TR Forums

So this has come up a few times over the years, but it seems to be becoming more and more frequent. Half the recent items I have received were apparent restocks sold as new. They had finger prints on them, seals were out of place and/or they had slightly deteriorated performance (power supply). Some of which died shortly there after. I had to RMA two graphics cards and a power supply.

Newegg has a restocking fee, but they definitely aren't selling this stuff at a discount. Anyone else had similar experiences? This really is uncouth for such a big retailer, which you expect a great experience from, has a reputation to uphold, and you pay a bit extra for these services in a lot of cases. Is it because they're so big they think they can do this and no one will say anything? I've also noticed similar notes in reviews popping up on their site.

I've had good luck with their open-box items but the price is always lower to compensate. If I got a used item as new I'd be livid.

I've seen it at Amazon and TigerDirect. Recently I purchased a set of "new" Sennheiser Momentum headphones from Amazon that had clearly been unboxed before. I'm talking the "if this seal is broken" tape being broken and taped over type of issue. Similarly I bought a video card from TigerDirect whose items like the driver disk, guide, etc had been removed from the paper packet and the packet was empty...

So.... not sure what to tell you. Seems like a common practice to me. (In the headphone instance Amazon returned, on the video card I didn't bother.)

Give 'em a nice one-egg review explaining the issue?

Newegg has been looking more and more seedy as the days go by. That said, I don't think a bad review is going far enough. I would demand a refund for any used item, regardless. If they want to sell an item as refurbished that's fine, but don't try to pass it off as new, and ask new item prices.

As Waco mentioned, this is the kind of stuff that's supposed to go into the discounted "open box" category. Sounds like their RMA department isn't doing it's job correctly. I would call them.

The Egg wrote:

Newegg has been looking more and more seedy as the days go by. That said, I don't think a bad review is going far enough. I would demand a refund for any used item, regardless. If they want to sell an item as refurbished that's fine, but don't try to pass it off as new, and ask new item prices.

Be careful, the have a 15% restocking fee if you return anything. Sigh.

Reminds me of the Newegg CPU shipments which had fake CPU's in the box. Just chunks of metal that looked like a CPU. Good times!

Duct Tape Dude wrote:

The Egg wrote:

Newegg has been looking more and more seedy as the days go by. That said, I don't think a bad review is going far enough. I would demand a refund for any used item, regardless. If they want to sell an item as refurbished that's fine, but don't try to pass it off as new, and ask new item prices.

Be careful, the have a 15% restocking fee if you return anything. Sigh.

Cannot say anything about your state's consumer protection laws, but those in my state and in California where NewEgg is based both say the original sales contract is bogused if I was sold used as new. I dunno, I build custom PCs in my spare time for friends and friends of friends and I virtually always buy from NewEgg - never had an opened item that was BOUGHT as a discounted opened item. I've gotten a few that obviously got cut out a box or pallet with a knife and got hit by the knife, but they had little NewEgg "inspection" stickers on them. Gotten the same with Amazon. I have gotten things that were not sold by Amazon but ordered off of Amazon that were used, but Amazon had no problem issueing a return with no cost to me (shipping either.)

mnecaise wrote:

As Waco mentioned, this is the kind of stuff that's supposed to go into the discounted "open box" category. Sounds like their RMA department isn't doing it's job correctly. I would call them.

This. Just call them and get it fixed, I've never been burned by actually talking to someone as opposed to putting up "reviews" that have nothing to do with the product itself.

If you purchased the item with a credit card, you've probably got protection through your card issuer, even if the e-tailer doesn't want to give you a full refund.

Waco wrote:

This. Just call them and get it fixed, I've never been burned by actually talking to someone as opposed to putting up "reviews" that have nothing to do with the product itself.

Agreed, one-egg rants don't help anyone and make it harder to tell if a given component has manufacturing problems. Contact support and explain the situation, hopefully they'll ship a replacement especially if you have photos that it was obviously repackaged. If they don't help, do what JAE suggests: get the credit card company involved and declare war.