ago
Perhaps one of the worst parts, which I haven't seen mentioned here yet: GamersNexus eventually managed to get the motherboard back, and took a look at it. Not only was it in terrible condition, there was an RMA sticker from Newegg to Gigabyte (the manufacturer). Gigabyte told Newegg it was broken and offered to repair it (for a price); Newegg refused, and then still sold it anyway. (Actually, looking again, this is mentioned in the article, but it bears emphasis.)
- freeAgent 5y ago
  Even crazier is that Gigabyte offered to repair it for $100, but Newegg refused and later sold it for $500.
  - albio 5y ago
    We don't know Newegg's margins. Perhaps the board cost them $450 in the first place so paying $100 to repair it so that they could sell it for $500 wouldn't make sense.
    - mijoharas 5y ago
      I mean, it would make sense. You have a broken product. You may have already spent 450$ to get it, but that's sunk cost. You have 3 options: 1. you pay $100 dollars to have a working product (you can sell it for $500). 2. you can engage in fraud and sell this broken product. 3. you write off this loss. if you discount committing fraud, then the 100$ repair fee definitely makes sense.
      - freeAgent 5y ago
        Yes, unless they thought the probability that they'd be able to sell the board for $500 was less than 25%, it would have made sense to pay for the repair.
Laura69 5y ago
[dead]
JimmyRuska 5y ago
I bought a 14tb drive from newegg and received an empty box in the mail. Later I ordered a 2tb SSD from best buy and received a 500gb ssd. I wonder if there's just more warehouse theft from the volatile market/inflation. And more people trying to exploit systems of trust in delivery now that everyone orders online eg https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-customer-admits-290k-returns-scam-faces-20-years-jail-2021-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-customer-admits-290k-...
- everybodyknows 5y ago
  Try to get delivery to a nearby store, then insist the staff open it for inspection. Staples will do this.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    This is why I love the in person stores over Amazon/Newegg/purely online options. Ship to store maintains their liability the whole way, and it reduces the time I spend dealing with that nonsense.
- hughrr 5y ago
  I think it’s down to incompetent returns handling. People buy a 500GB SSD and a 2TB SSD at the same time and return the 500GB one in the 2TB box. No one checks the return properly and it goes back to the warehouse and is sent out again. I expect this doesn’t happen enough to affect margins enough to invest in doing something about it so it carries on.
  - whoopdedo 5y ago
    The fraud can get pretty sophisticated. I came across a WD external hard drive that visually looked fine. Only when I plugged it in did I notice the size difference, and upon inspecting the SMART tables saw it was a much older Seagate brand drive with bad sectors. Somehow they had managed to swap the drive without making any marks on the case to indicate it had been disassembled. Either that or there's someone selling empty unassembled shells in new condition.
seqizz 5y ago
Could we do something about this general issue? Afaik after certain size, all companies only really care about your complaints either if you have enough followers/influence or if someone from HN/twitter can poke the "right" person within the organization.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I poked the right person at my bank and they promised to help and then my account was terminated for contacting employees outside the support system.
  - seqizz 5y ago
    That's why I told "some from HN/twitter", someone who has influence over the organization and/or its employees. It's _very_ different if I hunt the name of Newegg employee from linkedin and message her vs. a friend of her is mentioning "hey this guy has a problem with the company you work for".
MaxMoney 5y ago
qwertox 5y ago
EU's consumer protection laws put the burden of proving that the customer didn't receive a faulty item on the seller. This is valid up to one year after purchase. The seller must either fix or replace the item or reimburse the cost. Afterwards, during the course of an additional year, it is the customer who must prove that any damage on the item was there to begin with, so that a faulty item can be shipped back to the seller. This is a two year warranty which sellers must provide by law to the customer, regardless of any warranty terms the manufacturer attaches to its products. Usually the seller will want you to contact the manufacturer and ship the item to them directly in order to not to get involved, but in this case the consumer is accepting to be bound by the warranty of the manufacturer. If this was not successful, he can still send it to the seller. It is better to tell the seller that you won't be doing this, that you are going to use the seller's warranty, even if this may mean that the item will be gone for a longer amount of time because the seller may send it to the manufacturer first, to see if he can get the manufacturer to fix the item under the terms of his warranty, instead of directly replacing or reimbursing the cost of it.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  We also have a 14 day return window, or more clearly you have to notify that you have the intention to return it within the window. During this window you are allowed to test the thing you purchased. This applies to any remote purchase. Returns does not have to be free but almost all stores offer free returns.
- consp 5y ago
  > This is valid up to one year after purchase. Up to has asterisks and differs per country, here (Netherlands) it's 6 months.
  - qwertox 5y ago
    Are you sure? It was 6 months in Germany until 2021-12-31, but since this year it has been changed to 12 months and I thought that this came from a new EU-wide regulation. And the asterisks are in regards to "faulty" animals (stays at 6 months), and it's not applicable to B2B and C2C, at least in Germany. And some special rules regarding digital stuff like software.
hooby 5y ago
Newegg had a broken motherboard, already tried to RMA it themselves, then (likely accidentally) sold it as open box. I see no big problem with that first part at all. Seems like a honest accident - stuff like that can happen. No big deal, imho. But investigating the returned board - not seeing the RMA sticker on it, mis-classifying the damage, not checking their own records on the board - and claiming it was "customer damage" without any hard evidence... and not ever double-checking anything at all, after the customer repeatedly insisted they didn't even open the box... That's the real problem. It's almost impossibly sloppy to miss all that during any damage investigation, it's outright offensive to claim "customer damage" without having done any investigation to substantiate that claim, and it's complete madness, to spend a lot of time insisting on "customer damage" in discussions with the customer, without ever double-checking the board, the damage or the records. That's the reason why it's hard to believe this was a honest accident. Because if it was a honest accident... how could they have never noticed their accident, while "investigating" and refusing a refund multiple times over? With an RMA-sticker right on the board, dated to before the date of sale?
- PaulKeeble 5y ago
  It is a really incompetent fraud attempt, they could have just removed the RMA sticker before sending it back. Steve of GamersNexus would still have been able to get the history from the serial number with the motherboard manufacturer but it would have taken longer to work it out but it would also have removed the plausible deniability of an error I guess.
  - freeAgent 5y ago
