News Newegg Apologizes for Customer Service Failings, Promises Change

[Admin]

Following a very public shaming by Gamers Nexus, Newegg says it has "put in place new policies" to smooth open-box motherboard and CPU returns.

Newegg Apologizes for Customer Service Failings, Promises Change : Read more

 

[Eximo]

Kind of left out the part where Newegg shipped a damaged product that they themselves had tried to RMA to the manufacturer unsuccessfully. Makes it so much worse than taking in a open box product from a previous return and just shipping it out damaged. They knew it was damaged, or should have, but it still wound up going out the door.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Ever since Newegg sold out ("merged" with Lianlou Smart Limited) in 2020, it's been downhill both in decent pricing, customer svc, and pretty much everything. The worse bits are re-packaging bad products/returns, and allowing 3rd party vendors & not supporting the buyer when they have problems with those 3rd parties.

I remember fondly the days when they would fight patent trolls. Now they're just another e-tailer riding the coattails of past performance.

 

[helper800]

Kind of left out the part where Newegg shipped a damaged product that they themselves had tried to RMA to the manufacturer unsuccessfully. Makes it so much worse than taking in a open box product from a previous return and just shipping it out damaged. They knew it was damaged, or should have, but it still wound up going out the door.

The problem Newegg has on their plate right now is that only they know how bad it is behind the scenes and all we, the consumers, can do is assume the worst about the claims levied against them. Will I still buy things from Newegg? Sure. Will I be much more cautious about their tomfoolery? Definitely.

 

[hotaru251]

can't trust a company that had a board for bent pins, refused to pay mere $100 to fix them, and then decided to resell board as a working product to another customer.

that is legit evil intention...not accidental.


i'd avoid using them for anythign that can be "broken" (i.e. nothign delicate).

and again these comapnies never actually mean they are sorry...it only comes after bad publicity.

 

[DRagor]

Nothing I've seen so far tells me it was an incident. It more looks like a company policy of trying to scam the customers. Just hoping it will not become a new standard of dealing with customers world-wide.

 

[Eximo]

I can only think of one scenario that makes sense to have something like this happen. They sent in a product for RMA and got it back. Thus assuming it was fixed. Chances are very good that the person that received it had nothing to do with sending it in the first place.

But that speaks to a huge problem of not inspecting RMA materials they receive.

Given the state of the motherboard box, it may also have been a completely inexperienced person, they tore the side of the box open rather than open it properly. Again this speaks poorly of hiring practices and/or training.

No matter what Newegg doesn't come out clean here. Either it was intentional or they have some seriously bad practices in their warehouse.

 

[bigdragon]

When you have to layer policies on top of existing policies, something internal is deeply broken. Newegg's handling of this situation doesn't make me confident they'll treat people without a massive following fairly. The only thing isolated about this incident is that it happened to someone with a megaphone.

Remember, Newegg is the company that scalps its GPU products through the Shuffle program.

 

[spongiemaster]

I can only think of one scenario that makes sense to have something like this happen. They sent in a product for RMA and got it back. Thus assuming it was fixed. Chances are very good that the person that received it had nothing to do with sending it in the first place.

But that speaks to a huge problem of not inspecting RMA materials they receive.

I agree, I don't think anyone at Newegg intentionally sent out a known bad board to a customer with the intention of making them eat the cost. There is no way anyone could believe that kind of policy would work without getting caught at some point. It's most likely that who ever accepted this return from gigabyte didn't know the repair had been rejected, and obviously never bothered to inspect the product and just dumped it on the resell shelf. That is in no uncertain terms not an excuse for this happening. This is 100% unacceptable and is a huge black eye for Newegg. I would never buy open box from an online vendor, and this pretty much guarantees I never will.

 

[helper800]

I agree, I don't think anyone at Newegg intentionally sent out a known bad board to a customer with the intention of making them eat the cost. There is no way anyone could believe that kind of policy would work without getting caught at some point. It's most likely that who ever accepted this return from gigabyte didn't know the repair had been rejected, and obviously never bothered to inspect the product and just dumped it on the resell shelf. That is in no uncertain terms not an excuse for this happening. This is 100% unacceptable and is a huge black eye for Newegg. I would never buy open box from on online vendor, and this pretty much guarantees I never will.

The only open box I will buy personally is from an instore purchase, like microcenter, where I can inspect the item before paying for it.

 

[Zerk2012]

In all fairness to Newegg all it would take to send out a damaged product that was returned from the manufacturer would be one person missing it.

All their returns get shipped to one location in California with probably a full pallet of returns to go through not just one motherboard.

Personally I have never had a single problem with them, don't buy open box, refurbished, or from a market place seller.

 

[Eximo]

When you have to layer policies on top of existing policies, something internal is deeply broken. Newegg's handling of this situation doesn't make me confident they'll treat people without a massive following fairly. The only thing isolated about this incident is that it happened to someone with a megaphone.

Remember, Newegg is the company that scalps its GPU products through the Shuffle program.

Yes and no. The bundles often include expensive products, but at their normal prices. I don't generally go for $400 motherboards or $250 chassis, but if that is what you were after... You might also note that a lot of the bundles are branded, so this could be pushed by the manufacturer to allocate cards to Newegg at all. The power supplies are annoying, particularly the ones that aren't good matches to the cards. Really expensive RGB water coolers that aren't selling because of the price.

People conflate launch price, MSRP, and market price regularly. No one should be seeing the launch prices, costs have increased and that was passed onto the customer. This is why so many vendors released new SKUs with new prices. That 'gouging' is the AIBs to keep their margins intact.

