The response here has been a surge of "I'd do more business with Newegg because of this." I stated my point. I agree with this point of the article, but I wouldn't do business with these guys.
For the record, the letter previously published outlined exactly what happened. They shipped me an item that came out of the box broken. When I wrote to them they responded acknowledging, and issued an RMA. When they received the item they denied the return. I wrote back this was unacceptable. After a further week of no response I disputed the charge. At that point Newegg updated the status to "Repair". They shipped me back the "Replacement Item", and I put these things in quote because it references their language, when in fact it was the same broken item that I received. I reopened the dispute, demonstrating with photography exactly what happened. I wrote that I intended to re-open the dispute, at which point I received a refund from Amex.
I am surprised I am losing karma for this. For what? An opposing view? I've been nothing but genuine here. If you want to know who I am you don't need to analyze the parts of the small % of the letters that weren't redacted. Google my e-mail address. It's in my public profile.
IMO you're getting downvoted [sidenote: I wouldn't worry about karma so much] because your complaint is sort of analogous to complaining about higher prices at the Mom-and-Pop store across the street from the Walmart Supercenter.
Newegg's "strict" RMA policies are often compared to the much-larger Amazon, who practically allows you to set a purchased item ablaze and return it for a full refund, no questions asked. Amazon will even pay for the return shipping in most cases.
Sure, you can get better customer service from Amazon, just like you can get the same brand-name products from Walmart for cheaper than the Mom-and-Pop, but "supporting" a business typically implies sacrificing some sort of convenience (or money) because you believe in a business's philosophy. Since you were eventually reimbursed for the defective merchandise, you actually fared pretty well.
I think you're missing the point. off topic ranting about why you don't like newegg is why you're being voted down. it has no relevance to the topic no matter how important it feels to you.
I say this having no particular allegiance to newegg. I'm simply pointing out something you don't seem to understand.
> "I am surprised I am losing karma for this. For what? An opposing view?"
As I said above, here on HN, mere truth is not enough to make us consider a comment to be a positive contribution. We select for interesting and directly relevant comments. Your comment is honest, but doesn't particularly add value to the discussion; you might consider it relevant, but I find it tangential and uninteresting.
Downvotes are the HN community's way of signaling that this is not the sort of comment we'd like you to make on this story.
>"As I said above, here on HN, mere truth is not enough to make us consider a comment to be a positive contribution."
It sounds like you'd like to think your community-of-choice is unique, but get over it. There is no "we" here, nor is there some amazing comment quality optimization going on. This place goes hive-mind like any other forum on the internet. "We're" not special.
> "you'd like to think your community-of-choice is unique"
All communities are unique. This is the only community I know of that obsesses over a guy who makes bingo cards for a living. That doesn't mean we're necessarily better than other communities, just that we have our own specific approach to downvotes that people coming from other communities might be surprised by. (In particular, we usually downvote tangential/uninteresting comments, memes, and humor -- edw519 is an exception because his humor is typically both topical and side-splittingly entertaining.)
The person in question posted one of those types of comments, and then asked why it was being poorly received. He has now been educated as to what "we", in aggregate, are looking for.
For the record, the letter previously published outlined exactly what happened. They shipped me an item that came out of the box broken. When I wrote to them they responded acknowledging, and issued an RMA. When they received the item they denied the return. I wrote back this was unacceptable. After a further week of no response I disputed the charge. At that point Newegg updated the status to "Repair". They shipped me back the "Replacement Item", and I put these things in quote because it references their language, when in fact it was the same broken item that I received. I reopened the dispute, demonstrating with photography exactly what happened. I wrote that I intended to re-open the dispute, at which point I received a refund from Amex.
I am surprised I am losing karma for this. For what? An opposing view? I've been nothing but genuine here. If you want to know who I am you don't need to analyze the parts of the small % of the letters that weren't redacted. Google my e-mail address. It's in my public profile.
Also, if you want to fight patent trolls, support EFF. They don't have t-shirts, but they do have hoodies: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/nsa-spying-hooded-sweatshirt