    My guess is that prior to this episode blowing up on YouTube, Steve was dealing with a single customer support/RMA person who was either extremely lazy or negligent (perhaps due to Newegg incentives) and there is no escalation path for regular people whom Newegg isn’t aware are YouTube stars. I doubt Newegg set out to defraud Steve or anyone else, but they put the structure and incentives in place that let it happen. And they probably know this happens to some extent due to the wealth of other complaints they’ve racked up. They choose to operate this way, though, so the bottom line is that their execs are ok with scamming a small percentage of their customers because it saves/makes money. That small percentage just happened to hit the wrong guy this time.
mdoms 5y ago
Buy locally. Stop supporting huge corporations. They are not your friends.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  I don't think I have a local option. I know one local PC repair shop that sells decade old prefabs for twice what they go for online. Maybe I could contact one of the few enterprise places, but I suspect I'd find a similar selection at a similar price or someone that would basically charge me more to buy off newegg. Building your own PC is too niche to support businesses anywhere but major metropolitan areas. I'm stuck picking what I think is the less bad option.
- epinephrinios 5y ago
  I don't know about that. Local shop price gauged me but Amazon refunded 100% me for each and every return I initiated (even when it was my mistake and I threw away the packaging).
lnxg33k1 5y ago
In Europe you can return items bought for 14 days no question asked, if you buy them online, but not in physical shops. On the other hand i once had the issue of a broken item i bought online and the shop saying that for the warranty i had to deal with the manufacturer. So since then even if i get a broken item, i return it with no reason other than i don't need it and reorder it again fixed (hopefully) But yeah i learned that shop always try to don't deal with stuff
- Hamuko 5y ago
  The 14-day return period should actually be for all kinds of distance purchases, not just online purchases. For example, I agreed to purchase my car over the phone with a dealership and I got a 14-day return period for my car.
chrysoprace 5y ago
This just goes to show that the US needs better consumer laws. This shit wouldn't fly in Australia, the ACCC would be on their asses immediately.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  s/laws/enforcement/
kabdib 5y ago
NewEgg tolerates serially fraudulent third party sellers. Until they clean that up, I won't be spending any more money on their site. At least I have a chance of recovering my money from Amazon (or a physical purchase from Best Buy).
ejb999 5y ago
I once bought a powerful IBM server many years ago at one of the online resellers/liquidators (not eBay) (actually bought 5 of them, but only one was IBM and was the only one that had the problem). Got the server, plugged it in connected power monitor/keyboards etc - wouldn't boot. Finally opened up the case and there was no memory, no video card and no motherboard and no drives at all - but there was a note from someone at IBM detailing that the server had been cannablized to use the parts for another machine (with all the required documentation of who took it, when and where the parts went etc.) When I contacted the company that sold it to me as 'new / surplus' - they said it wasn't their problem, it was a warranty issue I had to take up with IBM, and they washed their hands. After many failed attempts, I resorted to tracking down the officers of the company via public records and harassing each of them personally by phone in the evenings and weekends at their homes until they issued me a refund. I hadn't paid by CC, so couldn't just dispute the charges.
- l-lousy 5y ago
  Seems like small claims court may have been easier
  - SoundsLikeAScam 5y ago
    The harassment route sounds like more fun.
    - tantalor 5y ago
      And creepy/illegal
      - ejb999 5y ago
        Please explain how it is illegal to call the person that sold you something defective, and refuses to refund your money?
        stronglikedan 5y ago
nhoughto 5y ago
Is Newegg bad now? Historically heard good things, what happened? Private equity?
- Liquix 5y ago
  From Wikipedia: "In 2016, Liaison Interactive, a Chinese technology company, acquired a majority stake in Newegg in an investment deal." "In 2020, Newegg entered into a merger agreement with Lianlou Smart Limited wherein Newegg stockholders became majority owners of LLIT. Following the consummation of the merger, Newegg listed as a publicly traded company on Nasdaq in May 2021 as Newegg Commerce, Inc." Don't know anything about it, but the timeline seems about right
  - nhoughto 5y ago
    Yeah right, that explains that then. My strongest memory of Newegg is this, which is quite the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10986167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10986167
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Newegg power search is good, but it does seem to have gone downhill in pretty much all other respects since Amazon became huge. I really want the power search but with a reputable vendor and don't really care if it isn't the cheapest option. Sadly I'm unaware of anywhere like that.
Ekaros 5y ago
Sometimes I wish companies could be executed. Under reasonable situations like this type of fraud. Three cases and everything is liquidated and sold. They don't deserve to live. Then again I'm also for removing LLC protections and throwing the stock holders in jail for this.
zwaps 5y ago
This is why consumer protection needs laws, but also laws that are effective. It isn't just about laws existing: In this case, it sure ain't legal for Newegg to sell a broken motherboard as working, and then decline the RMA. However, a user that ain't Steve from Gamer's Nexus will have no legal recourse that is effective. In the EU, this issue has been tackled explicitly: Within the first six month of a sale, the seller has to prove that the item was damaged by the customer. This burden of proof reversal essentially makes the law effective (in this instance). So would we get by relying on reputation? As long as the chance of getting a damaged item isn't overwhelming, people will still buy (see Amazon, which sells a huge amount of fake items without losing customers). It's easy to see that there's an mixed-strategy equilibrium here, and this equilibrium includes sellers sending out a certain percentage of broken or fake items to maximize profits. Sellers trying to maximize customer satisfaction is likely not the equilibrium. In other places in this thread we learned that customers are now being tracked as to what they return. Perhaps right now, this is for fraud prevention, sure. But if the data is there, it would be trivial for any good Data Science/ Economics team to maximize profits from sending out some semi-broken or used items here and there. All in all, we need effective customer protection. A similar argument holds for privacy. However, both the US and the EU have enacted consumer protection or privacy laws that are ineffective.
- ciupicri 5y ago
  According to what European Union law?
  - zwaps 5y ago
    It is actually 1 year, not 6 months. I believe it's this one: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019L0771&from=DE https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... codified in Germany as §477 BGB (other countries accordingly) edit: Article 11 Burden of proof 1. Any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within one year of the time when the goods were delivered shall be presumed to have existed at the time when the goods were delivered, unless proved otherwise or unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or with the nature of the lack of conformity. This paragraph shall also apply to goods with digital elements. 2. Instead of the one-year period laid down in paragraph 1, Member States may maintain or introduce a period of two years from the time when the goods were delivered.
blable2 5y ago
Parent company is a mainland Chinese. Does that help?
dboreham 5y ago
Perhaps they hired a bunch of ex-Frys employees?
- mindslight 5y ago
