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Some Newegg Customers Received Fake Intel Core i7s
Several readers have mentioned the strange goods that some customers received from Newegg in place of the Intel Core i7 920 processor they ordered. Word on the problem first surfaced on TribalWar on Thursday evening. Newegg still hasn't commented on this. It's not known whether it happened as a result fraud by another Newegg customer, in shipping, or where. The "processors" are made of aluminum, and the "fans" are some kind of synthetic molded material. The "factory seal" was printed onto the box; the holographic stickers on the boxes were also faked. The first part of this video shows the bogus goods. At this writing Google News lists a handful of blogs mentioning the fakes.
The display models would come in real boxes with correct spellings, possibly with some disclaimer about the parts inside not being real.
Also the parts inside would probably be real ones that failed quality control so they would look a lot more realistic.
They won't shoot themselves on their foot like this. As someone said, problem must be in some other part of the distribution chain.
Newegg's reputation is a critical part of their business, people buy on newegg because they expect that - on these type of situations - newegg won't screw the customer.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
There is no way they are directly involved and there is no way they won't make good on the substitute goods. NewEgg will likely ship out replacement processors to those who got fakes and deal with the matter themselves. From all my experiences with them, they have given me 0.00 trouble when dealing with a return or exchange. There are few companies I recommend to anyone, but newegg is one of them. There will be no "egg" on their faces when this is all settled. Above everything else, newegg values its reputation and treats its customers right.
(Should they not send replacement processors to the customers, I will presume there is good reason... they have always treated me well.)
These look like professionally done asian counterfeits to me. It's quite likely organized criminals are involved since it took a lot of resources to custom print the boxes and labels, and make the foam HSFs and fake cpus.
This isn't something the average joe or jane can do in his or her grandma's basement, you've got to have access to professional printing equipment at the very least.
Chances are a substantial number of real CPUs were stolen and replaced with these fakes.
ya like this is what they really should be focusing on organized CRIME
not some kid downloading a music or tv episode.
Look at all the comments here. Reputation is a major thing.
If a company has a reputation for doing right by its customers, as long as addresses a situation like this, it will be OK.
Now compare this to the reputation that Fry's or Tiger Direct had (don't know if either has improved). Would they get the benefit of the doubt this way?
Just goes to show that doing good is just good business.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Newegg is aware of a shipping error that occurred with certain recent orders of the Intel Core i7-920 CPU. After investigating the issue internally it appears one of our long term partners mistakenly shipped a small number of demo boxes instead of functional units. Our customer service team has already begun proactively reaching out to the affected customers. In line with our commitment to ensure total customer satisfaction, we are doing everything in our power to resolve the issue as soon as possible and with the least amount of inconvenience to our customers."
Why would Intel make a demo box with multiple spelling errors like a poor chinese user manual, and include stapled blank paper and broken plastic parts, and then get it mixed up in the mfg. channel? NO CHANCE. PERIOD.
This is obviously corporate communication lies. I wonder why Newegg, with a large set of loyal customers feel the need to lie so blatantly to its customers. Do they think they are idiots, or is lying just accepted?
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Agreed, seems a little elaborate for a customer or even Newegg insider, I wonder if their supplier is playing fast and loose with the merchandise. A white plastic mold of a fan with a sticker of flan blades on top? That's going far for a simple return.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The first link says "After investigating the issue internally it appears one of our long term partners mistakenly shipped a small number of demo boxes..."
My ass. Demo units with misspellings? Give me a break.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's called "diplomacy" and "dodging potential legal charges". Yes, a statement like that, given what people are saying, sounds ridiculous and utterly absurd to us, but what are you expecting them to say on official or semi-official channels? "After investigating the issue internally, it appears one of our long-term partners are fucking retards who thought they could get away with blatant fraud"? Saying anything like that would get them run up on slander in a heartbeat. Even implying it was anything remotely illegal on their distributors' ends could get them in legal hot water. Even if they could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was willfully fraudulent and a company-wide conspiracy at the distributor to screw over Newegg and its customers, they'd still have legal fees and time wasted to deal with it. Sorry, man; that's the legal system for you.
And after all is said and done, that distributor, who may have served them well for years and was suffering a single isolated incident at the time, wouldn't be so eager to continue doing business with Newegg, costing them a chunk of their supply chain. Not to mention the PR disaster that would result as cooler-headed customers would start to wonder what's going on with a company that flies off the handle and calls out their partners publicly like that.
Rather, the better answer would be to appear as diplomatic as possible in official channels, not assign blame directly, offer refunds or exchanges as customers demand, and quietly drop the distributor under breach of contract grounds if Newegg finds reason not to trust their cheating asses any more. Demanding any more from them is just letting petty bitterness boil over.
And alternatively, how much more detail were you expecting them to give in one tweet? :-)
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
What the hell is twitter?
Listserv for the ADD generation.
There is NO way it is a customer snowjob, as according to this even Newegg admits it was done by a supplier, but they are claiming it was "demo models" that were sent out. Of course we all know this is bullshit, as Intel would have no need to fake their own boxes for a demo model, nor would they use modeled plastic for a HSF, they would just put a bad binned chip in the box and be done with it.
My guess is either the supplier is trying to save face as someone on the factory floor swapped out a load of the real ones for these premade fakes, or someone on the docks had cooked up a shipment of fakes and loaded them in place of the real chips. Considering how much this supplier has to lose by burning Newegg I really doubt the supplier themselves did this, as Newegg has never struck me as the type that would deal with "fly by night" businesses in their supply chain. From the looks of it Newegg as always is being good about treating their customers right, so as long as they make good on the chips it will only make me shop there even more.
After all, anybody can have a problem in their supply chain, things can go wrong, there are always thieves or shippers that will treat a delicate item like a tire chuck. To me it all comes down to how they treat you when something like this happens. It is easy to do business with someone when everything goes right, it is how they treat you when something goes wrong that matters. The few times I've had to deal with Newegg when something went wrong they have always been top notch about it, and I'm sure these folks with have their new Intel chips express mailed right out.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No, I've worked with Intel's display boxes. Intel's display boxes, such as are used for making stacks of product at trade shows or for ads and store displays, would be a real box (no typos and no hologram) with clearly fake parts inside only if necessary (anything that fails QC is supposed to be chopped in half!). For trade show decor, real boxes with a cardboard filler for strength is all they get, maybe a chunk of wood for weight.
That font and type quality on the box is NOT Intel ... too fuzzy, like a cheap screen printer was used. When you are making thousands of boxes at a time, you can use better printers.
My guess is that someone in the supply chain made up a batch of these - enough for a case or two of them - and quickly switched the case for a case of genuine parts. Newegg is reporting 200 fakes, that's $80,000 which would be plenty to pay for cheap boxes and some filler bits.