Beware of Refurbished/Open Box Video Cards, outside of missing accessories and DOA.

L

lgestle

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2004
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I have bought/sold many items with individuals and retailers but this one is up there. I have read packing horror stories from transactions between individuals but I thought I would never get an item packed this poorly from this company. I must admit I have made allot of purchases, probably as much as the average [H]er, but with this company I have purchases dating back several years.

I have purchased refurbished/open box products prior (probably <1% of my total purchases from this company) and expect missing boxes, accessories, and/or DOA items but I never thought I would get an item DOA caused by shipping neglect. Took a chance...

Customer service has already taken care of my issue, but thought I would warn the community that you need to consider this risk. Personally I'm done with purchasing openbox/refurbish items.



Not a big concern as there was no padding above the box, but as long as the smaller box had some type of insulation I would consider adequate.
HD48501.jpg


This is when I started to panick. No insulation or padding around the card, this is how it came with nothing removed.
At this point I was going to send an email, but thought maybe I (or I should say the retailer) got away with this packing neglect
HD48502.jpg


Guess not:(
HD48503.jpg
 
Thats awful :(

I could only imagine how sad/pissed I would be after waiting for a nice card.

g/l with the RMA

-dave
 
Damn, that capacitor is really bent there. Does the card itself still work? If it did, I would still send in a complaint to save other people possibly from this.

That's some pretty piss poor packaging done.
 
I am going to take a wild guess and say this was sent from newegg open box?

ROFL my heatsink I ordered open box was sent in the same box + packaging but it was a heatsink so I couldn't care less :)
 
The etailer was my first contact and they received the same pictures. To get the point accross I didn't use the customer service line I found a contact higher up via another method. From there they took care of my issue and informed me they are escalating the issue internally. That was my primary objective as I didn't want this to occur with anyone else. As far as my purchase I'm taken care of, but still I'm out time but really that was a gamble to begin with on open box/refurbished items.
I think I was more dissapointed that there was no other signs of wear on this card so I'm assuming it was an ASUS new replacement. You can't blame asus, and so I lost that route if I even wanted to get an RMA with them. Nor could you blame UPS because it was poorly packed.
It may have worked fine prior to shipment, but I didn't even want to risk the rest of my machine because who knows what else is broken/shorted out.
This may have been a single incident, but at the same time to have this type of neglect had me worried.
I have seen other very bad traders sell defective items with very similar poor packaging styles. The arguement they have was it was broken, so why should I package it like it was new. The arguement can be made that the other person had a chance to repair it if it was packaged properly, but the way it was shipped now it's destroyed.
Maybe I got a little carried away but that thought came across my mind that company (maybe just isolated to an individual) was following similar practices (ie Not new, so why should we take extra care). Hopefully this was not the case but just a heads up and hopefuly I'm the rare exception that has to deal with it.
 
Same thing happened with a motherboard.
The SATA cables and the backplate were missing.
Pay cheap get cheap!
 
aZn_plyR said:
I am going to take a wild guess and say this was sent from newegg open box?

ROFL my heatsink I ordered open box was sent in the same box + packaging but it was a heatsink so I couldn't care less :)
Click to expand...

The packaging doesn't look like Newegg open box... IIRC they don't use bags of air...
 
remmeh said:
The packaging doesn't look like Newegg open box... IIRC they don't use bags of air...
Click to expand...

They do now. My last two open-box orders (both last June) used airbag things.

RadXge said:
Same thing happened with a motherboard.
The SATA cables and the backplate were missing.
Pay cheap get cheap!
Click to expand...

This isn't about missing "accessories," that's normal and is included in the fine print. This is about an item that's supposed to be in working condition, but isn't.
 
This is becoming a problem beyond refurbished parts. I bought a new OEM HDD from a famous e-tailer :) which came the same damn way. It had some bubble wrap around around an open HDD and a bit scotch tape. Thrown in a shipping box 5x too big with no popcorn or other protection. Later, I bought a case which was shipped to me in the original retail box, no extra packing at all. The box arrived beat to hell, but the case (out of sheer luck) was not damaged.
 
I had bought an Open Box 8800GT the other week, it came exactly like that :(.

Nothing broke runs like a champ :D!

Did your card work?
 
reminds me of my antec twelve hundred case. bought it new, when it arrived the side panel fan mount had fallen off, along with the grill that goes over the window. I thought I was going to have to RMA it, but I managed to fix it with a few extra screws. It's still a little wobbley and vibrates sometimes though.

/sigh
 
RadXge said:
Same thing happened with a motherboard.
The SATA cables and the backplate were missing.
Pay cheap get cheap!
Click to expand...

actually, if you got any accessories at all you came out ahead, open boxes are just the item itself in most cases and don't guarantee the accessories, missing SATA cables and backplate should've been expected...
 
Only time I've ever had an issue with selling was I sold a video card to someone on eBay. They claimed it didn't work which I knew was BS since it was pulled from a working gaming system. When I got the card back from him, the molex power plug was broken off and there were a bunch of glue pieces in the box from the heatsink clips. I think he tried pulling the heatsink or something. Either way, Paypal refunded me since he tried to fight me on the refund.