  Nice connection! I remember walking through Fry's and seeing so many obviously damaged items sitting around waiting to be "sold", with no intact inventory in sight. Every display keyboard in the keyboard aisle was beat to shit and missing most of its keys. I'm sure everything looked fine in their inventory system, right up until it wasn't. And the ambiance certainly wasn't helped by the exit line waiting to be treated as suspected criminals, or the dirty look the security guard would give you when you opted to skip it. Loss prevention (including return fraud) is a difficult problem, but companies that respond by taking it out on legitimate customers aren't long for this world.
teddyh 5y ago
I have a theory on what happened at NewEgg with this motherboard: 1. GN gets motherboard from NewEgg, never opens the shipping box. 2. GN sends motherboard back to NewEgg, as allowed by NewEgg’s policy. 3. NewEgg decides to decline the RMA just because they can, claiming whatever excuse they are forced to make up when anyone asks. (NewEgg went back and forth regarding whether it was thermal paste on the motherboard or damaged pins on the CPU socket.) 4. GN knows they didn’t damage the motherboard, since they didn’t even open the shipping box, so they relate the story to their surprisingly large audience, and the whole story blows up. 5. NewEgg goes “Oops, bad publicity, we’d better refund them.” 6. GN wants the motherboard returned, too. 7. NewEgg goes “Oh crap. We said the motherboard was damaged, so if we actually send the real motherboard back, GN will see that it’s fine and know we lied. But GN said that they never opened the shipping box, so GN has never seen the motherboard. We can just send back any old motherboard which is actually damaged. Genius!”, and NewEgg picks a motherboard which is marked as damaged in their inventory system, and ships it to GN. 8. GN opens the newly-received motherboard box, and finds it indeed has damaged CPU socket pins, but also finds an RMA sticker from Gigabyte, with an RMA number on it. GN investigates, and finds out the whole history of that board, painting a very ugly picture of NewEgg if that was the motherboard which they were originally sold. NewEgg is now in a bind. They can’t admit to lying about blatantly refusing legitimate RMAs, nor can they admit to knowingly shipping back a fake damaged motherboard to GN. So what they will probably try to claim is that the damaged board was the one sold to GN, but that it was a mistake in inventory management. However, this story still would not explain why NewEgg’s returns department missed seeing the huge RMA sticker from Gigabyte, and why they sometimes claimed thermal paste on the motherboard, and sometimes damaged CPU socket pins. Unless, of course, NewEgg lied and shipped a fake damaged motherboard back to GN.
- nickpeterson 5y ago
  I haven’t researched but this feels quite plausible. I think it’s important to remember how few people could be involved in this decisions, there could possibly be just two people on the Newegg side making the majority of these calls.
  - pc86 5y ago
codechad 5y ago
A friend of mine purchased a $2500 pre-built PC in November, which was delivered to him DOA. I ended up helping him troubleshoot it as Newegg made him jump through a bunch of BS before agreeing to RMA it for a new one. Disappointing if this is to become their standard operating procedure.
ravar 5y ago
I recently had an experience where I specifically ordered a part from the US for fast shipping. Something like a week or two later there was no activity on the shipping label, turned out it was being shipped from China. I called customer support and was told they would give me a refund. So I bought a replacement under the assumption the refund would process. The part mysteriously showed up the next day even though the shipping label said it was still in china. I eventually got my refund and returned the product to seller, but it took something like 4 hours of phone calls over 11 different calls and 3 weeks and threatening a charge back. I haven't shopped at newegg since then and have been using Amazon since. Not ideal but they are much more reasonable about returns.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bredren 5y ago
A major part of this is the initial return inspection. Apple has some problems right now with what seems like third party contractors claiming people are returning empty boxes, or damaged devices. Customers are having to appeal to customer service repeatedly and often things are fixed with no explanation. There’s a long thread on Mcarumors about the most recent iPhone upgrade program, for example. I think it is a mix of crooked third party device inspection companies and outsized incentives to reject warranty claims.
todd8 5y ago
I have ordered a number of computers directly from Apple and had them delivered without problem. My last big online Apple purchase (a new M1 MacBook Pro Max) was expensive and was scheduled for delivery weeks after I made the order. I followed it via the DHL tracking number online, and it finally showed up at local warehouse--it even showed it was scheduled for the next delivery cycle. I got a call in the evening from DHL asking me if I was satisfied with the delivery; I wasn't satisfied because it was never delivered. They apologized and then for several days kept telling me that they would find it and deliver it. They again called me to ask how the delivery went, and again I pointed out that they hadn't delivered it and didn't have my signature confirming delivery nor did they have a photo or even any tracking record showing that the expensive laptop had made it to my house. The happy ending is that Apple was great and canceled that order and simply put in a new order to replace it was delivered this time. During this process, it was possible to reach customer support for both DHL and Apple without difficulty. I wonder if Apple couldn't use it world-wide tracking network to track MacBooks that are in transit from China to mail order purchasers?
krnlpnc 5y ago
Handling returns is a huge PITA and expensive, but a company really has to just accept virtually any return in this day and age. Big box stores and Amazon have made the return process so painless and unquestioned that basic questions like "why are you returning this" can sour a customer relationship permanently. Even as a personal seller on ebay unquestioned refunds are the norm (and will be forced on upon you if you as a seller try to deny a return)
aliswe 5y ago
> PC retailer Newegg has found itself embroiled in a broad controversy, which could make you think twice before sending money to the company. Is this good writing?
zelon88 5y ago
I always buy expensive computer hardware in person. CPU's, Mobo's, Processors, GPU's, ect. It it's over $200; I'm buying it in person. I have no problem with the "open-box" or "clearance" sections, I just find that you get much less grief when you do certain things in person.
bloodguard 5y ago
We're literally not allowed to buy any server level components from Newegg because of shenanigans* like this. *getting RMAd drives sold as "new".
alkaloid 5y ago
Another video from a former NewEgg RMA inspector: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdxoewAdQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdxoewAdQw
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
i gave up on newegg years ago when i had to call them dozens of times for a single order, because they kept shipping me the wrong thing, or things missing parts, and hanging up on me when i called them and asked them to please ship me what i actually paid for it was months into the process that c level staff called me to apologize, and yet it continued for a month past that. the warehouse guy kept calling me over and over on my home phone in tones that i interpreted as threatening, sometimes five or six times in a row they wouldn't speak to me properly until i had my bank claw the money back i had been a customer of theirs for 15 years by then, and had never asked them for anything more serious than to check shipping availability. i guess that gets me no loyalty. never again. i had switched to them over price. a look at pc part picker shows that's no longer a good choice. every part i looked up had a better choice with a different vendor. live and learn.

