NewEgg pricing debacle... [rant=on]

Ok, I'm shopping online for a new TV for my home-away-from home when I'm working.

So... I see a Panasonic 42" LCD, says regularly $799.99... ok. A button below says "Click for Details". No problem... except nothing happens. Try it a couple of times, I'm thinking Javascript Error or something, no biggie. So, I click on Add to Cart. Now usually, on The Egg, your cart is displayed up top on the right, with a running total. I notice there is no total. Weird... ok, so I go to the cart.

The cart shows the item, but again, no price. So I keep clicking forward, end up all the way at PayPal, log in, STILL can't see a price, and it keeps telling me I'll have the opportunity to see the price before I confirm.

Then, as I'm going through PayPal's BS, I get to the payment options screen and it won't let me select my credit (debit) card! It will only accept an Instant Transfer from my bank account, PayPal balance, or BillMeLater.

Well, Eff That, Mate!

So here I am, spent 5 minutes navigating through various screens, logging into other websites, only to find out I can't use my credit card to fund a PayPal purchase (a first from The Egg, in my 10+ years experience with them), and I STILL have NO CLUE how much this stupid TV costs!

I went to the trouble to navigate back to NewEgg's product page for the item, trying to find out if there is indeed a price somewhere, or if it says anywhere that this item cannot be purchased with a credit card, etc. Obviously, there's nothing along those lines. I mean... REALLY?

Don't get me wrong... I love The Egg, and I'm probably on their website 200-250 days out of the year, for one thing or another. But this is simply ridiculous. To make someone jump through THIS many hoops, and literally get to the confirm payment page in PayPal (that was where I would've ended up next) before you can find out the price of an item? No way... and PayPal says, "You're almost done. You will confirm your payment on Newegg Computers." So, cringing, I click it, hoping I'm not going to get CHARGED just to see the frigging price, and sure enough, it finally pops up on the VERY LAST PAGE where you confirm your order... literally 10-12 pages past where I added it to my cart.

I mean, REALLY? REALLY, NewEgg????


Annoying... I'm not buying this item from you now, just on principle that you made me jump through so many hoops just to find out what you were going to charge me. And for those who are on the edge of their seats wondering what this top-secret, rock-bottom, Classifiied, Eyes-Only Clearance prices was... $580. That's right... so I naturally decide to check it out and see if this is really a great price.

Turns out, on Google Shopping, Amazon's Warehouse Deals has it for $521.99 shipped and Iwan for $544.77 shipped. And there, listed #3 when sorted by total price, is Newegg.... $580. No kidding? So Google gets to advertise your price on their shopping results, but your actual customers surfing on your own website have to log in, navigate away to PayPal, log in again, go through all the crap for confirming an actual purchase, then get all the way to the last page of confirmation of purchase before we can even find out how much the frigging thing COSTS?


No thanks, NewEgg.... No thanks.

Lame. My guess is that it's a requirement from the manufacturer of the TV, but that's still really dumb.

Newegg is good - I'd call their customer service line and complain. Not that I would expect it to fix anything, but adding your complaint to the other complaints they've undoubtedly gotten should help them get a clue.

New website layout blows.

New website layout blows.

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+1 If aint broke don't fix it

I went on there early in the morning after not being able to sleep, already frustrated about that, and I almost put my fist through the monitor as I was having nothing but problems with the new layout.

So... aside from not being able to see the price up front you're complaint is "spent 5 minutes navigating through various screens" only to find out the price at the very end of the process. How long did you spend crafting this diatribe?

soulfly1448 said:

So... aside from not being able to see the price up front you're complaint is "spent 5 minutes navigating through various screens" only to find out the price at the very end of the process. How long did you spend crafting this diatribe?

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Does that matter? He doesn't make threads like this every day, but if he's like me he checks stuff at newegg just about every day and crap like this is very irritating. Same goes for their new layout, which like posted above I think blows too.

BTW, if you can't contribute more than a silly little jab such as that, you really need to refrain from posting at all.

It really does suck. I wish they would stop trying to be Facebook and just leave things alone.

soulfly1448 said:

So... aside from not being able to see the price up front you're complaint is "spent 5 minutes navigating through various screens" only to find out the price at the very end of the process. How long did you spend crafting this diatribe?

Click to expand...

I spent a whole LOT more time writing my post than I did on Newegg, but it was the irritation factor of the whole thing. I see this "Add to cart to see price" thing all the time.

I get that. I understand it, as stupid as I think it is, over the last few years, we've seen it more and more.