I did buy an open-box x800XT back in the day. It did not work in any 3d games (kept blue screening), and the drivers would not install. Thankfully, it was ATI brand and the serial was never registered. So I warrantied it and got a brand new card :)
 
ya newegg is terrible with packing as with most other company's.. newegg has robots that do most of it i belive that may be the problem.. instead of buying openbox i just buy used with warranty from someone that knows what they are doing when shipping..


recently got a few hds from newegg wrapped in only paper so i know they are bad.. id just push that cap back down and try it out
 
My mobo has a few capacitors that look like they're bent.. But this was a retail, unopened box. Should I be worried or are a few slightly bent capacitors normal? It's also possible they got bent during installation I suppose..

 
I recently bought a Shuttle XPC open box from Newegg and yeah, yeah I know about accessories but come on, not a single one was in the box! Seriously didn't the douche who returned could of sent the cables and whatever back?
 
Yea it just got 2 Hard drives from Newgg 2 640 WD's.. They didn't put enough peanuts in the box to keep them from hitting into each outher.. One was dead the other worked fine..Sent the other back got a new one.. Running great in Raid 0 now.. Also ordered a Antec 300 and they just sent it in the retail box and UPS left it at the door I was like nice...When I have ordered computer cases from Koolance and other places they always put the case inside of anougther box like it should be shipped...
 
JimmiG said:
My mobo has a few capacitors that look like they're bent.. But this was a retail, unopened box. Should I be worried or are a few slightly bent capacitors normal? It's also possible they got bent during installation I suppose..

Click to expand...

Don't be worried. The capacitors aren't really 'bent', just leaning over. If they were bent they probably would have snapped off seeing as how close they are to the motherboard.
 
killster1 said:
ya newegg is terrible with packing as with most other company's.. newegg has robots that do most of it i belive that may be the problem.. instead of buying openbox i just buy used with warranty from someone that knows what they are doing when shipping..


recently got a few hds from newegg wrapped in only paper so i know they are bad.. id just push that cap back down and try it out
Click to expand...

Their robots gather the items for an order, but an actual person checks them and packs them. There was a video tour of one of their facilities a while back.

Their packing varies a LOT. I ordered a DVD burner and a heatsink a couple months ago. The DVD burner was bare in a 10x10x8 box filled with peanuts to the point that the top was bulging. The heatsink was in a retail box inside a 8x8x6 box that had a couple airbags. .
 
I don't see the problem of shipping a case in it's retail box, unless it's made from something that's going to crack.

The 3 cases I've bought from Newegg over the last few months haven't had a single problem caused by shipping, and they were shipped in the retail box.
 
AVT said:
I don't see the problem of shipping a case in it's retail box, unless it's made from something that's going to crack.

The 3 cases I've bought from Newegg over the last few months haven't had a single problem caused by shipping, and they were shipped in the retail box.
Click to expand...

I think the only problem he was concerned with was not so much protection as much as it was for theft concerns.

Regarding Openbox:
Personally newegg requires all original materials to be sent back for an RMA. What is odd is Asus only requires the hardware intself with no accessories.

I suspect they are tossing all the original boxes, items, and accessories as there's no value for them to store any of these. I don't blame them as I could only imagine they would need a seperate warehouse to store all of this stuff.

Part of the blame I would also leave with the vendor. Example I just received an Asus HD3850 that was on sale from a different retailer. When the box arrived I had to question what I ordered as it was 4ft long. I was trying to recall if someone bought me guitar hero or something of that nature. When I opened up the box the retail Asus Box for this card was huge with the actual card only taking maybe <20% of the actual retail box. I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but this was extreme overkill.

I would like to think newegg is just tossing these boxes to save on inventory space, instead of someone seeing that huge box that this HD4850 originally came with and said F* that and removed it entirely. Nothing wrong with that concept but they need to package the items safely. I consider the retail packaging the standard, so it's almost a double edged sword for these places. They need to spend more on shipping this items to protect them safely if they plan on tossing the original packaging. If they keep all the original boxes, they need to spend money on storage.

What I thought was odd was the new retails HD3850 that was well packed and in a 4ft box was 100$ shipped with a 30$ rebate ($8 shipping). The Openbox HD4850 was 152$ shipped and it came in that condition ($9.50 shipping). Both etailers shipped from california.
I know openboxes are probably a pain for any etailer, but I don't think they should be selling them if they're not willing to spend the effort to pack them properly . So in this case they saved a few dollars not keeping/shipping in the original box but now they damaged a HD4850 worth 130-150 dollars.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Yea it just got 2 Hard drives from Newgg 2 640 WD's.. They didn't put enough peanuts in the box to keep them from hitting into each outher.. One was dead the other worked fine..Sent the other back got a new one.. Running great in Raid 0 now
Click to expand...


Sometimes it takes weeks or months for the bad sectors to appear. If 1 HD died, then it's a fair bet the other one also sustained damage. You're nuts to accept either one.
 
I gave up on open box / refurb items after having to RMA 3 of them and realizing that the shipping costs were eating up the piddly savings.

I could go off on a rant about how lame I think it is that everyone sticks you with shipping after they sell you a POS... but im going to refrain.
 
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