392 points by gautamcgoel 5y ago

They are also doing shit like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ6LsloQ7K4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ6LsloQ7K4

wildrhythms 5y ago

The story that GamersNexus shares here of dealing with Newegg's support is so painfully realistic. Support reps have no idea what's going on. There is little to no escalation process. The support folks probably receive no training about the RMA process, how damaged hardware is assessed, or even what 'thermal pate' is. For companies like Newegg, there is no value anymore in quality support reps with expertise... companies only focus on quantity and trimming the budget: hiring the smallest team possible at the lowest price. This transcends so much of the tech industry. I used to work in IT support, started at $65k which was amazing for where I was living at the time. Everyone on the support team took pride in our work, and we shared a culture of expertise and owning the issue; of quality over quantity. Everyone suffers- the customer, the company, the support staff- when the goal is sheer throughput and 'cost efficiency'.

aksss 5y ago
> transcends so much of the tech industry Pervades might be better, but fully agree with your comment/experience.
- bcrl 5y ago
  It's sad that "at scale" has become synonymous with "without human oversight". It used to be that businesses tried to scale up while providing a level of support for their customers that showed they were valued. As a user today it is so hard to get bug reports directed to someone that can effect change in the right part of the system. As a software developer, I absolutely love getting bug reports for something I can fix, and I know how to file a good bug report. I see this universally across virtually every online product I interact with, from online accounting software to online mapping products and various large tech company's email services. I'm a powerless, unimportant user, not worth listening to because my statistics are not those generated by millions of other people.
  - svachalek 5y ago
    The easiest way to "scale" is set your base value to 0. If you don't do it at all, it's easy to double it, triple it, increase it by orders of magnitude.
    - 10000truths 5y ago
      If your base value is 0, then the value to your customers is also 0. In theory, a company with good customer support should have a competitive advantage over a company with poor customer support. But in B2C industries, customer support always seems to be a race to the bottom.
      - esyir 5y ago
        That seems like an expected outcome if you consider support requirements a relatively rare event though.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Because customers will almost always choose to buy from cheapest, or 2nd cheapest vendor.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    The thing that boggles my mind is the lack of formal escalation in modern support departments. It existed because it was a good model: it worked, while managing headcount and cost. Your front line people aren't trained or paid to know everything, but for God's sake have someone backstopping them up with deeper knowledge and access!
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Spoiler: there is no such thing as “escalation” most of the time. CSRs at the same level escalate to each other just to make you feel good. My wife use to work as a CSR at Verizon.
      - 5y ago
jcrawfordor 5y ago
I once had a lengthy chat interaction with a Google Store CSA about charging me 12 times for an order that ended in them saying "I'm sorry, it's all automated and I can't do anything." It was sort of a profound summation of the state of customer service today.
- kioleanu 5y ago
  I had to cancel a credit card because of Google. I tried buying 4 pixel phones from them. They cancelled the order 3 times after exactly 7 days, but didn't cancel the transactions on my card. I obviously didn't have that much money on my card (meaning the limit was lower than the amount). Increasing the limit would've released the money to Google automatically. So I cancelled the card and reopoened. I bought the phones from a local dealer afterwards.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    It is the nature of the credit card system that refunds may take 5-10 business days to show up on your statement. That isn't the fault of the merchant. (though, canceling orders is)
gurchik 5y ago
Not just customer service but also their media liaisons. It's a long video[1] but another Youtuber called Brett from UFD Tech has been talking about Newegg recently too. Newegg agreed to sponsor a fan giveaway by providing an Intel CPU to a winner, but after receiving photos and marketing from Brett did not respond to inquiries about the CPU for five months. They also didn't pay for two product review videos that Brett had made for them. Like with GamersNexus, they didn't respond to inquiries about fixing the situation until Brett posted about it on Twitter. Another small but interesting detail about this is that Brett never revealed the identity of his liaison with Newegg, but after making the video he received a photo from someone he's keeping anonymous that knows the liaison. In the photo, the anonymous person asks the liaison what is going on with the UFD Tech issue, and the liaison explains what happened but blames the lack of communication on him losing emails and not having Brett's contact information to make it right. A lie considering Brett was emailing the liaison during all of this. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_rKnK-uAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_rKnK-uAM
Roritharr 5y ago
We recently got aquired by a larger SaaS based in Canada. All their employees, including me now, go through a 3 week introduction program which includes 1 week in support. I have to say I'm stunned by the level of quality and attention they put into their support. So there are counter examples still.
- nickpeterson 5y ago
  One of the huge issues in industry today is that internal promotion isn’t the default, so people don’t work their way up the chain in companies anymore. Starting at a service desk, mailroom, or as a page used to be a rite of passage that let you learn a lot about the business and informed the rest of your tenure. Now people get hired into a mid level job and have to reverse engineer what the business does. It hurts IT because you have a bunch of capable people who seemingly are clueless as to how the business makes money.

dpifke 5y ago

Issues with Newegg returns have only been an issue since... well, forever. Especially the bit about stonewalling customers until the issue appears in a public forum, and then suddenly backpedaling. I've avoided them since 2012 or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108456

na85 5y ago
>Especially the bit about stonewalling customers until the issue appears in a public forum, and then suddenly backpedaling. That's standard practice for pretty much all of Big Tech. Official support channels? You can go fuck yourself. Get lucky and frontpage reddit or HN? They'll finally honor their commitments and put out a press release about how $BigCo is committed to $generic_ideals.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Amazon is a pleasant exception from this rule.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Apple is also very easy to get in person support from, you can even schedule it.
- User23 5y ago
  I miss Perl.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Yep... You need to have a personal army on the scale of Brad's Wife to get real help sometimes...
AceyMan 5y ago
Y'all stuck it out longer than I did. I bailed on Newegg not long after they became a marketplace and not a sole supplier. It just took too long to use the site to be even close to feeling assured that I was ordering (and likely to receive) the parts I actually needed. I do less PC building these days, but I, too, shop with B&H if they have what I'm looking for (which is nearly always).

anm89 5y ago

Insanity. Hope this gets higher up so more people see it and never purchase from new egg again.

smrtinsert 5y ago

After waiting an abnormally long time for parts with them more than a decade ago I've preferred microcenter ever since. Microcenters guys aren't perfect but they're good enough to bounce ideas off of.

jgalentine007 5y ago
Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever had a negative experience at Micro Center, but I've only been to a couple of them.

aksss 5y ago

For posterity, here's the actual Gamer's Nexus video about NewEgg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI

yxhuvud 5y ago
They have made several follow up videos.

threshold 5y ago

This is damning. They’ll never again have my business.

abracadaniel 5y ago

What are the best alternatives aside from Amazon to buy PC hardware?

joecot 5y ago
I've never had an issue with B&H Photo Video
kadoban 5y ago
B&H, Microcenter has some online presence. If you're really stuck, Bestbuy has some things (they're ~fine these days, their selection just sucks).
threshold 5y ago
Amazon. Also, Amazon. If that fails try Amazon.
lmm 5y ago
Last time I resorted to walking into John Lewis. I probably paid more than elsewhere, but life's too short to buy from somewhere that doesn't stand firmly behind their products.
PolygonSheep 5y ago
I built my last desktop with parts from Best Buy (except the SSDs which I was carrying over to the new one). They don't have a huge selection so you won't be able to build anything very high or low end but it was very competitively priced and I was able to get it all same day pickup. Their case selection is pretty much limited to the glass side panel/RGB LED stuff though. This was in very early 2020 just right before everything got crazy so I'm not sure how it is now.
trissylegs 5y ago
In Australia we have PCCaseGear and MWave. (And a bunch of others but I tend to just compare those two)
- Jedd 5y ago

barney54 5y ago

This is one reason I’m happy I live near a Microcenter. I haven’t bought anything from Newegg since they changed owners a few years ago and don’t plan on buying anything from them now.

roombarampage 5y ago

I buy new computer parts somewhat infrequently these days, but in the 2ish decades I’ve been buying from Newegg I’ve never had a problem. Once, when I royally screwed up an order (I double bought a whole desktop worth of parts) they took everything back without any problem at all. Additionally, they have been one of the most prominent companies fighting patent trolls. I’m sure they have screwed up in big and small ways over the years, but they’ve also been serving the tech community well for a long time. Companies are large and difficult to manage. Hopefully they learn lessons from this and improve.

