Confronting Newegg Face-to-Face
video description
You have restock fees, maybe that stopped? Don't know.. And then you're stuck with shipping cost from and back to them. Sending back an Item is just a huge money loss.
Let's say the item is heavy and fairly large. The shipping return can cost a LOT of money. Then if they have restocking fee on top of that. You end up in many cases with half your money back..
Buying the same item on Amazon it could be free shipping especially if Prime. Then if you don't like the product or it's not up to expectations, you can return it and it's fast and often times completely paid for. Just drop it off at Post office with paid return label. So easy and fast and you get full refund. Newegg can't compete with that.
Similar with Best Buy, I can buy anything online and I can just return it to the local store and get all money back, no shipping cost and no money lost.
So Newegg for me is just a place I would buy if I have to because either they are the only ones with a product in stock or only ones that have it at all. Even then I would be very hesitant.
I had to return something before with them and Basically ended up just wasting 75 out of 150. Because of restock and shipping. I could have just tossed the money on the ground or burned it. Such a waste.
Then you feel you can't trust their RMA policies and system. Always feel like they would reject it for some made up reason.
Date: 2022-02-22
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Comments and reviews: 9
Christopher
Transactional Histories with your current customers is a great thing. But businesses do need to elevate a new customer experience as well. This should not be over-looked. A business cannot thrive on just their current customer base to grow it. I see a lot of new customers of theirs and right off the bat it is a bad experience. The internet opens your business to a broad customer base but when your main market over time was a very niche customer base and grew under such word of mouth can kill your business. The 3rd party seller market added to Newegg has been a tragedy from the get-go mostly. I don't know anyone personally that has had very good experiences with them. They cannot seem to understand it isn't the 3rd parties reputation that is taking the hit but it is their own. If they are over committed to 3rd parties having a stage to stand on then they need to force a mandatory policy that benefits customers like Amazon does. The problem I see going on is they are trying to be another Amazon but aren't seeing it from a typical Amazon customer expectation. Sellers complain about Amazon all the time because honestly most of those sellers in the US are terrible most of the time. I have more faith and a lot of people do from Asian Sellers on Amazon because they actually do their best to retain customers, gain them, and I have never had an issue with refunds from them even if it took a while. THAT says a lot. This interview has a lot of trying to deflect to your personal case in this that came off a bit illogical. I personally stopped buying from NewEgg over a motherboard issue. I had to go through ASUS to deal with a defective board personally. They make NewEgg seem like a joke. They in the end had NewEgg take the board back, send me a new one in the process of mailing the old one back, and making it right. This should have been the status quo. I should not have had to go through a manufacturer to trouble-shoot an extremely expensive board with power problems to just get a replacement. But ABS I want to say is the only thing I recommend to check out as long as you watch what is in it. This is really long but Newegg hear me out. The statement well we are going to fail, even our competitors fail, and it has been difficult for our competitors as well is not a good enough excuse to walk around mistakes. A failure is a lost customer. A mad customer can lose you a dozen. People assume the logic most retail does that people just come back. In this market they have better options to not return. Also, making a commitment to your customers has NOTHING to do with being a publicly traded company that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life. It does not take shareholders or the biggest wig in your company to approve of a pro-active business decision. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE EMPLOYED. Pro-Tip get rid of half your ridiculous requirements from CSR's and get customers involved with reporting/reviewing CSR's as well as how your policies reflected an issue that is outside the CSR's personal responsibility and you will have better and happier CSR's and Customers. Most metrics aren't good evaluations of the CSR. It is already a stressful job. HIRE MORE PEOPLE. If you have to crunch metrics at all you DO NOT HAVE enough people. ASK anyone working for your competitors and whats dragging down their customers and the people that deal with them.
