Bizarre NewEgg Customer Service Experience

[Zoinks]

NewEgg customer service stories like mine seem to be more and more commonplace in recent years. But I received an email from customer service this morning that simply left me dumbfounded. Even a few hours after having read their latest response I am still scratching my head.

It started on November 27th, when NewEgg received an RMA return of a EVGA GTX 780 Classified Hydro Copper video card. They sent me an open box package that only contained a bare video card. No fittings, no power adapters, no software, no nothing. Just a card in an unsealed anti-static bag. I called customer service to ask for an RMA since what they sent me was not what I ordered. I was given an RMA number and a UPS shipping label. Since they did not have any more of these cards in stock I requested a refund. The EVGA store had them in stock so I ordered my replacement card there.

On the following Monday I received an email from NewEgg that my return had been processed and approved, that that a refund of $714.99 would post to my original form of payment (PayPal) in 3 to 5 business days.

When I didn't see a refund as promised I started a PayPal dispute in the resolution center, and at the same time made a few calls to NewEgg customer service and also corresponded with them through email. I was given assurances that my return had been approved and that a refund would be forthcomming. NewEgg did not respond at all to PayPal nor did they update the dispute in the Resolution Center. After a few more days of waiting with no action from NewEgg I decided to escalate the PayPal dispute to a claim. I received a notice from PayPal that NewEgg would have 10 days to respond to PayPal with the information they requested.

I waited another day or two and decided that I was not willing to give NewEgg 10 more days to respond to PayPal. If they were really interested in resolving the problem then NewEgg would have issued the refund and that would have been the end of it. But that didn't happen, so on December 10th I called my bank and filed a dispute on the original credit card charge from PayPal on November 15th, in the amount of $714.99. The following morning my bank had posted a temporary credit back to my card for the disputed amount. I called PayPal and told them that I have disputed the charge with my credit card issuer.

In the mean time, I had a number of exchanges with NewEgg customer service. I told them about the charge dispute and suggested that the best way to settle the issue was for them to simply issue the refund as promised. This would cause the PayPal claim and the charge dispute to automatically be closed.

I have not heard from NewEgg in several days. But this morning I received an email informing me that the reason I have not received my refund is because I opened a PayPal dispute for the amount that I was owed! They advised me to drop the PayPal claim and the credit card disputed charge cases against them, and at that point they would process and issue my refund.

That is the part of this that has me shaking my head. How stupid does NewEgg think I am?

I responded with the following:

Let me be absolutely clear. I have no intentions whatsoever of dropping the disputed charge with my bank or PayPal. NewEgg has brought this situation on itself.

It has become abundantly clear that NewEgg does not respect and value customer loyalty. And we are at this unhappy juncture because of your total disregard for me as a customer with a legitimate complaint.

Strange indeed.

 

[BugFreak]

I understand your concern but to me it seems that you have too much going on. Rather than wait out the proper days for things to work out you took action in multiple directions at the same time(Paypal, bank, newegg). The problem there is with so many hands in the pot each one doesn't know what the other is doing and run into duplicate claims for the same piece. Unless I misunderstood you have paypal trying to resolve the problem with newegg but at the same time your bank pulling funds from paypal while they are trying to get the same funds from newegg and behind the scenes each one has their own bank to deal with (hence the days needed to work out a refund). That is why they need you to drop the other claims, they are just clouding up the situation.

I run into this in my business all the time and it does nothing but slow the process down. Just my opinion but I think you should have waited it out and gave each element time to work it out. Newegg was originally at fault for sending you the wrong item but they still need time to work out the fix.

 

[Zoinks]

I disagree and have no plans to change my approach. Filing a PayPal dispute does not foreclose other avenues of dispute resolution. If I were to agree to NewEgg's demand and drop my claim then I would give up any leverage I might have, and after that if NewEgg did not follow through with its promise then my only recourse would be to take them to court. No thank you.

While I might accept that some issues take a little time to resolve, I don't believe that getting nothing but lip service from NewEgg for a couple of weeks qualifies as a genuine effort to resolve a legitimate problem. This is a pretty straightforward matter. They owe me a refund of $714.99 going on 2 weeks. The fact that I have filed a disputed charge claim does not absolve them of that or give them entitlement to withhold the refund.

 

[Zoinks]

And I have to say that what I find truly baffling in all of this is that NewEgg doesn't seem to place any value on customer loyalty. All of the parts for every computer build I have done for the last 10 years or so have been sourced from NewEgg. The only time I would order from someplace else was in the rare case that NewEgg did not have what I needed in stock.