The reason I made this thread was that this was way way beyond simply "add to cart" and "delete from cart" once you see the price. this was navigating probably 8+ pages of changes from one website to another and back again. It seemed like an inordinately long run-around just to get a price, and I thought I'd bring it up, since NewEgg is such a huge vendor around here and my experiences with them have almost always been good.

I'm also with some of you. If it's too hard to find the price, I won't buy. I don't want to buy a widget with "mystery" price only to find out I got charged $250 for it when I can get it for (oh say) $200 on another site.

Some of the sites may be doing this in order to hide the actual price from other web sites that uses bot to scan and set competing site's price lower. That I can understand, generally it's just click to add to chopping cart then check it. But I have a limit of 2 or 3 clicks to find the price, then forget it.

4GHZ_or_bust said:

I'm also with some of you. If it's too hard to find the price, I won't buy. I don't want to buy a widget with "mystery" price only to find out I got charged $250 for it when I can get it for (oh say) $200 on another site.

Some of the sites may be doing this in order to hide the actual price from other web sites that uses bot to scan and set competing site's price lower. That I can understand, generally it's just click to add to chopping cart then check it. But I have a limit of 2 or 3 clicks to find the price, then forget it.

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Agreed... and it was irritating to me also that when I Googled it and checked prices, NewEgg's price was there with all the others, but a PITA to find on NewEgg's site.

Maybe I'm ADD, but if you make it annoying for me to buy your product, I'll probably go elsewhere.

I just ran into the same thing today, looking at TVs at Newegg. And not only do you have to add it to the cart and start the checkout process, you have to enter payment info in and get to the last screen before hitting the "Pay Me" button just to see the freaking price! That is totally unacceptable in my opinion and also in my opinion, is borderline fraudulent. After all, it would be ll too easy to place an accidental order since you are at the place order screen just to see a price. It also smacks of trying to get additional credit info from their customers by making you enter in payment details.

I did go and hunt up the link in the contact us section and let them know just how I feel about this deceptive and (to me) unethical pricing policy, as well as their forum support going down the toilet too. I've bought well over $20,000 worth of stuff from them since I became a customer of theirs, but I'm now seeing nothing from them for me to recommend or use them over the competition any more.

I guess I can add this to the other reasons I've recently been seeing accumulate on not shopping with Newegg in the future.

muddocktor said:

I just ran into the same thing today, looking at TVs at Newegg. And not only do you have to add it to the cart and start the checkout process, you have to enter payment info in and get to the last screen before hitting the "Pay Me" button just to see the freaking price! That is totally unacceptable in my opinion and also in my opinion, is borderline fraudulent. After all, it would be ll too easy to place an accidental order since you are at the place order screen just to see a price. It also smacks of trying to get additional credit info from their customers by making you enter in payment details.

I did go and hunt up the link in the contact us section and let them know just how I feel about this deceptive and (to me) unethical pricing policy, as well as their forum support going down the toilet too. I've bought well over $20,000 worth of stuff from them since I became a customer of theirs, but I'm now seeing nothing from them for me to recommend or use them over the competition any more.

I guess I can add this to the other reasons I've recently been seeing accumulate on not shopping with Newegg in the future.

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With all the stupid things they've done lately I'm wondering if there was a change in management. This is not how the newegg I know (knew?) does business. Sad day when they'll lose so much business over stupid decisions and declining customer service.

It may well be a change in their supplier's contract with them regarding selling items under the MSRP. Some companies get really pissed if you advertise a price under MSRP, that's where that "see the price in the cart!" stuff came from.
It may be that the suppliers said "No price in the cart either!", and this is the best newegg can do.

during a plasma tv research session i ran into the "see price in cart" debacle at newegg. i bought mine from sears...and removed newegg from my favorites list. ive no patience for ineptitude in my old age. i may return if i run across a good deal that doesnt involve a hidden price :/
if your listening newegg, get it together.

maybe.... a purchase over $XXX isnt supported by paypal when u use a CC.

No comments from the resident NewEgg rep in nearly two months regarding this issue?

Hell, he hasn't logged in since early October, eaglescouter.

I'm left wondering if that was a bug in their processing S/W or really the way the stuff is supposed to work. Since it happened to someone other than the OP I'm inclined to think it was not a momentary glitch.

Regardless, I appreciate the rant here, but I would have found out sooner or later since I shop at newegg, uh... occasionally.

I highly suggest that if you have an experience like this that you also provide feedback to the company itself. I've found newegg customer service to be pretty responsive. At least let them know.

NB I've done that with a number of companies and often do not get a reply back. That tells me to believe that they don't really care about pleasing their customer and confirms my decision to do business elsewhere.