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Newegg refuses to repair defective laptop because user installed Linux
- dbingham 14y agoAnd so the day has come in which Newegg has become just another internet retailer.
- sciurus 14y agoTheir site has been steadily getting more annoying to use for a while now. It feels like they want to be Amazon.
- sliverstorm 14y agoWho wouldn't?
- ceejayoz 14y agoWanting to be and being able to be are vastly different things. Trying to be Amazon when that's not a feasible goal is a bad idea.
- sciurus 14y agoThere's money to be made in providing the best experience for purchasing computer equipment, which is what Newegg used to provide. Newegg has lost the focus necessary to maintain that experience; e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA01200095Y0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA01200095...
- DanBC 14y agoBut the good bits of Amazon are the customer service and product delivery. The Amazon website is - and I say this gently for any Amazon workers reading - fucking awful, a hateful experience. (In the UK.)
- philwelch 14y agoYou should hope to be better than Amazon.
- earl 14y agoYeah, except amazon has always had amazing customer service, at least for me. That said, I doubt I've spent less than $2k per year there any of the last 5 years since with prime amazon became the source of everything we used to buy at target.
- pbreit 14y agoSeems like the opposite, at least as far as returns go. See this recent example of a customer's experience returning an item to Amazon: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4091840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4091840 Also, I think few would agree with you that Amazon is annoying to use or that wanting to be like Amazon is a "bad thing".
- RegEx 14y agoTheir prices seem far less competitive in comparison to other retailers than they were about two years ago.
- betterth 14y agoI think the kind of price disparity they enjoyed was bound to dry up. There's only so much innovation and undercutting a retailer can do before they're just not profitting any more. My local brick and mortar computer store checks most of their prices against Newegg regularly, has a "will match anything on newegg 100%" all over their ads and in their store, etc. I don't use Newegg because I can get the same thing in 30 minutes instead of 3 days, without paying S+H, at (or better than) the NewEgg price. Now, if y'all want a retailer who is KILLING IT on accessories and wires and offering zomg-level discounts on quality goods: www.monoprice.com is your home!
- lysol 14y agoIt doesn't matter who the vendor is, extended warranties from the retailer are braindead.
- Yarnage 14y agoIt was an RMA, not an extended warranty repair. But I agree with you anyway.
- jtchang 14y agoFor what it is worth I actually contacted newegg at http://help.newegg.com/app/ask/site/US/category/74 http://help.newegg.com/app/ask/site/US/category/74 and asked them what they thought. I'm a big fan of newegg and hope they continue to bring competition to amazon. I am hoping this is just a small oversight and it will be corrected shortly.
- joering2 14y agoI stopped being their fan when their return policies changed. Now there is something called "Restocking fee" and I have to pay for shipping?? I don't think so. I use Newegg to research products but once I find what I am looking for, I search for the model on Amazon and end up purchasing there, knowing return policy is much better for customers.
- Yarnage 14y agoYeah I was surprised by those changes as well when I had to return something. The CSR I spoke to apologized then sent me a prepaid label and charged me no restocking fee. So great customer service but the charges almost seem arbitrary when the CSR can just apologize and wipe them out...
- eternalban 14y ago> So great customer service but the charges almost seem arbitrary when the CSR can just apologize and wipe them out... Only a fraction of total customers has your experience, so the cost -- marginal if only for a minor fraction prohibitive if for majority of users -- of keeping you happy as a customer is marginal. But they can't do that for everyone.
- gav 14y agoFrom their FAQ: Does Newegg.com pay the return shipping cost for defective merchandise? No, Newegg.com does not pay the return shipping cost for defective merchandise. We are not responsible for product defects, because we do not manufacture the products we carry. However I had the same experience as you when trying to return a defective mouse: Me: I'm not going to pay return shipping. CSR: Ok, we'll send you a shipping label. It's confusing and arbitrary. What's worse is that you have to return it to their CA facility and wait a couple of days for them to decide to ship out a replacement, which is a two week turn around time for customers on the east coast. Overall Newegg's level of price competitiveness and service is slipping; I see no reason to order from them unless avoiding the sales tax on that order is worth it.