FullyFunctional 5y ago
I've been a (fairly loyal) Newegg customer for at least 20 years, but past history is irrelevant and your flawless experience doesn't mean that there aren't countless people being royally screwed over with no means of recourse. I literally just today finally got reimbursed from defective RAM (2 out of 8 sticks were DOA) I sent back on the _24th_ and it only happened because I contacted them every other day (I kept records). Old Newegg was great. It's gone. I'm done. EDIT: English are not my bestest
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  You mean they took 3 weeks to give you a refund on something you sent in during peak return season... And that's old Newegg is gone? You also badgered them every other day... which probably took a bunch of your time but didn't accelerate things.
  - FullyFunctional 5y ago
    I really didn't want to expose the whole ordeal, but that didn't stop you from assuming you knew the situation. That's really impressive! I had to badger them every other day because the return label they gave me was wrong and UPS couldn't deliver and kept waiting for an update from them. It sat for ~ 4 days with nothing happening before being returned. I can guarantee you nothing would have happened as every time I spoke with a representative, they were discovering everything anew. I even had to teach them how to use their own tracking tools. Frustratingly, the official UPS site didn't have the same information as their internal site.

kop316 5y ago

Heh, I rememeber the last time I bought from Newegg, I bought a Motherboard + RAM combo, and when I went to assemble my PC, it would not boot. After a long time searching, it turned out the RAM + Motherboard combo I had was the reason. When I brought this up to Newegg, they actually told me they do not test their Motherboard + RAM combos to make sure they actually work. I think it took me two months to get my money back as well.

dang 5y ago

Hmm. I bought my nephew some parts to build his own computer with for Christmas (entice kid with new gaming rig, secretly inculcate with tech skills). The CPU/motherboard combo didn't work, so after much ado we returned the CPU, and Newegg said it was damaged and wouldn't accept the return. I just thought he might have accidentally damaged it. It never crossed my mind that it might be fraud.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Did you buy an open box combo?... Newegg had an incredibly generous RMA program for a while. They even took back a water damaged laptop from me back in the day after a manufacturer refused to repair it. They got hammered by people trying to force returns on parts of their GPU combos, but they still do pretty well even if they're a bit slow. - What happened here is tangential to what 99% of people are talking about, an open box product really was damaged... It just wasn't damaged by GN. So Newegg clearly didn't inspect it well enough (probably not unrelated to the spike in RMAs they're likely dealing with) Now Newegg is saying all open box products can be returned no questions asked, so even that's not an issue. Also not sure about how I feel about GN's theatrics here. They could have used their without games like "we're flying across the country to knock on your doorstep whether you like it or not!!!". Feels like a content-first, results-second approach.
- ben-schaaf 5y ago
  > It just wasn't damaged by GN. So Newegg clearly didn't inspect it well enough (probably not unrelated to the spike in RMAs they're likely dealing with) Newegg did inspect it when it was returned initially. They then sent it off to Gigabyte for RMA. Gigabyte quoted a repair fee which newegg declined, instead deciding to sell the product again to GN. The giant gigabyte RMA sticker could not have been missed when inspecting it again for GN's RMA.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    So you're saying Newegg didn't inspect it well enough... but with more words. "Giant gigabyte RMA sticker" wouldn't mean anything off to the someone reviewing an open-box RMA without a deeper inspection... in fact it likely gave them the false impression it had been repaired (which again explains why there was so much push back) - Everyone's using this as a springboard to harp on Newegg RMAs in general, but this is an issue with their open box program, not their RMA department. RMA department could have dug deeper, but clearly they didn't expect a manufacturer RMA sticker to mean it was not already fixed... But alas, apparently precious few people read the article all the way so now "Newegg RMAs are fraudulent" will be the new tune. I guess it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but you'd expect better from this crowd.

loeg 5y ago

This seems like a singular, shitty example of customer service, but I also don't really expect Newegg to manually verify every open box motherboard is functional before shipping it to customers. Not sure this paints a picture of a broader problem with Newegg, other than the usual problem of being in a race to the bottom with other big retailers.

abracadaniel 5y ago
It wasn’t just a defective board. Newegg tried to RMA it and was told it was damaged. They declined to fix it, took it back and then resold it, with the RMA service ticket from the manufacturer still on it. They knew it was damaged when the sold it. Even if it had been a mixup and resold accidentally, they would’ve seen the RMA sticker when it was returned again, and they still tried to pin it on the 2nd buyer.
- bobcostas55 5y ago
  Not only that. If they had simply sold it by mistake it would be bad, but somewhat understandable as a simple mistake. The worst thing is they refused the return, even though they knew from the RMA sticker that it was broken at the time of (re)sale.
cjbprime 5y ago
> I also don't really expect Newegg to manually verify every open box motherboard is functional before shipping it to customers There is more to this story which strongly suggests that Newegg was told by Gigabyte that this motherboard was broken before they resold it as open box, but even if they didn't: you can't have the "don't manually verify every return before reselling it" policy AND the "refuse returns for open box purchases if they're broken" policy, yet they did.
Ekaros 5y ago
I fully expect them to have properly done same inspection before they sell open box item that they do after receiving one back. Anything else is pure intentional fraud. And for bonus, GN tells they never even opened either the product or shipping box.

minerva23 5y ago

Newegg doesn't limit their fraud to selling broken open-box items. I personally saw them try to pass off an expensive mouse that was crusty and scratched as "new" (I double checked and it was NOT marked as an "open box" on the product page or order page). Newegg support refused to process the return, so I had to contest it with the credit card company. Pro tip: the CC support rep told me to process it as "product never received." He said if you pay for a new item and you get a used item, then you never received the item you paid for. Hopefully I never have to use that again, but now I know (and now you do too).

chrischen 5y ago
Does the product not received work better? From the merchant side those seem to be easier to win since tracking is sufficient proof, and the case review probably doesn’t spend too much time looking into used versus new item.
- minerva23 5y ago
  I only have that sample size of one, so I have zero confidence of whether it's better or not. All I can say is I had no problems with it that one time. Newegg didn't even try to contest (as far as I'm aware).
ryandrake 5y ago
Is it me, or are retailers and service providers suddenly getting less and less reasonable about returns and disputes? I’ve had to do more credit card chargebacks in the last three years than I had done in the previous 20 years. Fortunately, AMEX heavily sides with consumers against merchants, so this route has consistently worked for me. I’ve always considered a CC chargeback the tool of last resort, but companies are more and more slamming doors and dodging responsibility to the point where that tool has to be used all the time now.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Companies are betting that you'd prefer a continued tentative transactional relationship with them rather than ban yourself over a charge back. That's definitely how Airbnb works.

thewebcount 5y ago

Ugh. I had an equally infuriating transaction with them. I bought some obscure batteries for our wireless landline phone. I bought batteries for 2 handsets. They sent me the batteries for only 1 set. OK, mistakes happen. I contact them and tell them what happened. No problem, they say, they’ll send me the other set. An hour later my card is charged for another 2 sets of batteries, none of which ever ended up shipping to me. So I was charged for 4 sets of batteries and received 1 set. I’ve just stopped doing business with them now because it’s not worth my time or money to deal with them.

antisthenes 5y ago

Newegg had stellar reputation until around 2011-2012 and was the go-to for my hardware purchases. I think around that time they started doing shady things like what's described in the article, opened up a third-party marketplace of some kind (have to be careful not to order your stuff used from a 3rd party seller based in China), and generally went downhill as far as user-experience. Apparently they were acquired by a Chinese company in 2016. Their site also became much slower (why does it take 3 seconds for a sub-navigation to appear?) and now also sells a bunch of non-IT related crap. From now on, I tend to buy things at Best-Buy or even ebay.

blable2 5y ago
How has your eBay buying gone?

