Newegg - sigh

M

madcoder

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 30, 2005
Messages
288
Well I should have known better. I bought into the Newegg deal on the Hitachi drives this past week. I ordered 5. They showed up pushed into the corner block of one of those big styrofoam inserts that normally hold 20 in a larger box. They had just broken off the corner of one of those, 5 drives worth, and then wrapped that in a single strip of bubble wrap. That was in a large box, with just a little bit of brown shipping paper in the bottom. The problem with this, besides the fact that it can fly all around the inside of that big box, is that those large styrofoam box inserts have a clamshell design, meaning that the top 20% of the hard drives sticks out, and then the expectation is that the matching TOP piece is joined to the 20 drive box, so that the drives are fully surrounded by the syrofoam. Newegg is so stupid, they think that a single layer of bubble wrap can protect the 20% of those 5 drives I bought sticking out of the side of the chunk of styrofoam. Needless to say, not only were 3 of the ESD bags having pinhole punctures from impacts during transit, one drive has a physical dimple on the face where the label goes. That one works (still stress testing them though). 2 are completely DOA. The question is do I trust the remaining 3, because they will go into a RAID6 array of 12, which will hold RAW photo files. I do keep backups, but I don't want to have these 3 remaining ones fail. Do I return them all and take the hit, or stress test these 3 working ones and if ok for a few weeks, keep them? I am really annoyed. I should have believed all the stories people post.

Cliffs:
-Bought 5 drives on Newegg special
-Newegg, with their lackadaisical approach to shipping has caused me to receive 2 of the drives DOA
-Trust the remaining 3 or return all?
-Never buy drives from Newegg
:mad:
 
:D

Would have expected NewEgg to know how to package HDDs properly. They ship so many of them that poor packaging must be hurting their profit at some point. That is assuming you RMA them. I certainly wouldn't be happy to receive disks that way, as i know how sensitive HDDs can be.
 
RAM all of them. Physically call them and speak with as high up of a manager as you can get.

Ask them to be packed by the manager himself so that they know that they will be packaged correctly.
 
Yeah, this is what I am thinking. The most annoying part is before putting them into long term usage, I was planning to use them as an extra redundant backup for some other data I have because I am moving this coming week, and anyone who has moved a data center before knows that at least a few drives don't survive the move. Now I need to go out to a local retailer and buy some this weekend full price.
 
OMG, this is even more disconcerting!

The shipping address on the box says it came from:

RMA Warehouse
Whittier CA

BAHHH. I am pissed. I have always internet ordered drives from MWave in the past, and those always came extremely well packed or even in the full 20 pack/styrofoam casing.
 
Is the proposed "higher manager" that was suggest working on the weekend, or should I wait until Monday to call them? I have lots of experience working out consumer issues and even in multi-million dollar negotiations, so I can probably "handle" them once I get the guy on the phone. However I do appreciate any anecdotes others may have related to dealing with Newegg specifically in a successful manner on cases like this. I do not expect to have to pay any fees or extra shipping, and the new ones should be well packed, and overnight shipped.
 
madcoder said:
The shipping address on the box says it came from:

RMA Warehouse
Whittier CA
Click to expand...

I don't think that means they were returned parts. I often see the from address as "RMA Warehouse" on my newegg orders, and I'm pretty sure they did not slip in returned parts on those orders.
 
I'd try to re-pack them exactly as you remember receiving them, and take pictures. That should help a lot when you contact newegg.
 
Good luck with that, and let us know how it turns out. Newegg has definitely dropped the ball before when it comes to shipping HDDs but hopefully they will make it right in terms of CS.

Next time, try Amazon. I've started placing more orders there where in the past, I wouldn't look any further than Newegg. Prices are usually competitive, items are packed well, and I haven't had to deal with their CS but I've heard it's extremely good also.
 
Yeah, Amazon normally has prices equal to Newegg, has free shipping on most everything, and has great customer service. I stopped shopping at Newegg when I moved to HI because they screw you on shipping, but I doubt I'll go back even when I move back to the mainland.
 
