Dear Newegg, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
Newegg has long been my favorite online retailer. As a computer hardware geek, and the Director of IT here at AI, they’ve always sold stuff that I’m frequently purchasing. Whether I was looking for a new motherboard for a system build for a friend, or even something as simple as buying some Ethernet cable for the office, Newegg has always been the site I go to first.
Newegg sucked me in as a customer really early with spectacular customer support. Two specific instances stick in my mind. I believe these both happened back in 2001. The first was replacing a motherboard after it stopped working after just a week. It was a super smooth process; they replaced it quickly without a ridiculous RMA process.
The second incident was a broken front panel on a computer case I bought. They didn’t even make me return the original broken case. They simply grabbed a replacement part from a case at their warehouse, and shipped me just the broken part. I was able to get on with my system build without any delays due to the damaged part.
People always ask me where to buy computer stuff. Countless times, I have said, “Buy it from Newegg. They may not always have the lowest price, but their prices are always very competitive and you can’t beat their service.” Regrettably, I no longer feel this way.
Once again, it comes down to 2 incidents. The first one was a 3 years ago. I was trying to get some extra remotes for my Nintendo Wii, and I found some for sale at Newegg. I bought 2, thinking I was all set. A few hours later I got an email from them saying that they didn’t actually have any in stock and that they were cancelling my order.
I was pretty annoyed, so I emailed them a complaint. They said they would give me a few dollars off of my next order. I can’t recall the exact amount but it was at most 20 dollars. I think it was 10, but I want to give Newegg the benefit of the doubt here. I was not happy so I emailed them back. I never received another response from them, and I certainly didn’t get that discount.
I wrote this incident off as an oddity in my years of positive service with Newegg, and I ignored it. But then, this past Friday, the same thing happened. For the second time, I had completed checkout at Newegg, and I was sent an email after the fact that my item was out of stock and my order was being canceled.
In the interest of full disclosure, this new incident involved a black Friday special. But honestly, in the 3 years since this last happened to me, I would have expected that they invested time and money into their system to prevent this type of thing from happening again. After all, according to their Facebook page, they are the 2nd largest online only retailer. They can afford to fix these problems.
In any case, I emailed them 3 times and haven’t heard back from them yet. From my perspective, this is now enough to form a pattern of a website that breaks down during the holidays, and a pattern of a poor customer service response to the people who are affected. Patterns I intend to avoid by giving other vendors my business from now on.
Between my business and personal accounts, I spent around 10 grand there last year. Sure, those numbers aren’t huge, but they aren’t insignificant either. And if they lose other long time customers from incidents like this, those numbers can add up. In addition to the fact that they risk losing the excellent word of mouth that made them so big to begin with.
Where will I shop now? Well, I’ve already got a couple of vendors that I consider reliable. I’ve got account managers at CDW, Dell, and Apple. They aren’t the cheapest vendors, but I like having a direct line to somebody who values my business, and there are situations where that is worth spending the extra money. I buy my memory direct from Crucial these days. There’s plenty of stuff I can get at Amazon, a vendor that has never failed me. For more urgent purchases, I can walk 3 blocks from my office to the local Best Buy.
For the items that I traditionally have purchased from Newegg, I’m going to give zipzoomfly.com a try. They have been recommended by a fellow hardware geek a few times. They don’t seem to have the vast selection that Newegg has, but their prices seem fair, so it’s time to give their service a try.
I miss the Newegg of old. I congratulate them on their enormous success, but in my opinion, they’ve had to sacrifice a chunk of their brilliant customer service to get there. I, myself, am moving on for now.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
UPDATE:
It seems Newegg’s big thank you to their customers is a $10 gift certificate. No thank you.
8:08:39 PM System says, Hello my name is Angelique. How may I help you today?
8:08:49 PM Joshua Rusch says, hi there
8:09:18 PM Joshua Rusch says, I had an order for a black friday deal canceled due to stock issues, even though I checked out on the site successfully
8:09:44 PM Joshua Rusch says, I’ve seen a few reports that you are honoring the deal on alternative colored laptops for people who checked out and had their order canceled
8:10:01 PM Joshua Rusch says, I’ll paste the exact message somebody sent me…
8:10:24 PM Joshua Rusch says, I was actually able to get a hold of an escalation rep @ 5pm, pacific standard time, via phone (800) 390-1119
Once talking to a live person, I insisted on being transferred to the escalation dept.
