The well-known technology Youtube channel Gamers Nexus recently made news about a motherboard with Newegg. A motherboard that had never been opened after purchase and even the shipping carton remained intact was found to be artificially damaged and could not be returned. This incident made Newegg the most popular gossip subject in the technology circle. Now, Newegg has chosen to admit its mistake and will provide a 30-day unconditional return service for Open box CPUs and motherboards in the future, which can be regarded as barely suppressing this incident:
▲The war between Newegg and Youtuber ended with the former softening his attitude (Image source）
Newegg is a well-known shopping website for computer components and consumer electronic products. Many players abroad will designate this website to purchase the required electronic products. However, the company has recently suffered a setback in terms of goodwill. The incident was revealed in a video by the famous foreign Youtuber “Gamers Nexus”, making the company a laughing stock among gamers around the world.
According to a post and video on Twitter by Steve Burke, who runs the Gamers Nexus channel, he once purchased a $500 Gigabyte motherboard on the site. The motherboard was marked as an open box, which means that the motherboard had been sold before, but was returned and repackaged by Newegg. In other words, the so-called Openbox is roughly equivalent to second-hand products, or things marked as new products on some shopping websites. However, due to some reasons, he was unable to use this motherboard. In fact, Steve Burke claimed that he had not even opened the box of the motherboard or even the box used to transport the motherboard. Therefore, Steve Burke chose to apply for a return to Newegg:
▲Logically speaking, a motherboard that has never been opened and used should look the same as when it was shipped, without any unnecessary traces of use, but Newegg magically determined it to be a defective motherboard (Image source）
However, something magical happened. Newegg claimed that the Gigabyte motherboard, which was said to have never been opened and used, was damaged and deemed non-returnable. Only then did Steve Burke know that Newegg had sold him an Open box motherboard with a severely damaged CPU socket. This incident ended up causing quite an uproar on the Internet, with many victims even leaving messages of support in similar situations. Newegg suddenly became the target of public criticism, and its reputation was completely ruined:
There is obviously a huge gap between the two sides’ statements. Newegg’s return review concluded that the product had been damaged, which was obviously the buyer’s responsibility, and it was impossible to review the refund. However, Steve Burke has a considerable Internet voice and is not the kind of ordinary user who can be easily rounded and flattened. According to Steve Burke, in addition to the obvious damage to the CPU socket, the motherboard also has an RMA label from Gigabyte. This shows that the motherboard body has already been damaged, and it went through the original factory repair process before being sold to Steve Burke:
▲The pins are twisted and deformed. If the original was not returned by Newegg, I might never have found out that the website sold me a faulty motherboard (Image source）
At this point, the two sides’ accounts roughly summarize the story – first, Newegg recycled the motherboard that was returned through a seller and asked Gigabyte to inspect and repair it. During this process, Gigabyte may not have repaired the pin bending problem in the CPU socket. It is speculated that Gigabyte returned the original product to Newegg, but Newegg did not check the product for defects and sent the seriously faulty motherboard to the Youtuber. That is why today we see Newegg being criticized by Gamers Nexus.
Newegg’s response here is still a bit slow. Perhaps it is waiting for the opportunity to speak out when the voice of netizens has subsided. The company admitted that the defective product this time occurred on its own, and promised to provide unconditional return services for open box CPU and motherboard products in the future. But Newegg’s controversy over computer components is not limited to this. For example, the website has bundled certain popular products with some problematic products and put them on the shelves for sale, and was subsequently complained by customers. And recently, due to the scarcity of some parts, Newegg forced users to only purchase its products through the computer assembly service on the website, and charged an additional $99 assembly fee (hey, this operation looks familiar):
▲In the picture, you can see the original webpage for purchasing the Z490 Aorus XTreme motherboard. The framed area shows that the website is indeed marked with Openbox, but the font is really small (Image source）
Steve Burke finally received his refund. However, as a Youtuber, he cannot let go of such a newsworthy and highly anticipated film subject. It is said that he will go to Newegg’s corporate headquarters in California for talks. This meeting may not necessarily be the content of his next video. Newegg unfortunately kicked this iron plate, and it may not be so easy to settle the matter.
Source: KOCPC Chinese