I bought into the Newegg deal on the Hitachi drives this past week. I ordered 5. They showed up pushed into the corner block of one of those big styrofoam inserts that normally hold 20 in a larger box. They had just broken off the corner of one of those, 5 drives worth, and then wrapped that in a single strip of bubble wrap
Click to expand...

They did this to me at work around 3 years ago but in my case there was only tape covering the open end of the Styrofoam pack and the 5 drives when shipped in peanuts ended up sitting in the box drive side down on the bottom with no peanuts below. I believe out of the 5 I had to RMA 3 of those drives before the first 6 months. I am not sure of the other 2. They were 320 GB Seagate 7200.10s.
 
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I never had a problem with newegg's packaging. All of the drives I received where well packaged. Maybe it is the shipper who packaged. Maybe he got lazy. That stinks though. Contact them and see what they have to say.
 
NOW, another one has failed. I had taken the 3 ones that were not DOA, and put them in a simple RAID5. It got to 98% initialization, and then one of them died completely. So 2 were DOA, and 1 more died upon initialization, which represents only a few hours of usage. They are definitely ALL going back. Stupid Newegg. What a waste of time and money. I will never buy again from Newegg.

I think the dozen or so people who take my advice on computer and electronic purchases will be interested to know about my experience, and I suppose my story can add to the untold number of these stories here on the H.

I'm going to ask for a full refund, without the 15% restock fee.
 
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Yeah they have been shipping like this for a while... Usually, its packed in a box thats about the same size so it doesnt move around. I have received a medium box w/the half styrofoam and bubblewrap around the whole brick all taped up. I stress test for a day or two and then test create a raid6 array, then stress it some more.
Usually I buy other items to help fill out the box. If I get a hard drive brick of 5 drives thats damaged, I take pics, call/email and request an RMA on all drives. Sometimes they ship new ones, sometimes they just refund. Sometimes I get new drives packed well, sometimes I dont. I haven't tracked which warehouse they come from, but overall, the stuff shipped from the East Coast is better...

I also take pictures of the boxes and the unboxing and the drives themselves. If they fail in testing I will RMA back to Newegg for new ones or if they only offer a refund, I'll rma back to manufacturer. The few times I've had to do this, I've received brand new drives from WD with full 3 year+2months warranty.

I buy 5 drives now, expecting one to fail sooner rather than later... I also have started to split my drive purchases between various companies since my DELL fiasco, where 8/7 drives I purchased all failed in a year... yes, one of the drives I RMAd from DELL died a month after I got it back... I blame poor handling on Dell and their one year Dell warranty...
Since then, I split between newegg, mwave, zzf, and amazon now... although I'm really wishing I could get sales on drives in cases of 10-20...
 
newegg's oem harddrive packaging is notoriously bad. They often just place drives in bubble wrap alone in cardboard boxes.

It's kind of funny because I looked into replacing a hitachi hard drive through manufacturer warranty, and they require that you ship it in its own special foam packaging fit to each drive, and if you don't they will void your warranty. This means that newegg has technically already voided your manufacturer warranty with their crappy shipping. :(

that being said, I just bought 10 hitachi 2TB drives (not oem since the price was the same), haven't really stress tested them yet, but so far they are all initialized in 2 raid5 arrays just fine, and I haven't had any problems.
 
I too used to order 90% of my PC froms newegg.

Amazon gets more of my business now, and newegg less.
 
After the post I read yesterday on this site about Newegg and my war story contribution to it, it is becoming apparent that something is amiss at Newegg and it is not good. . . .I think next time I am in SoCal I am going to take a drive to Whitter and see what is making the Egg crack . .
 