vmception 5y ago

> Gamers Nexus went public on his sizeable YouTube channel. As you might expect, this led to an immediate refund from Newegg top kek how predictable

consp 5y ago

Newegg isn't alone in shipping broken/used as new and doesn't just happen in the US. I ordered a usb-c dock recently at a medium sized hardware online store, got a used part with seals broken and replaced with the yellow anti-static stickers which look officialish to the uninitiated (so no accident here). After opening all protection plastic was missing as well as the usb-c cable. Fortunately for me this was in the EU and burden of proof is on them but shipping used/broken products off as new also happens here. One interesting thing is they also screwed up since they offered a discount to use the opened product after which my position was far stronger as I could reject any attempt to send me another product and I could just dissolve the purchase completely as it meant they had offered a compensation sum which I could rejectnif unreasonable and they always are. (There is a lot of difference in eu implementations per country about rights of dissolvement of purchase so watch out with your local laws.)

balls187 5y ago
I cut back on purchasing from Amazon for the same reason. One four separate occasions, items I purchased "New" appeared to be repackaged. It did not appear that the items had been used, but they had been removed from their original packaged state, and then repackaged.
akvadrako 5y ago
Compensation sums are not always unreasonable. I got €100 off a fridge because the delivery guys noticed a large scratch on the back.
- consp 5y ago
  True, but my experience is it usually is, they offered a 6% discount but wanted me to test the operation of the product as well which was impossible because of the missing cable and I had very little fate in it functioning as it should (which I why I called it unreasonable and they short of agreed). The customer service was quite good actually and they corrected it pretty nicely which is in stark contrast to the NewEgg example here. Nice exceptions are always welcome and worth mentioning.

astrange 5y ago

Here I thought Newegg was only guilty of wasting everyone's time by sending 10+ emails every time you ordered anything.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Jap2-0 5y ago

Perhaps one of the worst parts, which I haven't seen mentioned here yet: GamersNexus eventually managed to get the motherboard back, and took a look at it. Not only was it in terrible condition, there was an RMA sticker from Newegg to Gigabyte (the manufacturer). Gigabyte told Newegg it was broken and offered to repair it (for a price); Newegg refused, and then still sold it anyway. (Actually, looking again, this is mentioned in the article, but it bears emphasis.)

freeAgent 5y ago
Even crazier is that Gigabyte offered to repair it for $100, but Newegg refused and later sold it for $500.
- albio 5y ago
  We don't know Newegg's margins. Perhaps the board cost them $450 in the first place so paying $100 to repair it so that they could sell it for $500 wouldn't make sense.
  - mijoharas 5y ago
    I mean, it would make sense. You have a broken product. You may have already spent 450$ to get it, but that's sunk cost. You have 3 options: 1. you pay $100 dollars to have a working product (you can sell it for $500). 2. you can engage in fraud and sell this broken product. 3. you write off this loss. if you discount committing fraud, then the 100$ repair fee definitely makes sense.
    - freeAgent 5y ago
      Yes, unless they thought the probability that they'd be able to sell the board for $500 was less than 25%, it would have made sense to pay for the repair.

Laura69 5y ago

[dead]

JimmyRuska 5y ago

I bought a 14tb drive from newegg and received an empty box in the mail. Later I ordered a 2tb SSD from best buy and received a 500gb ssd. I wonder if there's just more warehouse theft from the volatile market/inflation. And more people trying to exploit systems of trust in delivery now that everyone orders online eg https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-customer-admits-290k-returns-scam-faces-20-years-jail-2021-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-customer-admits-290k-...

everybodyknows 5y ago
Try to get delivery to a nearby store, then insist the staff open it for inspection. Staples will do this.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  This is why I love the in person stores over Amazon/Newegg/purely online options. Ship to store maintains their liability the whole way, and it reduces the time I spend dealing with that nonsense.
hughrr 5y ago
I think it’s down to incompetent returns handling. People buy a 500GB SSD and a 2TB SSD at the same time and return the 500GB one in the 2TB box. No one checks the return properly and it goes back to the warehouse and is sent out again. I expect this doesn’t happen enough to affect margins enough to invest in doing something about it so it carries on.
- whoopdedo 5y ago
  The fraud can get pretty sophisticated. I came across a WD external hard drive that visually looked fine. Only when I plugged it in did I notice the size difference, and upon inspecting the SMART tables saw it was a much older Seagate brand drive with bad sectors. Somehow they had managed to swap the drive without making any marks on the case to indicate it had been disassembled. Either that or there's someone selling empty unassembled shells in new condition.

seqizz 5y ago

Could we do something about this general issue? Afaik after certain size, all companies only really care about your complaints either if you have enough followers/influence or if someone from HN/twitter can poke the "right" person within the organization.

kingcharles 5y ago
I poked the right person at my bank and they promised to help and then my account was terminated for contacting employees outside the support system.
- seqizz 5y ago
  That's why I told "some from HN/twitter", someone who has influence over the organization and/or its employees. It's _very_ different if I hunt the name of Newegg employee from linkedin and message her vs. a friend of her is mentioning "hey this guy has a problem with the company you work for".

MaxMoney 5y ago

qwertox 5y ago

EU's consumer protection laws put the burden of proving that the customer didn't receive a faulty item on the seller. This is valid up to one year after purchase. The seller must either fix or replace the item or reimburse the cost. Afterwards, during the course of an additional year, it is the customer who must prove that any damage on the item was there to begin with, so that a faulty item can be shipped back to the seller. This is a two year warranty which sellers must provide by law to the customer, regardless of any warranty terms the manufacturer attaches to its products. Usually the seller will want you to contact the manufacturer and ship the item to them directly in order to not to get involved, but in this case the consumer is accepting to be bound by the warranty of the manufacturer. If this was not successful, he can still send it to the seller. It is better to tell the seller that you won't be doing this, that you are going to use the seller's warranty, even if this may mean that the item will be gone for a longer amount of time because the seller may send it to the manufacturer first, to see if he can get the manufacturer to fix the item under the terms of his warranty, instead of directly replacing or reimbursing the cost of it.

Gwypaas 5y ago
We also have a 14 day return window, or more clearly you have to notify that you have the intention to return it within the window. During this window you are allowed to test the thing you purchased. This applies to any remote purchase. Returns does not have to be free but almost all stores offer free returns.
consp 5y ago
> This is valid up to one year after purchase. Up to has asterisks and differs per country, here (Netherlands) it's 6 months.
- qwertox 5y ago
  Are you sure? It was 6 months in Germany until 2021-12-31, but since this year it has been changed to 12 months and I thought that this came from a new EU-wide regulation. And the asterisks are in regards to "faulty" animals (stays at 6 months), and it's not applicable to B2B and C2C, at least in Germany. And some special rules regarding digital stuff like software.

hooby 5y ago

Newegg had a broken motherboard, already tried to RMA it themselves, then (likely accidentally) sold it as open box. I see no big problem with that first part at all. Seems like a honest accident - stuff like that can happen. No big deal, imho. But investigating the returned board - not seeing the RMA sticker on it, mis-classifying the damage, not checking their own records on the board - and claiming it was "customer damage" without any hard evidence... and not ever double-checking anything at all, after the customer repeatedly insisted they didn't even open the box... That's the real problem. It's almost impossibly sloppy to miss all that during any damage investigation, it's outright offensive to claim "customer damage" without having done any investigation to substantiate that claim, and it's complete madness, to spend a lot of time insisting on "customer damage" in discussions with the customer, without ever double-checking the board, the damage or the records. That's the reason why it's hard to believe this was a honest accident. Because if it was a honest accident... how could they have never noticed their accident, while "investigating" and refusing a refund multiple times over? With an RMA-sticker right on the board, dated to before the date of sale?