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Transactional Histories with your current customers is a great thing. But businesses do need to elevate a new customer experience as well. This should not be over-looked. A business cannot thrive on just their current customer base to grow it. I see a lot of new customers of theirs and right off the bat it is a bad experience. The internet opens your business to a broad customer base but when your main market over time was a very niche customer base and grew under such word of mouth can kill your business. The 3rd party seller market added to Newegg has been a tragedy from the get-go mostly. I don't know anyone personally that has had very good experiences with them. They cannot seem to understand it isn't the 3rd parties reputation that is taking the hit but it is their own. If they are over committed to 3rd parties having a stage to stand on then they need to force a mandatory policy that benefits customers like Amazon does. The problem I see going on is they are trying to be another Amazon but aren't seeing it from a typical Amazon customer expectation. Sellers complain about Amazon all the time because honestly most of those sellers in the US are terrible most of the time. I have more faith and a lot of people do from Asian Sellers on Amazon because they actually do their best to retain customers, gain them, and I have never had an issue with refunds from them even if it took a while. THAT says a lot. This interview has a lot of trying to deflect to your personal case in this that came off a bit illogical. I personally stopped buying from NewEgg over a motherboard issue. I had to go through ASUS to deal with a defective board personally. They make NewEgg seem like a joke. They in the end had NewEgg take the board back, send me a new one in the process of mailing the old one back, and making it right. This should have been the status quo. I should not have had to go through a manufacturer to trouble-shoot an extremely expensive board with power problems to just get a replacement. But ABS I want to say is the only thing I recommend to check out as long as you watch what is in it. This is really long but Newegg hear me out. The statement well we are going to fail, even our competitors fail, and it has been difficult for our competitors as well is not a good enough excuse to walk around mistakes. A failure is a lost customer. A mad customer can lose you a dozen. People assume the logic most retail does that people just come back. In this market they have better options to not return. Also, making a commitment to your customers has NOTHING to do with being a publicly traded company that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life. It does not take shareholders or the biggest wig in your company to approve of a pro-active business decision. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE EMPLOYED. Pro-Tip get rid of half your ridiculous requirements from CSR's and get customers involved with reporting/reviewing CSR's as well as how your policies reflected an issue that is outside the CSR's personal responsibility and you will have better and happier CSR's and Customers. Most metrics aren't good evaluations of the CSR. It is already a stressful job. HIRE MORE PEOPLE. If you have to crunch metrics at all you DO NOT HAVE enough people. ASK anyone working for your competitors and whats dragging down their customers and the people that deal with them.
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Adragontattoo
So they repeatedly went BACK to the MB issue BUT around the 28:00 mark. They said 9 of 10 questions blah blah...
So here's some questions...
1: HOW did a MB that was sold, returned, sent to the vendor AND returned as denied RMA by the vendor get put back in stock for resale with no documentation?
2: How do they not have ANY system in place to track, ID, document and separate vendor denied and returned E-WASTE from valid stock? This isn't a one off issue. There is no way this never happened any other time.
3: We engage with customers that reach out to us. Unless they reached out and here is a stack of customers that you ignored. Why are you reaching out to open box customers over the prior year if you want to engage with those customers who reach out to you??
They are reaching back a FULL calendar year because of the issue being FAR more prevalent than they want to publicly admit...
Steve, you did as best as you could. No fault there. I do not envy you at all.
Look at the table. 2 of the 4 have futzed with the pens but taken no notes (Vince and the far side of the table guy.) 1 is guarded, but he's the lead and the operations guy is the only one who took notes .
BUT your video isn't the only one. UFD Tech had MULTIPLE issues BOTH related and unrelated with Newegg and he has had additional questions as a result of this issue.
Newegg, Show Don't Tell. Make the changes you claim to be in the process of making... Show everyone that you care about your reputation and customers more than revenue. God I hate Corporate business buzzword lingo. All fluff and zero substance.
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So they repeatedly went BACK to the MB issue BUT around the 28:00 mark. They said 9 of 10 questions blah blah...
So here's some questions...