It seems inexplicable to me that NewEgg would prefer a credit card chargeback or PayPal reversal to a business relationship with a long-time customer who has done a lot of repeat business with them. One must keep in mind that the fact that I am owed a refund of $714.99 is not in dispute. NewEgg has already received my return and approved the RMA weeks ago.

 

[Neuromancer]

I waited another day or two and decided that I was not willing to give NewEgg 10 more days to respond to PayPal. If they were really interested in resolving the problem then NewEgg would have issued the refund and that would have been the end of it. But that didn't happen, so on December 10th

Going by this time frame then you did NOT give them 3-5 business days to refund your money before you acted immaturely. Once you escalated it to a claim, than the regular CSR rep has to pass it up the line. Which will add a further delay. If you had just waited till the Tuesday after they said they were going to send it. You would have had your money. or a pending in paypal as paypal themselves adds a few days into the mix I have noticed. Which is why I do not use paypal for online etailers that accept CCs.

I use paypal for sales with friends/forums or for sites I am not comfortable giving CC info to.


EDIT: once you started Charge back it is not stoppable by newegg, and considering the huge amount of CC fraud going around with charge backs, if they give you a refund and you DONT drop the chargeback they get hit twice.

Chargeback is a major taboo, once that happens, I would no longer deal with the buyer at all (edit it is reported that some 80% of chargebacks are fraud cases)

Not to mention you asked for a refund from newegg, then from paypal, and then again from your CC. That sends off fraud alerts all over the place.

 

[Zoinks]

3 to 5 business days from December 2nd when they approved the RMA is December 5th to December 9th.

I understand that there are a lot of NewEgg fans and apologists on this site. So some of the responses will come as no surprise. I'm merely reporting my experience with NewEgg. You're welcome to judge it as you see fit. But that won't really change anything and I'll continue to do what I think is appropriate under the circumstances.

 

[pcgamer4life]

While I completely sympathize with the fact that you had a lot of money tied up for a product that wasn't even in your possession anymore, it does seem like you got a little impatient.

Granted, Newegg should have posted the refund after the 3-5 days that they claimed.. but did you actually give them 5 full business days before filing the PayPal dispute? If not, then the rest of the events to follow were entirely your fault. If you did allow them 5 full business days, then I probably would have re-engaged NewEgg prior to filing the dispute and give them until the end of that day to issue your refund. What confuses me is that things were entirely in your favor via PayPal, all you had to do was wait 10 days.. instead you got impatient and filed a dispute with your bank.

I'm not saying what you did was wrong (unless you didn't give them the full 5 days to process your refund), just saying that if it had been handled differently on your end, things might have moved along a little more quickly.

In any event, I'm sure that everything will get straightened out, but probably not in the timeframe that you expect because there are so many parties involved now.

[edit]
Just saw your above response about the 5 business days. In that case, you didn't do anything wrong.. just handled it differently than I would have personally. Maybe I'm just a little more forgiving of reputable retailers (I generally give them the benefit of the doubt, considering they have thousands of transactions and hundreds of disputes each day). Maybe the resident Newegg rep will chime and and can help escalate your case and get you the refund you deserve in a more timely fashion. Good luck!

 

[Neuromancer]

Yes December 9th. Then you said you waited a "day or two."

so on the 10th (less than 24 hours from the 9th so obviously not what you meant by a day or two) you escalated to a claim AND filed a chargeback.

On the 10th you should have contacted newegg to see where the refund was.

I am not defending newegg, I just think you jumped the gun and cornfuzzled the situation for Newegg.

 

[Zoinks]

Had I realized that Paypal gave the seller 10 days to respond I would not have even bothered filing a Paypal claim and would have simply disputed the charge with my bank.

Before calling my bank I discussed the situation with PayPal. They said they fully understood why I might wish to file a dispute with my bank. The difference, in case you weren't aware, is that going though the PayPal process leaves the funds in limbo until the case is decided. By going through my bank, a temporary credit is issued back to my credit card account in the disputed amount. If the seller issues a refund while the cases are open they are automatically closed: this came from PayPal and my bank.

Some of you mistakenly think that having an open PayPal claim and disputing the charge with your bank complicates matters. It does not, at least if I understood PayPal and my bank rep correctly.

 

[Neuromancer]

Yeah. Banks act like charge back is something simple and is "no big deal" it is actually the largest source of fraud for etailers. (IIRC it was something like 5% of all CC payments at one point).

 

[Zoinks]

On the 10th you should have contacted newegg to see where the refund was.

