One Bad Egg

This post is a complaint about the online seller Newegg. Our two sons ordered us a flat screen TV for Christmas from them. It arrived while we were in Ann Arbor. While Dan was at home, he unpacked the TV and powered it up. It did not work. His photo below shows its ‘picture’ right out of the box:

Bad Newegg TV

Earlier this month I returned the broken TV to Newegg. Following their return policy, I obtained a return code (RMA #). I had never dealt with Newegg before, but have had frequent interactions with Amazon. I am even an Amazon Prime member. My experiences with Amazon led me to believe that Newegg would treat me in a similar professional and satisfactory manner.

Monday, I learned how wrong I was. Newegg had sent an email saying that the TV was broken and that they were sending it back to me and the email included a link to the manufacturer, with a suggestion that I should contact them, because it appeared to me that Newegg was not accepting any responsibility. Calls to the Newegg customer service line yielded other conflicting instructions like when I receive the TV again, I should launch an appeal to the shipper. Since now the TV has crisscrossed the country three times, I don’t hold out much hope that any sort of appeal will be fruitful.

I feel like I’ve been ripped-off. It is not just about the money, although I do still expect restitution. I feel like I have been cheated and I want justice. To this end, I will play out the final hand of this appeal process, even though I don’t think that it will go anywhere. More importantly though I want to get the word out about how Newegg has treated me and let the court of public opinion judge.