- evilbit 14y agoNewegg: party like it's 1999...
- evilbit 14y agodownvoters clearly haven't been linux users cca 1999...
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoIs it at all possible that Linux Mint in some way collided with a driver or some other critical infrastructure?
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoMy thought exactly. I'm kinda curious as to what harm linux floffin off can do. Don't get me wrong, I still use and love Linux, but there is always a problem with linux, so far it's always in software/doesn't affect hardware, but I guess it's possible to do damage to the hardware?
- slurgfest 14y agoI have never heard of the mere act of installing Linux damaging any hardware, ever. I would like to hear substantiation before I start believing that. Back in the day you could hose your CRT by trying to set a graphics mode it didn't support, but that would take a special effort to do.
- tedunangst 14y agohttp://lwn.net/Articles/300202/ http://lwn.net/Articles/300202/ Can't find the followup that explains the actual bug, but it had to do with the kernel unmapping some unneeded memory and ...blah... and whacking random garbage into the eeprom of the network card. All you had to do was boot linux once and your network card would never work again, at least until you went to the trouble of flashing it.
- slurgfest 14y agoThe post is titled "e1000e and the joy of development kernels" This is hardly a matter of 'improper config'! Why on EARTH are you running DEVELOPMENT KERNELS (not just talking about newish kernels) on your bare hardware? Is that something normal users would do? Why? How would they even acquire and install them? How do you expect to ensure that bleeding edge open source development drivers cannot be used to do stupid things? Some kind of legal prohibition on making any drivers until you have been vetted by some central committee?
- georgemcbay 14y agoTangential to this story but anecdotally I've been hearing of lots of situations recently where newish laptops have had screen problems soon after purchase and the brands involved have varied (ASUS, Lenovo, Acer, etc). And by "screen problems", I mean electrical ones either with the panel itself or with the controller, resulting most often in parts of the screen or the entire screen dancing towards full white. I wonder if there is some shared panel manufacturer who has been dropping the ball lately?
- Yarnage 14y agoIt's probably just a coincidence. Most electronics have a manufacturing failure rate so these things can happen.
- excuse-me 14y agoAnd a screen problem is pretty much obvious to anyone straight away. Intermittent problems on anything else will either not be noticed by ordinary users or blamed on Windows!
- orbitingpluto 14y agoThis is NewEgg's chance to either gain or lose 1% of its customer base. Since margins are so tight on computers, and NewEgg costs for software support will decline, isn't this a no-brainer from a business perspective?
- motoford 14y agoI think their customer base of people who use Linux, might want to use Linux, or who are just plain disgusted by this behaviour is way way more than 1%. Remember that the people who will be upset by this (techies) are the same ones who put NewEgg on the map to start with.
- systematical 14y agoThis is not the community they want to alienate.
- kenrikm 14y agoTrue, and it just goes to show you need to treat ALL of your customers with respect because you never know who are the ones who can Hurt or Help your business.
- lowrydin9 14y agoAgreed. Surprising response from Newegg - we've had no problem returning machines that were defective here at work. Filing a chargeback appears to be the best solution in this case.
- kenrikm 14y agoI have had bad customer service from NewEgg in the past I'm not surprised by this. Now I buy almost everything off Amazon and only go to Newegg for stuff that can't be DOA (cables and such)
- dsr_ 14y agoCables can certainly be DOA. Miswired jacks, broken strands... these things happen.
- adrr 14y agoWhen wiring our datacenter, buying bulk ethernet cables, you'll find a bad cable every 100 or so cables. Still beats the failure rate of making cables yourself.
- wccrawford 14y agoOn the other hand, if I'm wiring them myself, I can just cut the end off and try again, since I've got a whole pile of ends right there, and the equipment to do it. If I'm relying on the bought cables, it could be quite painful to re-run the wire.