There, I spoke with a Becky and an Ivan. They gave me the blackfriday price on the exact same netbook in a different color. There are reports of other people doing the same as well online:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5563846&postcount=15
Good luck!
8:11:29 PM Angelique says, I would be glad to assist you. We are offering $10.00 off your next order with Newegg for the inconvenience.
8:12:01 PM Joshua Rusch says, What about the people claiming they got the same deal on the same laptop in a different color?
8:12:08 PM Joshua Rusch says, are they lying?
8:12:43 PM Joshua Rusch says, do you have customer service reps named Ivan and Becky, if so I’ll try talking to them on the phone….when your phone lines actually start working again
8:14:50 PM Angelique says, There were many customers that were inconvenienced by the stock situation, as such we have decided to offer $10.00 off a future order with our company.
8:15:17 PM Angelique says, We are not able to honor the sale price for all customer’s that were inconvenienced.
8:15:38 PM Joshua Rusch says, I have given this company over 25 grand in business over the past 3 years
8:15:43 PM Joshua Rusch says, you really don’t want my business any more?
8:15:51 PM Joshua Rusch says, http://www.alexanderinteractive.com/blog/2009/11/dear-newegg-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish.html
8:16:09 PM Joshua Rusch says, I suggest you check with your boss, I’ll give you the other account number I buy under
8:17:39 PM Joshua Rusch says, Look at account #XXXXXX, also under my name
8:17:56 PM Joshua Rusch says, you REALLY want to lose all that business over 120$ or whatever it was?
8:19:28 PM Angelique says, We definitely value you as a customer, and that is why we are offering the 10.00 discount off your next order. There is nothing that can be done to honor the original price or else I would definitely take care of it for you.
8:20:32 PM Joshua Rusch says, hah, OK, well I’ll be adding this conversation to my blog post. 10 dollars does not say you value me as a customer.
8:21:43 PM Angelique says, I apologize that we were not able to offer you more in this situation.
8:22:23 PM Joshua Rusch says, It seems like a no brainer to me…give me the discount, and get another couple of years of business, but its your loss, I have other vendors.
8:22:27 PM Joshua Rusch says, Bye
UPDATE 2
I thought I’d include a link to the facebook posting in which newegg said it would be contacting the people that experienced the stock problem on their website. Click here. As you can see, there are many complaints there. Not all of them are about successful checkouts, but there are enough.
Also, here is the netbook that they sold me, before they canceled the order:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115576
Here are two of the exact same netbooks specwise, just in different colors. They refuse to substitute them in for the deal they originally sold me.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115573&cm_re=AOD250-1924-_-34-115-573-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115575&cm_re=AOD250-1924-_-34-115-575-_-Product
I had the same issue as you, and it is a horrible tactic that they pulled. To be honest I do not think that they had any intention to honor the deal that was posted. To be able to go back and cop out of the confirmed sale is not only a bait and switch (I purchased $100 of additional products in their black friday sale because I was online at the time) but false advertising. I’ve already reported them to the BBB although I am sure nothing will come of it.
Sorry to hear that you had the same experience. I’ve been with Newegg too long to accuse them of dirty sales tactics. I do, however, believe there was some negligence on their part. They’ve obviously had these issues in the past and should have come up with a good solution to prevent them from happening again. And they should be making it up to their loyal customers in a bigger way than they have been so far.
I was actually able to get a hold of an escalation rep @ 5pm, pacific standard time, via phone (800) 390-1119
Once talking to a live person, I insisted on being transferred to the escalation dept.
There, I spoke with a Becky and an Ivan. They gave me the blackfriday price on the exact same netbook in a different color. There are reports of other people doing the same as well online:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5563846&postcount=15
Good luck!
Hey, thanks for the info. I’ve been waiting for them to contact me since they posted a message on their facebook page saying they would be contacting everyone, and I had emailed them several times as well. But I hadn’t seen any posts about any successful resolutions on that facebook page.
I’ll try to contact them, and update my blog post with the results. Certainly they partially redeem themselves if they get me the same deal on the same laptop in a different color.
I say partially because I feel very strongly that their website shouldn’t have these problems to begin with.
Well, it certainly doesn’t look like this is going to get resolved today. I keep getting a busy signal at their phone number, and the chat waiting room just seems to die after a few minutes.
