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Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

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Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#21

Post by steve8918 »

rfrey wrote: post #6

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them. Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any eve…

What they need is a post-mortem and a transparent analysis of the situation posted on their website, similar to what Heroku did with their outage. If they can show that the reason why this occurred was because of a break in a process, and this process was fixed, then I wouldn't have any problems with Newegg.

If the refund was a one-off situation to quiet the public outcry, and they don't care about fixing their general problem, then why would I purchase something from a company that I lack confidence in?

I regularly buy things from Amazon even if it's a little bit more expensive because I've been using them since their inception, and I have 100% complete confidence in them.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#22

Post by pcopley »

billswift wrote: post #8
rfrey wrote: post #6

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them. Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any eve…

There is a difference between "doing the right thing" because it is the right thing and doing it because the victim screamed loud enough. Some people will no doubt go back to using them, and more probably will if they are consistent about doing the right thing.

Doing the wrong thing (completely ignoring Norma) Clearly Newegg is in one of the middle categories. Personally, I think as long as customers are taken care of it doesn't so much matter what the decision making behind it is.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#23

Post by bitwize »

slurgfest wrote: post #7
x1 wrote: post #3

(I posted this earlier... this is a little off topic) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook#Suspend http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1774661 First off, I'm glad newegg will accept returns but we've got a HUGE problem in the linux community with these newer laptops. The problem isn't that newegg needs to accept our laptops but why these newer laptops are getting bricked by linux! I want an ultrabook. I…

I don't think Ubuntu has ever claimed perfect support for those and I don't understand why Asus is not being held to the mat for not doing basic QA with at least one Linux distribution. Anyway, when you buy hardware, do not just buy whatever looks nice but buy something confirmed to work for your use cases. If that use case is running OS X, get something which supports OS X. And same for Linux, too.

I don't understand why Asus is not being held to the mat for not doing basic QA with at least one Linux distribution.

Because there's no money in it.

A PC runs Windows. That's practically the definition of a PC. They're selling into a market that's like 90% Windows -- more like 99% if you filter out all the Macs. Their margins are razor thin. They can either do QA with Windows only at a certain cost x, or they can do QA with Windows and Linux at cost 2x and see almost no additional money for it.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#24

Post by wulczer »

x1 wrote: post #3

(I posted this earlier... this is a little off topic) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook#Suspend http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1774661 First off, I'm glad newegg will accept returns but we've got a HUGE problem in the linux community with these newer laptops. The problem isn't that newegg needs to accept our laptops but why these newer laptops are getting bricked by linux! I want an ultrabook. I…

It didn't work out of the box, but I have a UX31E and it works flawlessly now (meaning: it behaves exactly how I want it to, all peripherals work), with Debian testing.

I tend to treat the effort of making a new laptop work perfectly with a Linux distro as a one-off cost. If you're using the machine 10 hours a day for two years, spending three days on making it work right is barely noticeable.

In that vein, a friend of mine bought a Mac and spent a similar amount of time making it work flawlessly. That included buying software that minimises and tiles windows, figuring out that if you resume it with a large screen plugged it, the DPI will change and fonts on the laptop display will look weird and first googling and then working around this:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3336420?start=0&tst...

I'm sure someone with a new Windows laptop would spend a similar amount of time to make it work just right.

There are no silver bullets.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#25

Post by MartinCron »

rfrey wrote: post #6

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them. Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any eve…

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age, or I'm lucky enough to only deal with decent retailers, but I've been in quite a few scenarios lately where the company had a choice to make me either a spiteful vocal detractor or a customer-for-life and they have made the customer-for-life choice.

The fact that it's hard to tell if the person you're screwing out of a refund has a few thousand twitter followers (I sure as hell don't) might be creating the right kind of pressure for customer service.

Newegg, you're still in the "customer-for-life" group.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#26

Post by ck2 »

Newegg has always treated me right, even paid to ship a defective monitor back and shipped me a new one, zero hassle.

They may not be amazon-level customer service but they are up there.

If you get the wrong customer service person on the wrong day, anyone can have a bad experience.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#27

Post by x1 »

wulczer wrote: post #24
x1 wrote: post #3

(I posted this earlier... this is a little off topic) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook#Suspend http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1774661 First off, I'm glad newegg will accept returns but we've got a HUGE problem in the linux community with these newer laptops. The problem isn't that newegg needs to accept our laptops but why these newer laptops are getting bricked by linux! I want an ultrabook. I…

It didn't work out of the box, but I have a UX31E and it works flawlessly now (meaning: it behaves exactly how I want it to, all peripherals work), with Debian testing. I tend to treat the effort of making a new laptop work perfectly with a Linux distro as a one-off cost. If you're using the machine 10 hours a day for two years, spending three days on making it work right is barely noticeable. In that vein, a friend…

Fair point. On reflection my biggest problem isn't just tinkering, I don't mind that, but the fact that now when it fails it can fail HARD. That or it just wont have something supported (multi-touch, graphics, webcam)

It's good to know you got your zenbook working, I really like the keyboard and size on that laptop but the fact that I could brick it just makes me uncomfortable.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#28

Post by Symmetry »

xxiao wrote: post #20

could it be somehow the linux display driver damaged that screen? while I use linux but I do think newegg has a point. A policy is a policy and newegg can not verify all those 100+ linux distro on the market.

Generally speaking you don't want a screen to break no matter what signals you put into it. It would really suck if a virus could actually destroy your computer.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#29

Post by r00fus »

debacle wrote: post #9
rfrey wrote: post #6

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them. Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any eve…

It's not helpful to provide incentives to companies who only own up to their mistakes after a brutal public shaming.

No, but it's good to recognize they did the right thing eventually. This isn't "providing an incentive", it's showing them that good behavior is expected.

Anyone who has raised kids understands this basic psychology.

Re: Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux

#30

Post by incongruity »

steve8918 wrote: post #21
rfrey wrote: post #6

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them. Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any eve…

What they need is a post-mortem and a transparent analysis of the situation posted on their website, similar to what Heroku did with their outage. If they can show that the reason why this occurred was because of a break in a process, and this process was fixed, then I wouldn't have any problems with Newegg. If the refund was a one-off situation to quiet the public outcry, and they don't care about fixing their gener…

Are you sure it's a "general problem"?

Just as much as fixes can be "one-off"s, so can problems. Is there a repeated pattern that I missed? If not, I'm not quite sure how one makes the leap to the generalization of this problem.

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