1: HOW did a MB that was sold, returned, sent to the vendor AND returned as denied RMA by the vendor get put back in stock for resale with no documentation?
2: How do they not have ANY system in place to track, ID, document and separate vendor denied and returned E-WASTE from valid stock? This isn't a one off issue. There is no way this never happened any other time.
3: We engage with customers that reach out to us. Unless they reached out and here is a stack of customers that you ignored. Why are you reaching out to open box customers over the prior year if you want to engage with those customers who reach out to you??
They are reaching back a FULL calendar year because of the issue being FAR more prevalent than they want to publicly admit...
Steve, you did as best as you could. No fault there. I do not envy you at all.
Look at the table. 2 of the 4 have futzed with the pens but taken no notes (Vince and the far side of the table guy.) 1 is guarded, but he's the lead and the operations guy is the only one who took notes .
BUT your video isn't the only one. UFD Tech had MULTIPLE issues BOTH related and unrelated with Newegg and he has had additional questions as a result of this issue.
Newegg, Show Don't Tell. Make the changes you claim to be in the process of making... Show everyone that you care about your reputation and customers more than revenue. God I hate Corporate business buzzword lingo. All fluff and zero substance.
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Jay
It was all a very corporate and too much public relations speak. The issue with that is that when the customer can clearly tell it s PR speak it isn t good PR. Good PR isn t speaking a different language, it s about Relations and a good relationship involves openness, transparency, trust, understanding, commitment, and action. Good PR shouldn t be able to be identified as PR, it should be fluid and come from a corporate and individual value of genuine care for the customer.
I would have loved to hear Newegg say that they have formed two task forces. One to investigate and audit every process, procedure, execution of procedure, and system within to company to address the known issues and find unknown issues that haven t presented yet. The second to investigate and review all previous RMA rejections and have authority to make decisions (seems like they are already doing this to an extent). Both these task forces should have authority and autonomy in their respective taskings and they need to be genuine, it means nothing if it s just a facade and they re met with resistance when performing their duties or top level management rejects or ignores their findings. The formation of these kinds of task forces would have shown a commitment to finding and resolving the issues on the side of Newegg. Right now it feels a little too, let s do a few easy things and hope that gets us out of the spotlight to me. I do like that they did execute on a few of your suggestions though.
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It was all a very corporate and too much public relations speak. The issue with that is that when the customer can clearly tell it s PR speak it isn t good PR. Good PR isn t speaking a different language, it s about Relations and a good relationship involves openness, transparency, trust, understanding, commitment, and action. Good PR shouldn t be able to be identified as PR, it should be fluid and come from a corporate and individual value of genuine care for the customer.
I would have loved to hear Newegg say that they have formed two task forces. One to investigate and audit every process, procedure, execution of procedure, and system within to company to address the known issues and find unknown issues that haven t presented yet. The second to investigate and review all previous RMA rejections and have authority to make decisions (seems like they are already doing this to an extent). Both these task forces should have authority and autonomy in their respective taskings and they need to be genuine, it means nothing if it s just a facade and they re met with resistance when performing their duties or top level management rejects or ignores their findings. The formation of these kinds of task forces would have shown a commitment to finding and resolving the issues on the side of Newegg. Right now it feels a little too, let s do a few easy things and hope that gets us out of the spotlight to me. I do like that they did execute on a few of your suggestions though.
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BOOMDANGHOLLA
My experiences with online retailers (not said company in particular) is receiving open box items sold as NEW and not labeled like new. As a shopper id like to know if my item purchased has been recertified/tampered/inspected etc...after it leaves the manufacturer in any way for many reasons. when a return comes in, even if the item is deemed brand new, fact of the matter is, its not. It may not have the factory seal, factory packing so forth. And to me, it matters. It can be really disappointing during your unboxing experience when you realize that someone other than the manufacturer has went through your box or worse has missing hardware or damaged components. I rely solely on online shopping to survive, so having any negative experience with a company no matter how small, not only affects my future interactions but also my livelihood. There are retailers that will never again get my business for those reasons.
thnx to GN for shedding some light on the issues and putting a company as newegg on blast. i hope that this event ripples and reaches other online retailers, so that they may learn and improve as well. We must all improve for futures sake.