Well, no go on the other laptop at the discounted price. Customer service says 10 dollar gift certificate. I’ve posted the conversation above.
So they’ve pretty much cemented my boycott of them. I will never buy from Newegg again.
They didn’t even reimburse me.
“There is nothing that can be done to honor the original price or else I would definitely take care of it for you.”
It’s funny how the survey for the webchat even asks if they “go they extra mile”
Have you never made mistakes in your life? In all your years of purchasing from them they had 2 incidences where the company did not performed to your satisfaction and you want to ditch them? As an IT Director I assume you are decently paid and you are making such a big fuss over such a small amount?
In the business of banking we believe in firing unprofitable and overly troublesome customers. Looks like you just got fired! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
LOL. Newegg is not the end all be all of vendors. They are frequently NOT the lowest price. Also, businesses are frequently willing to pay extra for customer service.
In addition, I don’t let my personal experiences hurt my company. If I did, we’d have no Macs in the office at all :) In this instance, I can have my cake, and eat it too.
One thing that I know about newegg is that last year they did just over 2 billion in sales with only 1% of profit.
One of their issues may be that they can’t afford to fix what’s broken. They have cut back as much as they can and you are now seeing the downside of that. I have read that they offered IPO to try and drum up a couple hundered million in cash, to help upgrade their infrastructure and to go towards funding bigger deals, but I haven’t heard if they were successful in that or not. I personally wouldn’t invest in that since they historically haven’t been very profitable. Most companies will do business with strong companies that show profit because the company that makes profit lasts and can afford to hire people to fix teh issues that arrise. Newegg can’t. We may be watching the end of new egg in the next few years. not that I want to see that happen, I purchase from them for my personal use also.
Companies can and will make mistakes but at least they’re willing to take responsiblity and offer a resolution with a discount. Im not trying to throw other companies under the bus but I WILL say that when BestBuy had a typo, they gave me a “we’re sorry…” and no discount.
Eggcellent point. But the problem I have with Newegg is that it seems like a pattern to me. 2 out of stock problems with popular items, 3 years apart. It’s not a simple human error like what you described. I would be very understanding if that were the case, and a simple “I’m sorry” would suffice, as long as they were proactive about contacting me quickly and apologizing. I’ve tried (and failed) in the past to buy 20 dollar hard drives before :) I didn’t hold it against that particular company when they canceled my order.
I am the Director of IT for a medical manufacturing company and have spent quite a bit of money at Newegg over the past 7 years both personally and professionally. Up until this incident I too was a happy customer.
I can understand that they sold out of a product, but the complete lack of professionalism and the attitude of their CS reps toward this matter is uncalled for. I have sent many emails, most of which haven’t been returned and the ones that have simply sent out form letters which are full of holes and contradictions. For example, look at the quote from one of their CS reps:
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. After checking in our system, I found that your order was canceled, since we do not have the item at that time. Please kindly note that every product we carry is listed on our website, pricing and availability posted in real time.”
Well, if every item is listed on their website with availability in “real-time”, how can they cancel an order due to insufficient stock?
I would also like to refer you to their own FAQ (http://www.newegg.com/HelpInfo/FAQDetail.aspx?Module=5#xdetail196) under How can I obtain a price, stock or shipping quote from Newegg.com? where they clearly state “We do not take orders for what we do not have”.
Again, they contradict their own policy, as they did take an order for something they didn’t have.
They really need to be honest and just admit they totally dropped the ball with regard to following their own policies and that their inventory system is full of holes (which needs to be corrected asap). But this one excuse after another, false promises of contacting every customer (per their Facebook page), and ignoring my many emails is just ridiculous and as a result has made them lose yet another longtime customer.
I also had a similar problem with a notebook. They told me they’d honor the price, then on the in stock date they deactivated the item! That’s a classic bait and switch.
NewEgg and FedEx both suck the big one. I ordered an item that NewEgg had in stock. FedEx Overnight. It still isn’t here and NewEgg wants to give me $10.00 off my next purchase for the inconvenience. How about you take the item and shove it down your pie hole. And FedEx, Jesus Christ, they lie. I called them five times and got a different reason for the delay every time. I was waiting for them to tell me their plane was lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Overnight Express is now three days and counting. I won’t buy or use either ever again. I use a lot of high tech items in my field. NewEgg just lost thousands in annual business and FedEx, well, I hope they go the way of EMRON.