Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus recently purchased a Gigabyte motherboard from Newegg and opted for expedited shipping as he needed it quickly for a content piece. By the time it arrived, however, he had already sourced a different board and no longer needed the unit from Newegg so it was returned. Something Burke didn’t notice when he placed the initial order was the fact it was an open box item, meaning it had been returned by someone else and deemed resellable by Newegg. Burke said he never opened the shipping box the board came in, much less its retail box. He submitted an RMA, shipped the package back and waited. Newegg eventually e-mailed Burke and said the RMA was rejected due to bent pins on the CPU socket. Burke tried to resolve the matter through traditional customer support channels, but was unable to make any headway. It wasn’t until he used his platform on Twitter that Newegg suddenly became responsive and wanted to rectify the situation. Gamers Nexus has more than 192,000 followers on Twitter and 1.58 million subscribers on YouTube. Newegg in a recent post on Twitter said they have become aware that a small number of returns may not have been thoroughly inspected before being routed for returns, liquidations, or e-waste recycling, and thus were accidentally resold as open box merchandise. Newegg said these were unintentional process errors and isolated incidents, adding that they’ve already changed their internal procedures to manage product returns. The company also said it is reaching out to customers that may have been affected by these issues. In a follow-up video, Burke said Newegg refunded the purchase and sent him back the busted motherboard. I’m not sure why they did both as it seems like a simple refund would have sufficed in this situation. Incredibly enough, the board had an RMA sticker affixed from Gigabyte, meaning Newegg had sent the board to RMA to diagnose what was wrong with it. Burke called Gigabyte and learned they received the board in July 2021, offered to fix the CPU socket for $100, but noted that Newegg declined and had the board sent back to them. From there, it somehow made it back into the store as an open box item and was sold to Burke. Newegg invited Burke to come to their headquarters and discuss the issue, which he is taking them up on. What has your experience with Newegg been like as a customer? I’ve shopped with them since the early 2000s and never recall having any sort of issue that I couldn’t get resolved in a timely manner. Then again, it’s been years since my last order so perhaps things have changed since the last time I did business with them. Image credit wallpaper cave