- inportb 14y agoBut that doesn't preclude the possibility of keeping a box of jacks and a crimp tool, just in case.
- sciurus 14y agoI would definitely shop monoprice over newegg for cables.
- teach 14y agoNot that Newegg sells them, but I've had bad luck with Monoprice's analog cables (1/4" or XLR).
- jemfinch 14y agoFile a chargeback. Show your credit card company the return policy and how you didn't violate it, and you will get your money back. This is precisely why you should always pay with a credit card online.
- ZanderEarth32 14y agoI am not to familiar with credit cards and their fraud or return policies. Why exactly is it easier to refute charges with a credit card, more so than a debt card?
- 3pt14159 14y agoBecause it is part of the agreement with Visa. You purchased something that came with an agreement, they didn't hold up their end so you can reverse the transaction. End of story.
- danielweber 14y agoIt kind of sucks from the vendor side. But, yes, there's a lot of power to the consumer. Please be sure you legitimately feel that Newegg violated their return policy before exercising this power.
- NLips 14y agoPartly because it just is. Partly it is because with a debit card you would have to fight to get your money back whereas with a credit card the provider would have to fight either you or the retailer to get their money back if there is a dispute.
- cmelbye 14y agoDebit cards carry reversal rights as well - at least in the United States. It's simply a mechanism to protect credit and debit card holders against technical issues, quality issues, fraud, etc.
- jemfinch 14y ago
- tibbon 14y agoI had a really bad experience in the past with Newegg and their lower levels of customer service. At one point I documented and blogged it, but that blog is no longer up unfortunately. Anyway, the good news is that once I got in touch with someone higher up the chain they were like, "That never should have happened" and worked to make it right. It just took a ton of kicking and screaming to get there, which really wasn't worth it on my part, but in the end, they did the right thing. One thing I'm seeing more and more is that companies are holding back their lower tier support employees from actually being helpful. For example, have you ever had one of those "Instant Online Chat Support" things help you out? No, they are always so unempowered its not even funny.
- beambot 14y agoI've used an "Instant Online Chat Support" for TurboTax (answering questions) and at my auto repair company (to schedule appointments). Worked fine for me. When done well, it can be vastly superior to phoning in. But like you said... the people on the other side need to be empowered.
- Lockyy 14y agoI've used Typefrag's livechat feature and it was very useful for finding out information about why my ventrilo server was down and when it'd be back up. Which is what instant connection services are for in my opinion, contacting to ask questions and get answer immediately not to get things sorted at a level that would require any sort of changes.
- thebigshane 14y agoI used the online chat support for an Asus laptop whose monitor went out after a few months. I kept asking if this was a human or a machine because it felt incredibly automated. But in the end, it was very helpful and I got the information I needed to ship the laptop on their dime and got the laptop back a week or two later and things were great.
- dllthomas 14y agoWhat gets me is "system cannot be resold as received" - I mean, sure, a customer should wipe their data off the disk... but would NewEgg really ship a system to a new customer without doing a fresh install of the OS if it was running Windows?
- noobiscus 14y agoDon't know about NewEgg, but I have personally received a windows PC from Staples (UK) that already had a user account for 'dave' on it. I am not a Dave.
- mrwud 14y agoCouldn't she just reinstall windows and send it back?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoSure, if she wanted to go through the hassle, and paying the shipping. Not to mention, the laptop may not have come with an installation disk.
- grecy 14y agoThat would depend on how dead the machine is. Let's assume we're talking about a dead screen, motherboard or power supply.... it's going to be hard to re-install windows then.
- danielweber 14y agoYou could get a second hard drive. Pull the first one out, put the second one in, do whatever you want. When/if it's time to return, put the first drive back in. They'll wonder why you've barely used it but whatever. I did this when laptops were $1500. Now that they are $400 it's usually not worth the bother.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoThe purchaser would have good reason to zero out the drive before return. That would protect personal data and coincidentally not leak any additional usage info to the supplier.