PaulKeeble 5y ago
It is a really incompetent fraud attempt, they could have just removed the RMA sticker before sending it back. Steve of GamersNexus would still have been able to get the history from the serial number with the motherboard manufacturer but it would have taken longer to work it out but it would also have removed the plausible deniability of an error I guess.
- freeAgent 5y ago
  My guess is that prior to this episode blowing up on YouTube, Steve was dealing with a single customer support/RMA person who was either extremely lazy or negligent (perhaps due to Newegg incentives) and there is no escalation path for regular people whom Newegg isn’t aware are YouTube stars. I doubt Newegg set out to defraud Steve or anyone else, but they put the structure and incentives in place that let it happen. And they probably know this happens to some extent due to the wealth of other complaints they’ve racked up. They choose to operate this way, though, so the bottom line is that their execs are ok with scamming a small percentage of their customers because it saves/makes money. That small percentage just happened to hit the wrong guy this time.

mdoms 5y ago

Buy locally. Stop supporting huge corporations. They are not your friends.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
I don't think I have a local option. I know one local PC repair shop that sells decade old prefabs for twice what they go for online. Maybe I could contact one of the few enterprise places, but I suspect I'd find a similar selection at a similar price or someone that would basically charge me more to buy off newegg. Building your own PC is too niche to support businesses anywhere but major metropolitan areas. I'm stuck picking what I think is the less bad option.
epinephrinios 5y ago
I don't know about that. Local shop price gauged me but Amazon refunded 100% me for each and every return I initiated (even when it was my mistake and I threw away the packaging).

lnxg33k1 5y ago

In Europe you can return items bought for 14 days no question asked, if you buy them online, but not in physical shops. On the other hand i once had the issue of a broken item i bought online and the shop saying that for the warranty i had to deal with the manufacturer. So since then even if i get a broken item, i return it with no reason other than i don't need it and reorder it again fixed (hopefully) But yeah i learned that shop always try to don't deal with stuff

Hamuko 5y ago
The 14-day return period should actually be for all kinds of distance purchases, not just online purchases. For example, I agreed to purchase my car over the phone with a dealership and I got a 14-day return period for my car.

chrysoprace 5y ago

This just goes to show that the US needs better consumer laws. This shit wouldn't fly in Australia, the ACCC would be on their asses immediately.

mistrial9 5y ago
s/laws/enforcement/

kabdib 5y ago

NewEgg tolerates serially fraudulent third party sellers. Until they clean that up, I won't be spending any more money on their site. At least I have a chance of recovering my money from Amazon (or a physical purchase from Best Buy).

ejb999 5y ago

I once bought a powerful IBM server many years ago at one of the online resellers/liquidators (not eBay) (actually bought 5 of them, but only one was IBM and was the only one that had the problem). Got the server, plugged it in connected power monitor/keyboards etc - wouldn't boot. Finally opened up the case and there was no memory, no video card and no motherboard and no drives at all - but there was a note from someone at IBM detailing that the server had been cannablized to use the parts for another machine (with all the required documentation of who took it, when and where the parts went etc.) When I contacted the company that sold it to me as 'new / surplus' - they said it wasn't their problem, it was a warranty issue I had to take up with IBM, and they washed their hands. After many failed attempts, I resorted to tracking down the officers of the company via public records and harassing each of them personally by phone in the evenings and weekends at their homes until they issued me a refund. I hadn't paid by CC, so couldn't just dispute the charges.

l-lousy 5y ago
Seems like small claims court may have been easier
- SoundsLikeAScam 5y ago
  The harassment route sounds like more fun.
  - tantalor 5y ago
    And creepy/illegal
    - ejb999 5y ago
      Please explain how it is illegal to call the person that sold you something defective, and refuses to refund your money?
      - stronglikedan 5y ago

nhoughto 5y ago

Is Newegg bad now? Historically heard good things, what happened? Private equity?

Liquix 5y ago
From Wikipedia: "In 2016, Liaison Interactive, a Chinese technology company, acquired a majority stake in Newegg in an investment deal." "In 2020, Newegg entered into a merger agreement with Lianlou Smart Limited wherein Newegg stockholders became majority owners of LLIT. Following the consummation of the merger, Newegg listed as a publicly traded company on Nasdaq in May 2021 as Newegg Commerce, Inc." Don't know anything about it, but the timeline seems about right
- nhoughto 5y ago
  Yeah right, that explains that then. My strongest memory of Newegg is this, which is quite the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10986167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10986167
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Newegg power search is good, but it does seem to have gone downhill in pretty much all other respects since Amazon became huge. I really want the power search but with a reputable vendor and don't really care if it isn't the cheapest option. Sadly I'm unaware of anywhere like that.

Ekaros 5y ago

Sometimes I wish companies could be executed. Under reasonable situations like this type of fraud. Three cases and everything is liquidated and sold. They don't deserve to live. Then again I'm also for removing LLC protections and throwing the stock holders in jail for this.

zwaps 5y ago

This is why consumer protection needs laws, but also laws that are effective. It isn't just about laws existing: In this case, it sure ain't legal for Newegg to sell a broken motherboard as working, and then decline the RMA. However, a user that ain't Steve from Gamer's Nexus will have no legal recourse that is effective. In the EU, this issue has been tackled explicitly: Within the first six month of a sale, the seller has to prove that the item was damaged by the customer. This burden of proof reversal essentially makes the law effective (in this instance). So would we get by relying on reputation? As long as the chance of getting a damaged item isn't overwhelming, people will still buy (see Amazon, which sells a huge amount of fake items without losing customers). It's easy to see that there's an mixed-strategy equilibrium here, and this equilibrium includes sellers sending out a certain percentage of broken or fake items to maximize profits. Sellers trying to maximize customer satisfaction is likely not the equilibrium. In other places in this thread we learned that customers are now being tracked as to what they return. Perhaps right now, this is for fraud prevention, sure. But if the data is there, it would be trivial for any good Data Science/ Economics team to maximize profits from sending out some semi-broken or used items here and there. All in all, we need effective customer protection. A similar argument holds for privacy. However, both the US and the EU have enacted consumer protection or privacy laws that are ineffective.

ciupicri 5y ago
According to what European Union law?
- zwaps 5y ago
  It is actually 1 year, not 6 months. I believe it's this one: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019L0771&from=DE https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... codified in Germany as §477 BGB (other countries accordingly) edit: Article 11 Burden of proof 1. Any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within one year of the time when the goods were delivered shall be presumed to have existed at the time when the goods were delivered, unless proved otherwise or unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or with the nature of the lack of conformity. This paragraph shall also apply to goods with digital elements. 2. Instead of the one-year period laid down in paragraph 1, Member States may maintain or introduce a period of two years from the time when the goods were delivered.

