[Tfug] Cheap parts online?

[Robert Hunter]

On 8/8/07, Predrag Punosevac <punosevac72 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.newegg.com by far the best

I've done tons of business with newegg.  While they generally have been
decent, I recently had a very disappointing experience, which I thought I
would share.

A few weeks ago I ordered a case of hard disks (that's 20 disks) from
newegg for a file server I'm building.  The drives arrived in a Styrofoam
"brick", inside of an over sized box that was partially filled with
peanuts.  The box had suffered damage, and someone, probably UPS, had
patched the tears in the box with copious amounts of tape.  Needless to
say, I was not entirely confident about the integrity of the drives, so I
initiated an RMA, and asked very explicitly that the replacement drives
be packaged properly.  In fact, I returned the first order inside a
"real" hard disk shipping case, and included a note in large print
requesting that the replacement order to be shipped back to me in the
same box.  A week later, the second order of disks comes in, once again
packaged in a Styrofoam brick that was floating around in an over sized
box that was only partially filled with peanuts.  At this point, I was a
little more than irate.  When I spoke with the CSR, I was informed that
the returns warehouse and shipping warehouse were in different locations,
which was why they did not use the case I had provided them with, and
furthermore that the customer service department had no way of
communicating to the shipping department any "special" requests, such as,
say, to please properly package a several-thousand-dollar order of hard
disks.

Moral of the story?  Obviously, to be careful about ordering hard disks
from newegg; but also, that newegg appears to have a reached a point
where they do so much business that they have little regard even for
long-term customers with whom they have done significant amounts of
business.  I will definitely be exploring other resellers.

-- 
Rob