To me, it started going downhill when they dropped their free Fedex shipping and switched to UPS for their main shipping. Thats when I started receiving dented and squished boxes and soon after that I noticed drives being wrapped in bubble wrap and shoved in boxes of foam peanuts that were probably not recyclable...
ive noticed amazon and dell packaging has gotten much better and more eco-friendly. less peanuts which create less weight and less cost and just shrinkwrapping things to cardboard that fit perfectly in the box. It reminds me of ordering memory from mushkin and having it arrive in an airbubble... yeah a small box suspended inside an air bubble like baloon...it was cool...
 
blargsauce said:
newegg's oem harddrive packaging is notoriously bad. They often just place drives in bubble wrap alone in cardboard boxes.

It's kind of funny because I looked into replacing a hitachi hard drive through manufacturer warranty, and they require that you ship it in its own special foam packaging fit to each drive, and if you don't they will void your warranty. This means that newegg has technically already voided your manufacturer warranty with their crappy shipping. :(

that being said, I just bought 10 hitachi 2TB drives (not oem since the price was the same), haven't really stress tested them yet, but so far they are all initialized in 2 raid5 arrays just fine, and I haven't had any problems.
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lucky you. peanuts for the win and bubbles on top and bottom. they have casings in the hdd's when you opened them up of course all HDD's are stuck in antistatic bags. i don't think those plastic casings are even helpful and on top of that getting flipped around.

did you complain to newegg already and they say anything? POST A REVIEW on their site and what happened. Pics would've been a good idea also. sorry to hear about your DOA hdd's.

PSST. go with f3's :]
 
cyclone3d said:
RAM all of them. Physically call them and speak with as high up of a manager as you can get.

Ask them to be packed by the manager himself so that they know that they will be packaged correctly.
Click to expand...

You bought a few hundred dollars of equipment and you want a manager to handle the order personally. Maybe the president of UPS could hand deliver them also. Maybe a head engineer for WD could oversee the assembly of the drive.

Some people have too high of expectations.

I have bought from NewEgg for a decade. No hard drive was ever damaged in shipping.

There are enough hard drives sold that it would be unusual if someone did not recieve a dozen bad drives at one time.
 
GeorgeHR said:
There are enough hard drives sold that it would be unusual if someone did not recieve a dozen bad drives at one time.
Click to expand...

It would be a lot more unusual if newegg packed them competently. A lot of newegg's hard drive packing is just negligent.

In the case of the original poster, they could have double or triple bubble-wrapped the top of the brick. Even better, they should have used small bubble wrap (the big bubble wrap has too big gaps between bubbles and usually exposes hard drive corners), and also put a piece of foam on top of the ends of the drives sticking out.

That is not rocket science. And it is not terribly expensive, especially given how much newegg charges for shipping and handling.
 
Hi,
I agree with the above poster. It would only take a little more effort to avoid the problems. They would probably even be fine with the little bubble wrap, if they weren't then placed in a box 4 times bigger than that, such that they fly around the inside of the box during transit.

Here is the summary of what happened...follow up:

I called Newegg, and told them what happened, and that I needed to buy drives locally because of a deadline I had. I told them that I expected to get a full refund, without penalty. He agreed, and set it up, along with sending me a UPS prepaid return shipping label by email. Cool.
 
The ironic part is that even though 3 of them are broken, I will now ship them back PROPERLY packed. Luckily, I have some of the boxes that the retail ones come in, that I can use.
 
I doubt I'll buy any more OEM drives from Newegg until they get shipping under control, but I'll still buy retail drives like the Hitachi 2TB on sale recently. I recently bought OEM drives from Zipzoomfly and Ewiz and the packing from both places was fantastic. Zipzoomfly put the drive in a foam box which was then put IN a box of peanuts, not on the bottom of a box of peanuts like Newegg usually does. Ewiz shipped my drives in the foam container they receive them in which was also in a box of peanuts. However the ZZF drive was still bad and their RMA service leaves much to be desired so YMMV there.
 
My SSD just came in a envelope. Probably not as big of deal as a normal HD, but still. :rolleyes:
 
The good thing is Newegg usually doesn't have the best deal on 2TB HDs, especially for Californians, so I don't have to order from them. :)
 
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