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My experiences with online retailers (not said company in particular) is receiving open box items sold as NEW and not labeled like new. As a shopper id like to know if my item purchased has been recertified/tampered/inspected etc...after it leaves the manufacturer in any way for many reasons. when a return comes in, even if the item is deemed brand new, fact of the matter is, its not. It may not have the factory seal, factory packing so forth. And to me, it matters. It can be really disappointing during your unboxing experience when you realize that someone other than the manufacturer has went through your box or worse has missing hardware or damaged components. I rely solely on online shopping to survive, so having any negative experience with a company no matter how small, not only affects my future interactions but also my livelihood. There are retailers that will never again get my business for those reasons.
thnx to GN for shedding some light on the issues and putting a company as newegg on blast. i hope that this event ripples and reaches other online retailers, so that they may learn and improve as well. We must all improve for futures sake.
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Tom
Yes, very unconvincing. It reminds me of meetings I had when I was working at an engineering company. These guys only know how to talk. But they are dangling around the topic! In my opinion they should tell us:
- They'll instruct their employees to do stricter reviews of RMA's, quality control for open box items, and a list of faults that won't go for resale (like bended cpu pins).
- Maybe have employees with more experience once in a while double check employees with less experience
- Most of all, instruct their costumer service to be more in favor of the costumer
- A plan to oversee these changes being implemented
It's not that hard. I've done costumer service at a rental company, we were instructed if a costumer wasn't happy you are allowed to give them their money back. Like you said Steve, I can literally bring anything back to Amazon, and they'll confirm it and it's done. I've never had any issue where they doubted the cause.
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Yes, very unconvincing. It reminds me of meetings I had when I was working at an engineering company. These guys only know how to talk. But they are dangling around the topic! In my opinion they should tell us:
- They'll instruct their employees to do stricter reviews of RMA's, quality control for open box items, and a list of faults that won't go for resale (like bended cpu pins).
- Maybe have employees with more experience once in a while double check employees with less experience
- Most of all, instruct their costumer service to be more in favor of the costumer
- A plan to oversee these changes being implemented
It's not that hard. I've done costumer service at a rental company, we were instructed if a costumer wasn't happy you are allowed to give them their money back. Like you said Steve, I can literally bring anything back to Amazon, and they'll confirm it and it's done. I've never had any issue where they doubted the cause.
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xGodofAcidx
They still won't do what they needed to do all along, come clean about this with no excuses, or else the apology isn't genuine. They start off with repeated apologies, and that devolves into the guy claiming it was an honest mistake and asking why they'd screw their customers.. that question sounds like a person caught red handed resorting to What could my motive possibly be? There is none . Well, this one is insultingly simple: If a company is dishonest, and they can add some extra money to the quarterly profit numbers, there's your reason. I came into this being a former Newegg customer because of how they treated me the one time I had to use their customer service, but willing to give them a second chance, and I can confidently say they have flushed that right down the toilet by their unwillingness to own what they did here (not just to Steve but to thousands of customers over the years) in a genuine manner.
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They still won't do what they needed to do all along, come clean about this with no excuses, or else the apology isn't genuine. They start off with repeated apologies, and that devolves into the guy claiming it was an honest mistake and asking why they'd screw their customers.. that question sounds like a person caught red handed resorting to What could my motive possibly be? There is none . Well, this one is insultingly simple: If a company is dishonest, and they can add some extra money to the quarterly profit numbers, there's your reason. I came into this being a former Newegg customer because of how they treated me the one time I had to use their customer service, but willing to give them a second chance, and I can confidently say they have flushed that right down the toilet by their unwillingness to own what they did here (not just to Steve but to thousands of customers over the years) in a genuine manner.
