Newegg: No, We'll Totally Take Returns After You Install Linux • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by kijin » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

sourc3 wrote: post #55

I had a similar experience with Newegg. I bought one of these shiny 13" uber-thin laptops from them about a year ago. The wireless card on that machine is useless (due to aluminum casing apparently). Exchanging with another model was almost impossible and I had to literally argue with a bunch of people on the phone to get the RMA. Not sure if I ever would buy anything from them again. Amazon on the other hand has bee…

Difficulty of getting exchanges/refunds is a common feature of virtually all discount electronics stores. Their prices are low because they don't need to absorb as many unconditional returns as big-box stores do. (RMA? What's an RMA? Just return it within 30 days if you don't like the shape of the shift key or something.)

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

#72

Post by streptomycin » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

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…

Your first link looks like a pretty bad situation. But there were similarly bad problems in the past too. My Dell laptop from 5 years ago had a hard drive that would basically go nuts under Linux, something to do with the timer telling it when to go into "sleep" mode not working so it switched back and forth constantly. If I hadn't noticed it sounded weird sometimes and taken action to fix it, it would have worn itself out within a year. It took a couple versions of Ubuntu before that bug got fixed by default.

And your second link basically seems to be "my somewhat nontypical graphics setup doesn't work in Linux", which is an age old problem.

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

#73

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

DanielStraight wrote: post #33

steve8918 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why? Why is "we made a mistake, we're offering to fix it" not enough? What more could they say? Do you want the name of the rep who made the mistake? Do you want them fired? Neither one of these seems remotely reasonable, but I'm not sure what else you could want. It was a simple human error. Customer service agent was wrong about the policy. It happens.

Could DanielStraight or anyone link to the Newegg apology he's quoting, it doesn't appear to be in the article or linked from it?

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

#74

Post by zbuc » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 7:58 PM UTC

Udo wrote: post #37

incongruity wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's an issue if you're sending in your stuff to RMA and you have to rely on your luck as to whether they exchange it or not. As a customer I would want to know what the policy actually is. This issue comes at a delicate time where a lot of people feel they are stripped of simple ownership rights for their digital devices, left completely at the mercy of huge companies who have a vested interest in being unhelpful.

The policy is listed and clear. They didn't honor the policy as it was written for whatever reason(bad/new support person?) and corrected the problem and upheld their policy, which doesn't forbid RMA if you install a different OS.

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

#75

Post by rndmize » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #47

papsosouid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why is "we made a mistake, we're offering to fix it" not enough? Because I don't want to have to waste my time trying to drum up media attention when it happens to me. >What more could they say? Explain how this mistake happened in the first place, and what they are doing to prevent it from happening again. It doesn't help me that I may be able to publicly shame them into giving me an RMA. I want to know that I will…

>It was a simple human error. Customer service agent was wrong about the policy How do you know this? Personally, I know this because they've never given me a word of trouble on an RMA when I've done this, and Newegg's record is so staggeringly positive that I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It feels like you're making a mountain out of a molehill here (it sort of reads like you have an axe to grind…

I agree. I've never had any problems with newegg, they were ahead of the game as far as shipping/order speeds for a long time, and the times I've had products that had problems they were replaced efficiently. Newegg has been the standard for computer gear since I started building machines, and I've never heard anything but praise for them.

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

#76

Post by praxulus » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 8:00 PM UTC

miahi wrote: post #18

TallGuyShort wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't mean they're devious. More likely, it means somebody with more authority and more intelligence simply didn't know about the problem until there was a public outcry.

It means that they don't have/follow clear procedures, so it's a matter of luck if your request is processed this or that way.

It's a matter of luck, but given that I've literally never heard of anybody else having a poor experience with Newegg, they still compare favorably against most of the alternatives.

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

#77

Post by SCdF » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 8:00 PM UTC

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 just feels like them squashing bad press. They have rectified this specific instance. There is nothing from the linked article that indicates that Joe Normal won't have these or similarly silly problems in the future.

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

#78

Post by astine » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 8:02 PM UTC

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.

The whole point of the Ultrabook is to act as a viable Windows competitor to the Macbook Air. Linux doesn't even enter the picture.

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

#79

Post by astine » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

x1 wrote: post #27

wulczer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For what it's worth, I have the same laptop running just fine with Linux (Ubuntu) as well. My one complaint is that the keyboard is horrible. The responsiveness is well below that of any other keyboard I've used.

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

#80

Post by dpifke » Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

This story somewhat mirrors a similar RMA experience I had with Newegg a year or two ago.

I bought several high-end Cisco access points. One needed to be RMA'd, so I boxed it up and sent it back.

The problem was that I inadvertently used the box from one of the working APs. The remaining boxes were discarded.

Newegg refused to take the RMA because the serial number on the box's label didn't match the serial number of the unit inside. All of the original parts were there, still sealed in the original plastic. The RMA'd unit's serial number was on the original invoice. The sticker on the box bore the same part number and was in every way identical to the three others that were shipped to me, but the box's serial number was apparently worth $600 and the RMA could not be processed without it. I escalated my issue through several levels of management, all of whom were insistent that there was nothing they could do.

I posted about my experience on a couple of reviews sites, and within 24 hours Newegg relented and agreed to accept the RMA, conditional on me removing my negative reviews.