NewEgg

[bobdec]

I have bought many things from newegg and their shippping have been timely and fast.
I have never have had to return anything for replacement so I cannot comment on that.
The reviews on the site have always been a big help in deciding what to purchase.
They usually have the best price on most items and about 50% of the time I have been able to purchse the items with free shipping, a big plus.
Their check out is a bit of a pain, but after using it for quite awhile it seems easier.

[Josh]

I concur. I am in love with newegg. I just opened a preferred account with them due to my needing to purchase a GPS device. Every order I've ever placed has been quick, painless, and prompt. I have had to make a few returns and the process was very painless. Quick and courteous representatives and quick replacements or refunds. I have never had a bad experience with them. I did have one with ServiceNet, their warranty provider, when they told me that they changed their policy stating the customer is responsible for shipping costs on the return of an item for repair. This wouldn't be a problem if the item I wanted to repair wasn't a UPS. I wasn't paying for a trackable UPS shipment of a UPS device that weighs over 30 pounds. After telling them that I was told, when I first purchased the contract, that shipping was included, they offerred to buy out my contract for the purchase price of the device and I didn't have to return the old one. All in all, I would still use service net now that I know what I know.

[quantumrider]

I have never had a problem with NewEgg order(and I've had a lot of them over the years), unfortunately they are now required to charge NY residents tax on orders, that combined with the latest tendency for them to definitely have higher prices on some of the popular items, means I have to start looking someplace else for my hardware fix.

-ark

[wraith808]

I just had (and am still having) and experience with NewEgg, and though I've used them quite often in the past, this left a bad taste in my mouth.

I plan to get a GPS for my wife for Mother's Day.  I saw a decent deal on NewEgg, and placed an order last Friday for the device.  They processed it, and my PayPal account was debited the amount Saturday.  Saturday evening, I get an e-mail saying that the item was backordered, and that my Paypal account should show the balance in 1-2 business days.  It seemed like a long time considering that they took it out on Saturday and found out the same day, but I could go with it- I found the item in Amazon, so as long as the money was there by Wednesday, I could get it by Friday.

Yesterday, it didn't even show the refund as initiated, so I wondered what was going on.  I called them, and they said that it had been initiated, but I wouldn't see it until today.  I thought that strange, but let it go.  I called paypal today to see if it had indeed been initiated, and they said no, that no action had been taken on it by NewEgg.  So I called them again, and they said that it would be 3-5 business days, and that I should see the refund initiated by Thursday.  So I asked if anything at all had been done on it, since Paypal said it should show up on their end... and he said no, that nothing would be done until Thursday.

I was in a quick chat session, and the representative said that she'd sent a communication to get them to accelerate the process but what I don't understand is:
1) why charge before they ship?
2) why does it take so long to return money that you've done nothing with?
3) why does the e-mail say one thing (1-2 business days) and their representatives say something else?

I'm just really put out by this... anyone want to take a stab at why?  I might be a bit irrational about the whole thing since my money is involved, and wanted to know if anyone else thought it was a bit unreasonable.

[J-Mac]

Not irrational at all. Sounds like a process problem - who is supposed to initiate and complete a task, how quickly they should get it done and note it as such in their tracking system, and very importantly - how they manage their communication of such issues to the customer. I've seen similar process problems in the past with Newegg. Not so bad that I refuse to use them but TBH I usually only buy there if Amazon doesn’t have the item available through my Prime account.

I wouldn’t dump them altogether; and I'm pretty sure you would still buy there if the price was right. But I agree that this wasn’t handled properly.

I'm curious:what other online vendors do DC members use regularly for tech purchases? I usually get all my tech items from either Amazon or Newegg, and most of that at Amazon. But Amazon isn't really geared up to sell tech/computer stuff. Their site search sucks and they don’t offer any decent drill-down feature. E.g., if you are looking for USB flash drives the search results page doesn’t have the ability to select size, like 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, etc. And their search results often have all other sizes mixed in if you search for a specific size. Who do you all use?

Thanks!

Jim

[JavaJones]

Hehe, finding the best product and the best deal are often different things, and I use different tools for both purposes (though there is some overlap).

For general product search I think Newegg has the best options by far. Their Power Search is a technoweenie's wet dream (aside a few quirks of the presumably automated filter creation system and wording issues). So I often start there just to find what product I might even want to find the best prices on. I also like Newegg's reviews better than most other sites because the audience is usually fairly tech-savvy.

Once I find  the product(s) I'm interested in, I then check prices on Amazon and TigerDirect, as well as Google Shopping as necessary. Amazon is generally my preferred vendor just because I have Prime and free 2 day shipping is hard to beat. They also don't charge me tax. TigerDirect is great too, often free shipping (but not 2 day), and they don't charge tax either. Newegg does charge me tax being a CA resident, so that's why I tend not to buy from them much, but if I lived outside CA I'd probably buy from them a lot more as they do generally have good prices and, as I said, a great search engine.

- Oshyan

[wraith808]

I generally use BensBargains and FatWallet to score deals and go from there.  However, if I'm going after a particular item, I check buy.com, tigerdirect.com, amazon.com, and newegg.com.  I also check pricewatch.com as they have an excellent search engine- even better than newegg, and list all of the vendors, though sometimes it comes up short.

[J-Mac]

Your circumstances sound similar to mine: I agree with you on Newegg's search and reviews - both are excellent resources. I also use Amazon Prime (though more and more I notice that the Prime "free shipping" price is equal to the best overall price from non-Prime vendors on Amazon plus their shipping).

Tiger Direct - I'll have to check them out. This is what I am looking for; some alternatives to Amazon and Newegg for when I can't find an items at either place. I haven't gained full trust in Google Shopping yet; I have seen a few vendors listed there that I know are trouble sometimes. I have heard the name "Fry's" mentioned a lot also.

Thanks!

Jim

[wraith808]

An update on my newegg situation:

After the chat with the customer service person, the money was almost immediately refunded, which was good.  But what bothers me is that it took 2 phone calls and a chat, and getting almost irate (I kept myself in line... but it was frustrating) to get this done.  Why do you have to become that customer that you don't want to become to get anything done?

[3of0]

I use NewEgg a little here and there.  I love how i can research what I want, and the reviews are invaluable.  I did have an incident a few years back, but it was so minor I don't even remember what it was.

I work in a place that uses Dell.  Starting 3-4 months ago, it's been pulling teeth to get anything done.  We would place an order, and a month later we would finally get a third of what we ordered.  We ended up canceling the rest and ordering it from someplace else which ended up being cheaper and faster.  Also, we put in a quote for a few items, after 2 weeks asked where they were and they said that they're no longer available and that we would need to order something else.

We are currently a dell shop, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to work with them to get things done and resolved.  As far as NewEgg, my experiences have been great and I'm seeing they have some quarks, but to me it seems bearable, especially if they work with you to get things resolved.