blable2 5y ago

Parent company is a mainland Chinese. Does that help?

dboreham 5y ago

Perhaps they hired a bunch of ex-Frys employees?

mindslight 5y ago
Nice connection! I remember walking through Fry's and seeing so many obviously damaged items sitting around waiting to be "sold", with no intact inventory in sight. Every display keyboard in the keyboard aisle was beat to shit and missing most of its keys. I'm sure everything looked fine in their inventory system, right up until it wasn't. And the ambiance certainly wasn't helped by the exit line waiting to be treated as suspected criminals, or the dirty look the security guard would give you when you opted to skip it. Loss prevention (including return fraud) is a difficult problem, but companies that respond by taking it out on legitimate customers aren't long for this world.

teddyh 5y ago

I have a theory on what happened at NewEgg with this motherboard: 1. GN gets motherboard from NewEgg, never opens the shipping box. 2. GN sends motherboard back to NewEgg, as allowed by NewEgg’s policy. 3. NewEgg decides to decline the RMA just because they can, claiming whatever excuse they are forced to make up when anyone asks. (NewEgg went back and forth regarding whether it was thermal paste on the motherboard or damaged pins on the CPU socket.) 4. GN knows they didn’t damage the motherboard, since they didn’t even open the shipping box, so they relate the story to their surprisingly large audience, and the whole story blows up. 5. NewEgg goes “Oops, bad publicity, we’d better refund them.” 6. GN wants the motherboard returned, too. 7. NewEgg goes “Oh crap. We said the motherboard was damaged, so if we actually send the real motherboard back, GN will see that it’s fine and know we lied. But GN said that they never opened the shipping box, so GN has never seen the motherboard. We can just send back any old motherboard which is actually damaged. Genius!”, and NewEgg picks a motherboard which is marked as damaged in their inventory system, and ships it to GN. 8. GN opens the newly-received motherboard box, and finds it indeed has damaged CPU socket pins, but also finds an RMA sticker from Gigabyte, with an RMA number on it. GN investigates, and finds out the whole history of that board, painting a very ugly picture of NewEgg if that was the motherboard which they were originally sold. NewEgg is now in a bind. They can’t admit to lying about blatantly refusing legitimate RMAs, nor can they admit to knowingly shipping back a fake damaged motherboard to GN. So what they will probably try to claim is that the damaged board was the one sold to GN, but that it was a mistake in inventory management. However, this story still would not explain why NewEgg’s returns department missed seeing the huge RMA sticker from Gigabyte, and why they sometimes claimed thermal paste on the motherboard, and sometimes damaged CPU socket pins. Unless, of course, NewEgg lied and shipped a fake damaged motherboard back to GN.

nickpeterson 5y ago
I haven’t researched but this feels quite plausible. I think it’s important to remember how few people could be involved in this decisions, there could possibly be just two people on the Newegg side making the majority of these calls.
- pc86 5y ago

codechad 5y ago

A friend of mine purchased a $2500 pre-built PC in November, which was delivered to him DOA. I ended up helping him troubleshoot it as Newegg made him jump through a bunch of BS before agreeing to RMA it for a new one. Disappointing if this is to become their standard operating procedure.

ravar 5y ago

I recently had an experience where I specifically ordered a part from the US for fast shipping. Something like a week or two later there was no activity on the shipping label, turned out it was being shipped from China. I called customer support and was told they would give me a refund. So I bought a replacement under the assumption the refund would process. The part mysteriously showed up the next day even though the shipping label said it was still in china. I eventually got my refund and returned the product to seller, but it took something like 4 hours of phone calls over 11 different calls and 3 weeks and threatening a charge back. I haven't shopped at newegg since then and have been using Amazon since. Not ideal but they are much more reasonable about returns.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bredren 5y ago

A major part of this is the initial return inspection. Apple has some problems right now with what seems like third party contractors claiming people are returning empty boxes, or damaged devices. Customers are having to appeal to customer service repeatedly and often things are fixed with no explanation. There’s a long thread on Mcarumors about the most recent iPhone upgrade program, for example. I think it is a mix of crooked third party device inspection companies and outsized incentives to reject warranty claims.

todd8 5y ago

I have ordered a number of computers directly from Apple and had them delivered without problem. My last big online Apple purchase (a new M1 MacBook Pro Max) was expensive and was scheduled for delivery weeks after I made the order. I followed it via the DHL tracking number online, and it finally showed up at local warehouse--it even showed it was scheduled for the next delivery cycle. I got a call in the evening from DHL asking me if I was satisfied with the delivery; I wasn't satisfied because it was never delivered. They apologized and then for several days kept telling me that they would find it and deliver it. They again called me to ask how the delivery went, and again I pointed out that they hadn't delivered it and didn't have my signature confirming delivery nor did they have a photo or even any tracking record showing that the expensive laptop had made it to my house. The happy ending is that Apple was great and canceled that order and simply put in a new order to replace it was delivered this time. During this process, it was possible to reach customer support for both DHL and Apple without difficulty. I wonder if Apple couldn't use it world-wide tracking network to track MacBooks that are in transit from China to mail order purchasers?

krnlpnc 5y ago

Handling returns is a huge PITA and expensive, but a company really has to just accept virtually any return in this day and age. Big box stores and Amazon have made the return process so painless and unquestioned that basic questions like "why are you returning this" can sour a customer relationship permanently. Even as a personal seller on ebay unquestioned refunds are the norm (and will be forced on upon you if you as a seller try to deny a return)

aliswe 5y ago

> PC retailer Newegg has found itself embroiled in a broad controversy, which could make you think twice before sending money to the company. Is this good writing?

zelon88 5y ago

I always buy expensive computer hardware in person. CPU's, Mobo's, Processors, GPU's, ect. It it's over $200; I'm buying it in person. I have no problem with the "open-box" or "clearance" sections, I just find that you get much less grief when you do certain things in person.

bloodguard 5y ago

We're literally not allowed to buy any server level components from Newegg because of shenanigans* like this. *getting RMAd drives sold as "new".

alkaloid 5y ago

Another video from a former NewEgg RMA inspector: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdxoewAdQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdxoewAdQw

JohnHaugeland 5y ago

i gave up on newegg years ago when i had to call them dozens of times for a single order, because they kept shipping me the wrong thing, or things missing parts, and hanging up on me when i called them and asked them to please ship me what i actually paid for it was months into the process that c level staff called me to apologize, and yet it continued for a month past that. the warehouse guy kept calling me over and over on my home phone in tones that i interpreted as threatening, sometimes five or six times in a row they wouldn't speak to me properly until i had my bank claw the money back i had been a customer of theirs for 15 years by then, and had never asked them for anything more serious than to check shipping availability. i guess that gets me no loyalty. never again. i had switched to them over price. a look at pc part picker shows that's no longer a good choice. every part i looked up had a better choice with a different vendor. live and learn.