No thank you. It takes them two to three days to respond to email and when I call typical wait times on the phone are an hour...sometimes longer. I had already spent 4 hours on the phone waiting during various attempts to speak with customer service.

 

[Zoinks]

Yeah. Banks act like charge back is something simple and is "no big deal" it is actually the largest source of fraud for etailers. (IIRC it was something like 5% of all CC payments at one point).

That may be true, but that doesn't make all charge disputes fraudulent.

Banks require you to provide proof to back up your claim. They just don't chargeback merchants because customers ask them to. I had to supply my bank with a complete record of the transaction. That includes the original order, the RMA, proof that NewEgg received and approved the RMA, and a complete transcript of my various contacts with NewEgg.

 

[Zoinks]

I am not defending newegg, I just think you jumped the gun and cornfuzzled the situation for Newegg.

Fair enough. Perhaps you're right. But even if I should have waited another day or two it really doesn't change things. Part of what motivated me to pursue a claim was the lip service I was getting via email. Even after I started the dispute I had no indication until today that the dispute itself was what was holding up the refund. Had customer service been straight with me from the beginning we might not be where we are today. Also, this is not a small sum of money. If it were a small amount I would have waited considerably longer. I personally think it is unreasonable to take two weeks to issue a refund and I would have a problem with that in any transaction unless the merchant gave me valid extenuating circumstances that would cause a delay.

If the two to three day turnaround for customer service email and hour + wait times on the phone are typical (I can't say that they are even though that has been my experience), then it seems to me that there are not enough customer service people to service the customer base.

Lastly, I do know a little something about customer service. I work as an IT Consultant for a company that has a very strong customer service slant. While my job is primarily to deliver professional technical services to our clients, I also spend a fair amount of time doing customer service work. Our company is very good at resolving customer service issues, and there have been times where I have had to act as an advocate for our customers. If resolving a customer issue requires an extended length of time then I explain that to the customer and give them a reason why the time may be necessary. If I foresee that an issue might escalate into a customer service problem then I try to be proactive and reach out to that customer before they call their account representative to complain. We aren't a small volume company either, last year we did about $115 million in revenue.

 

[Dorito Bandit]

NewEgg customer service stories like mine seem to be more and more commonplace in recent years. But I received an email from customer service this morning that simply left me dumbfounded. Even a few hours after having read their latest response I am still scratching my head.

It started on November 27th, when NewEgg received an RMA return of a EVGA GTX 780 Classified Hydro Copper video card. They sent me an open box package that only contained a bare video card. No fittings, no power adapters, no software, no nothing. Just a card in an unsealed anti-static bag. I called customer service to ask for an RMA since what they sent me was not what I ordered. I was given an RMA number and a UPS shipping label. Since they did not have any more of these cards in stock I requested a refund. The EVGA store had them in stock so I ordered my replacement card there.

On the following Monday I received an email from NewEgg that my return had been processed and approved, that that a refund of $714.99 would post to my original form of payment (PayPal) in 3 to 5 business days.

When I didn't see a refund as promised I started a PayPal dispute in the resolution center, and at the same time made a few calls to NewEgg customer service and also corresponded with them through email. I was given assurances that my return had been approved and that a refund would be forthcomming. NewEgg did not respond at all to PayPal nor did they update the dispute in the Resolution Center. After a few more days of waiting with no action from NewEgg I decided to escalate the PayPal dispute to a claim. I received a notice from PayPal that NewEgg would have 10 days to respond to PayPal with the information they requested.

I waited another day or two and decided that I was not willing to give NewEgg 10 more days to respond to PayPal. If they were really interested in resolving the problem then NewEgg would have issued the refund and that would have been the end of it. But that didn't happen, so on December 10th I called my bank and filed a dispute on the original credit card charge from PayPal on November 15th, in the amount of $714.99. The following morning my bank had posted a temporary credit back to my card for the disputed amount. I called PayPal and told them that I have disputed the charge with my credit card issuer.

In the mean time, I had a number of exchanges with NewEgg customer service. I told them about the charge dispute and suggested that the best way to settle the issue was for them to simply issue the refund as promised. This would cause the PayPal claim and the charge dispute to automatically be closed.

I have not heard from NewEgg in several days. But this morning I received an email informing me that the reason I have not received my refund is because I opened a PayPal dispute for the amount that I was owed! They advised me to drop the PayPal claim and the credit card disputed charge cases against them, and at that point they would process and issue my refund.

That is the part of this that has me shaking my head. How stupid does NewEgg think I am?

I responded with the following:



Strange indeed.