If we go by the launch MSRP for the 3070Ti for example ($600), Newegg has several between $800 and $900 depending on the model. All things considered, that isn't too bad. If the AIBs commonly listed their prices you could directly compare them, but I would bet they are around that $800 mark.

EVGA is usually the best rubric, they list their prices, and the cards that Newegg had today are an exact match (Though the RTX3050 itself is overpriced for its performance level)

Notable weird one today was an A520 board paired with an RTX3090...only $72 on top of $2130...
Most of the rest weren't too bad in terms of bundles.

I do note the MSI cards seem to be the most expensive.

 

[logainofhades]

They are only doing this because they got caught. They are a shady company that I will never do business with again.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_rKnK-uAM&t=1s

 

[Phaaze88]

Hopefully, they turn around for good, or someone else takes their place. We don't need Amazon getting any bigger.

 

[JamesJones44]

I stopped using NewEgg about 5 years ago when I ordered a few different components for a new build and the motherboard (new, not open box) arrived DoA and they told me that wasn't covered under their return policy. After that I swore I would never use them again and haven't since. Looks like nothing has changed since then so no reason to go back now.

 

[g-unit1111]

I will never in a million years buy open box anything. You typically get screwed out of money and the store you bought it from will laugh all the way to the bank.

I will also never buy from 3rd party "minion sellers" either - they are also extremely shady for multiple reasons.

 

[King_V]

I will never in a million years buy open box anything. You typically get screwed out of money and the store you bought it from will laugh all the way to the bank.

I will also never buy from 3rd party "minion sellers" either - they are also extremely shady for multiple reasons.

I'd say the distinction should be emphasized between "minion sellers" and legit sellers - I'm thinking where the 3rd party seller is actually the manufacturer of the product... I've bought from Aukey, and my GF has bought from Mpow, for Aukey and Mpow.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

Remember, Newegg is the company that scalps its GPU products through the Shuffle program

out of 6+ months of watching the Shuffle very closely i never saw a 3rd party vendor or anyone selling "scalped" price products.
everything on there was at MSRP.

the fact that they were bundling nicer products, that they knew customers wanted desperately to get their hands on, with expensive garbage nobody who has a clue would actually want is an entirely different situation.

 

[randomizer]

It's most likely that who ever accepted this return from gigabyte didn't know the repair had been rejected, and obviously never bothered to inspect the product and just dumped it on the resell shelf.

Even if this was the case, someone obviously inspected it after Steve returned it because they rejected his return. This person would have seen the existing label that says "CPU socket damaged", but they chose to ignore it.

 

[hotaru251]

They sent in a product for RMA and got it back. Thus assuming it was fixed.

in GN's video they called the MB manufacturer and got details into the past RMA (it was rma'd in july iirc) and it was gonna cost $100 to fix pins....newegg refused to pay it.

so no way they did not know as they intentionally denied paying for the repair.

someone obviously inspected it after Steve returned it because they rejected his return.

exactly.
they could of easily verified it (as steve himself did) as to if the prior bent pins was ever fixed or not.
They chose to just blame customer w/o any effort to find out truth.

 

[g-unit1111]

I'd say the distinction should be emphasized between "minion sellers" and legit sellers - I'm thinking where the 3rd party seller is actually the manufacturer of the product... I've bought from Aukey, and my GF has bought from Mpow, for Aukey and Mpow.

That's pretty rare though. Yeah I've bought Aukey headphones and I actually use them as my primary headset. And I've also bought Sabrent SSDs directly from Sabrent. For that there's there's things that are good. But what I'm talking about is when you see sellers with names like "Dealz 4 U" and "Meow Meow Shop" (actual seller name). That's when you really start getting into shady territory.

At the start of the pandemic I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo from Amazon. It arrived in a plain cardboard box with a broken USB adapter. I checked the seller - sure enough they were a minion seller with a shady name that just hawked open box products. Thankfully I returned it and was able to get a full refund and went to Best Buy and bought the same thing and it worked fine.

 

[King_V]

That's pretty rare though. Yeah I've bought Aukey headphones and I actually use them as my primary headset. And I've also bought Sabrent SSDs directly from Sabrent. For that there's there's things that are good. But what I'm talking about is when you see sellers with names like "Dealz 4 U" and "Meow Meow Shop" (actual seller name). That's when you really start getting into shady territory.

At the start of the pandemic I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo from Amazon. It arrived in a plain cardboard box with a broken USB adapter. I checked the seller - sure enough they were a minion seller with a shady name that just hawked open box products. Thankfully I returned it and was able to get a full refund and went to Best Buy and bought the same thing and it worked fine.

Yep, I'll definitely agree with you there. I usually avoid 3rd party . . and for Amazon and NewEgg, if they are an unfamiliar name, I check to see if they're located in the US (where I am), or in China.

Now, Aukey and Mpow are in China, but, I didn't see them as a risk because they're established brands. And, ugh, I have seen both those particular seller names you mentioned, and that was a big "nope" for me!

 

[USAFRet]

The only time I've been burned at Newegg was a refurb Asus Transformer, that came with bogus Win 10 Pro install license key.

Newegg wouldn't assist, nor would the reseller.

 

[JamesJones44]

Yep, I'll definitely agree with you there. I usually avoid 3rd party . . and for Amazon and NewEgg, if they are an unfamiliar name, I check to see if they're located in the US (where I am), or in China.

Now, Aukey and Mpow are in China, but, I didn't see them as a risk because they're established brands. And, ugh, I have seen both those particular seller names you mentioned, and that was a big "nope" for me!

Definitely want to check the sold by and shipped by tags on Amazon. Most of the time if it's not sold and shipped by Amazon I don't buy it.

 

[helper800]

I have been sold repackaged items from amazon before, luckily amazon has a great returns policy.