- singlow 14y agoI am a Linux user, and I have wrecked laptops with it before. It is easy to overheat or otherwise abuse a laptop by having improper configs. For example, I had a battery become unusable because Linux often failed to sleep when the lid was closed because some dialog box was blocking. It would run in the bag with no ventilation when I didn't realize it until the battery drained and it would fail to shutdown until the hardware fail-safes took over and I realized my backpack was too hot to hold. Did this a few times and the last time, the battery wouldn't charge anymore. After getting a new battery I became very conscientious about whether it actually was asleep before I put it in the bag. I have had this happen in Windows before as well, in one case it would wake up if I forgot to turn off my Bluetooth mouse when I put it away. Since it was already closed, there was no trigger to go back to sleep so it would run itself dead in the bag and eventually the plastic near a hot component melted. Turns out there is an option in the Windows device manager to tell it not to wake on Bluetooth that prevents this. However a defect in the factory-installed operating system that causes failure is something you have to warranty. A defect in the user-installed operating system is not. However, I have no idea how they could trace the problem to the operating system. Not sure how they would ever know that Linux is installed. Any good Linux user would wipe the hard disk before returning a computer to the manufacturer for repair :)
- jeremyarussell 14y agoI've seen that happen with windows as well. Opened program wants to close, but needs to save or some such, laptop overheats. Sometimes it's just a lesson learned, I wouldn't say it was Linux that wrecked the laptops though. I do find it interesting that newegg isn't using a CD loaded testing suite anyways, using windows PE or a DOS based environment. (like Eurosoft's PC-Check software.) There's also the fact that it should take about, ten to fifteen minutes just to slip the hard drive out, hook it to an imaging workstation, and image the default OS over to it. (My imaging station takes 5 - 10 minutes). To the best of my understanding it's pretty much assumed that when you send stuff in you are waiving your right to have the same data sent back anyways.
- reddit_clone 14y agoI have had this happen when I was running a XP mode virtual machine in a Windows 7 laptop. The Virtual Machine prevented the main OS from going to sleep. It was surprising my backpack didn't catch on fire.
- excuse-me 14y agoI bought 10 identical Shuttle PCs from newegg. One was DoA and I returned it with an RMA - they sent it straight back to me because I had returned it in the wrong box. The serial # on the machine didn't match the barcode on the box! They seriously expect you to keep the individual box for every unit? Or are they just a scam that try and stop you every returning anything? Anyway - haven't bought anything from them since.
- tzs 14y agoIf you had said you were returning a two year old unit for warranty repair, and it was denied because you did not use the original box, I would sympathize with you. Expecting you to keep all your boxes for years would clearly be ridiculous. But for a DoA unit? You couldn't keep the box for a few hours or days? Seriously?
- excuse-me 14y agoI kept one box and the styrofoam in case I had to return a unit. I remember Sun once sold mini box versions of their workstations (rather than the original pizza box) - their claim was that at the square footage cost of a Wall St trading floor the machines would pay for themselves in 'n' years. Then there was a note on the pallet sized box that the machine + 19"CRT came in - saying that you had to keep it for warranty returns!
- thereallurch 14y agoPicture this: You bought 10 of something, all identical items (minus some sn on the box). You throw away the packaging material for 8 or 9 of the 10 items (remember, it's all identical). You then have a device DOA/fail that isnt the EXACT packaging you saved. What difference would it make to newegg take the item out of the box and scan the barcode inside? A little customer service goes a long way.
- invisiblecow 14y agoI don't buy at newegg or have any other incentive to side with them but... in my past experiences, Linux didn't really have the most compatible hardware drivers. Am I the only one to think that?
- dllthomas 14y agoIs there anything in the returns policy to prevent you installing your own custom drivers under Windows? From the quoted bit, it didn't look like it... If that's okay, why shouldn't installing Linux be okay?