That's disturbing. I've also read about others who have claimed the same thing has happened to them. Read through a few reviews and you'll see where others have said that they've received merchandise that had previously been opened and/or missing items, too. That's messed up right there.

This is my first year ever ordering from Newegg. In fact, I am waiting on my CPU, now. I'll continue to do business with Newegg. If I ever have a terrible experience with them and they don't want to make things right, I'll just take my business elsewhere. That simple.

Anyway, good luck on getting your issue resolved.

 

[pcgamer4life]

Read through a few reviews and you'll see where others have said that they've received merchandise that had previously been opened and/or missing items, too. That's messed up right there.

To be fair, this happens relatively frequently across all retailers (brick and mortar as well as online retailers).. it's not limited specifically to Newegg. Some times things slip through the cracks.. and as long as the company makes it right (which they did by issuing an RMA without much protest), there shouldn't be much to complain about, really.

 

[Zoinks]

It isn't made right until a refund has posted.

 

[Zoinks]

That's disturbing. I've also read about others who have claimed the same thing has happened to them. Read through a few reviews and you'll see where others have said that they've received merchandise that had previously been opened and/or missing items, too. That's messed up right there.

This is my first year ever ordering from Newegg. In fact, I am waiting on my CPU, now. I'll continue to do business with Newegg. If I ever have a terrible experience with them and they don't want to make things right, I'll just take my business elsewhere. That simple.

Anyway, good luck on getting your issue resolved.

To be clear, I really don't have a problem with the initial customer service response when I called after I received my order. This was just one item out of a few orders in the last month that came to about $4,000.

They did not resist at all my request for an RMA, and I was provided with a pre-paid UPS shipping label. I actually expected them to do this because they sent something I didn't order.

But I have not been satisfied with the customer service response since then.

 

[Dorito Bandit]

To be fair, this happens relatively frequently across all retailers (brick and mortar as well as online retailers).. it's not limited specifically to Newegg. Some times things slip through the cracks.. and as long as the company makes it right (which they did by issuing an RMA without much protest), there shouldn't be much to complain about, really.

Oh, I know it's not just Newegg. I understand that.

 

[Zoinks]

EDIT: once you started Charge back it is not stoppable by newegg, and considering the huge amount of CC fraud going around with charge backs, if they give you a refund and you DONT drop the chargeback they get hit twice.

Chargeback is a major taboo, once that happens, I would no longer deal with the buyer at all (edit it is reported that some 80% of chargebacks are fraud cases)

Not to mention you asked for a refund from newegg, then from paypal, and then again from your CC. That sends off fraud alerts all over the place.

I'm not sure where you are getting your information from, but what you are saying is not consistent with the information I was given by both PayPal and my bank.

I was told by PayPal that if NewEgg processes a refund in the disputed amount back to my PayPal account then the open case is automatically closed. PayPal will put a hold on the seller's funds in the disputed amount until the case is resolved. The bank will not process a chargeback until it completes its investigation and finds in my favor. I was told that this could take as long as 90 days. My bank said that if a refund posts back to my account while it is investigating my dispute then the case will automatically be closed and the amount of the temporary credit they applied to my account will automatically be reversed. I have no reason to believe that what PayPal and my bank are telling me is incorrect.

And as I said before, even if I should have waited another day or two before filing a claim...NewEgg's response since then has been completely wrong-headed. Withholding the refund is pretty much a guarantee that they are going to be hit with a chargeback since the facts are plainly not on NewEgg's side -- they have not posted the refund I'm owed and have no proof to the contrary. So if they were a day or two late with posting the refund, then the correct course of action is to simply post the refund now without further delay and this will all be over. All they have accomplished with their current behavior is poison a business relationship that has lasted over 10 years.

Disputing improper credit card charges is not taboo (not in my world anyway). It's one of the last great protections against fraud and merchant abuse provided by the Fair Credit Billing Act and an important consumer safety net.

 

[pcgamer4life]

It isn't made right until a refund has posted.

My point was that your initial request was an RMA because they shipped you an open box item. I was responding the the other poster about how they're flabbergasted that this could happen.. not the fact that you hadn't received a refund. They didn't give you grief or hassle, they issued an RMA and were going to send a replacement card.. which is what I meant by 'making it right.' When the card was found to be out of stock, the RMA department probably passed to torch to the returns department, which is why your case probably got hung up in the first place. Segregation of roles and responsibilities across a large corporation (plus the added bureaucracy that comes with it.. not to mention the fact that it was a $700+ purchase) makes cases like this a little tricky sometimes.