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Kaiden
Let me be a bit of the Devil's advocate. It does not matter who the corporation is, it is a common policy, for any corporation, to not publically commit to anything without it going through proper procedure. You're not dealing with a sole-prop here, a corporation is an entity that lives at the will of its shareholders, not the executives, this is all the more important when the shareholders are the public. Making commitments, publically, without following procedure looks like you're going rogue. It's standard practice for any commitment to be subject to internal scrutiny before being publicized, in fact, I'd be more concerned if they were making commitments on the spot, as it would be indicative of a broken corporate structure at best or blatant dishonesty. You weren't going to get any commitments that weren't already previously discussed, and that's to be expected.
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Let me be a bit of the Devil's advocate. It does not matter who the corporation is, it is a common policy, for any corporation, to not publically commit to anything without it going through proper procedure. You're not dealing with a sole-prop here, a corporation is an entity that lives at the will of its shareholders, not the executives, this is all the more important when the shareholders are the public. Making commitments, publically, without following procedure looks like you're going rogue. It's standard practice for any commitment to be subject to internal scrutiny before being publicized, in fact, I'd be more concerned if they were making commitments on the spot, as it would be indicative of a broken corporate structure at best or blatant dishonesty. You weren't going to get any commitments that weren't already previously discussed, and that's to be expected.
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burdenking
Tbf a 1 - 2 hr meeting rarely accomplishes anything especially if it involves fixing an issue that predates the tenure of the party involved.
Anyone that wants to keep their jobs or at the least still be a viable for candidate for promotion in a not so distant future. They'll be walking in egg shells in a meeting like this and would rather resort to corporate speak than to go off script and accidentally make their current scenario worse.
Since the issue had been a long running one, there's almost no way the rank and file wouldn't know about it.
If it involves cooperation with one or more 3rd party company and there being real corruption along the approval chain the issue is well beyond the payroll of middle management.
If office politics is a factor in the issue, I doubt a new hire would willingly take on that task.
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Tbf a 1 - 2 hr meeting rarely accomplishes anything especially if it involves fixing an issue that predates the tenure of the party involved.
Anyone that wants to keep their jobs or at the least still be a viable for candidate for promotion in a not so distant future. They'll be walking in egg shells in a meeting like this and would rather resort to corporate speak than to go off script and accidentally make their current scenario worse.
Since the issue had been a long running one, there's almost no way the rank and file wouldn't know about it.
If it involves cooperation with one or more 3rd party company and there being real corruption along the approval chain the issue is well beyond the payroll of middle management.
If office politics is a factor in the issue, I doubt a new hire would willingly take on that task.
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coppercount
What concerns me is the statement of the VP of CS calling his subordinates, colleagues below him, customers , as this was a good thing. In my opinion (and having worked for someone saying something similar) this allows management disassociate and not feel responsible for what their customers do and their well-being. Customers, in the worst case, are they . Customers are a foreign entity that you try to exploit for your benefit. You are not trying to improve things with customers, you are trying generate a revenue stream maybe through repeat business with the same customer. But in the end you could succeed in a different manner as well... Customer satisfaction is more a by-product of the relationship.
Having this mentality towards your employees .... for me, that is not a good sign.
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What concerns me is the statement of the VP of CS calling his subordinates, colleagues below him, customers , as this was a good thing. In my opinion (and having worked for someone saying something similar) this allows management disassociate and not feel responsible for what their customers do and their well-being. Customers, in the worst case, are they . Customers are a foreign entity that you try to exploit for your benefit. You are not trying to improve things with customers, you are trying generate a revenue stream maybe through repeat business with the same customer. But in the end you could succeed in a different manner as well... Customer satisfaction is more a by-product of the relationship.
Having this mentality towards your employees .... for me, that is not a good sign.
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