- andrewcooke 14y agothis is a thinkpad. they've always been the top-end linux hardware of choice. i've had thinkpads for decades with linux. as long as you select the right wireless card there are no issues - distros even have special packages for thinkpad compatability.
- sigkill 14y agoNot just that, in fact, a guy from Canonical commented on reddit saying that this specific model was certified for ubuntu.
- archangel_one 14y agoIt's not relevant; the owner tested it with a Windows install on a USB stick to ensure Linux wasn't the issue. And while Linux doesn't always have the most compatible drivers, I've never seen them fail in that kind of way. Anyway, the problem here is that Newegg are refusing to replace it simply because of the presence of Linux; by far the most likely explanation is that the hardware really is defective and Linux isn't at fault.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- motoford 14y agoNewEgg has really lost their way over the past 2 or 3 years. I have gone from don't even check anywhere else to checking NewEgg last. Amazon almost always beats them on price now.
- johnchristopher 14y agoI always wonder wether an incorrectly configured ubuntu kernel or drivers could actually damage modern computers. I remember viruses from the 80's that supposedly could kill the machine by asking the bios to increase and decrease voltages or hdd spin in such a way it would deal physical damages to the machine. Might have been a computer legend though. Note: When returning laptop, desktop, smartphone or anything I always tend to be anal retentive and put everything back in place, including software and OS so there are no arguing wether the problem is software or hardware (obviously I only need to send back hardware defective devices).
- bhudman 14y agoNewegg used to be awesome - I have spent thousands in the last 6 years with them, but their customer service is terrible. Their customer service pretty much reads a script and keep repeating the same thing. I think all companies have a life cycle: 1. New company, so customer is treated well/ 2. Company grows and becomes successful 3. Company needs to show ever increasing profits. Starts taking shortcuts to save money, and starts to ignore what made them great in the first place.
- zyce 14y agoThe policy quoted states you can't return it even if it is opened. "The following conditions are not acceptable for return, and will result in the merchandise being returned to you: Any desktop PC, notebook or tablet PC that has been opened"
- AGrinsPaul 14y agoIf you would like to petition Dell to start to include Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL on all of their machines and stop the whole "Dell Recommends Windows 7" monopoly cartel join this idea on ideastorm and let's try to get our voices heard... Dell Ideastorm Multiboot Linux: http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?id=0877000000006ixAAA&v=1339437474096 http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?id=0877000000006ixAAA... Dell Linux & Windows on all Laptops/Desktops: http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?Id=087700000008iglAAA&v=1339424370822 http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?Id=087700000008iglAAA... Dell Sputnik Ubuntu Laptop: http://www.ideastorm.com/Idea2SessionIdea?v=1339521444920&id=a017000000hIx3bAAC http://www.ideastorm.com/Idea2SessionIdea?v=1339521444920...
- shmerl 14y agoThey need to put presser on Newegg managers. It's simply ridiculous.
- sigmaxipi 14y agoNote that the NewEgg's refusal is based on the original OS being missing rather than a new OS being installed according to that email. My guess is that the user formatted the HD before installing Linux. Most OEM PCs now come with a recovery partition which is used to perform a factory reset. If the user erased this partition, then NewEgg would be unable to reset the device to its initial state for testing. It would be similar to the user returning the device by not returning important CDs.
- uslic001 14y agoI now try to buy all my electronics at Amazon instead of NewEgg or TigerDirect due to the poor return policies at Newegg and TigerDirect with DOA items. NewEgg used to be better than it is now but they have gone downhill in the past two years. TigerDirect has always had poor return policies.
- rrrazdan 14y agoI have had HP India refuse servicing my laptop (its speakers went kaput) because I had VLC installed. According to them, greater than 100% sound amplification in VLC was to blame.
- mayneack 14y agoLooks like they've fixed this specific problem. http://consumerist.com/2012/06/newegg-no-well-totally-take-returns-after-you-install-linux.html http://consumerist.com/2012/06/newegg-no-well-totally-take-r...