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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.
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Probably not on Newegg's part, but somewhere up the chain. According to HardOCP (http://hardocp.com/article/2010/03/05/newegg_selling_fake_intel_cpus) the CPUs came from D&H Distributing. Now currently it is trying to be passed off as "Demo units." Bullshit. No way these things, complete with misspellings, are legit demo units from Intel. Seems more likely that D&H has been buying some things from gray market channels and got burned. Likely to go poorly for them, as Intel may stop distributing to them.
... on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Newegg/status/10050889498 http://twitter.com/Newegg/status/10050906222 And others.
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
Fire up Excel and open any spreadsheet that has a fair amount of numeric calculation. If results greater than 65535 are shown as "#MANY", then you most likely have one of the fake Intel chips.
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.
This is what Intel gets from assembling these boxes in Elbonia. The CPUs are $300, and the pay to the Elbonian packer is $0.17. You were hired from the mud farm, and told to put these little green squares with metal into a box with a plastic propeller in it. Now you discover that these squares you are handling is worth 1 full years salary, and your family is starving.
Maybe your even think the little squares you make will work just as fine as the original ones, and that the end user will not notice. Your cousin tiled his entire bathroom with all the extra P4, and to him, they where all the same. And for the fan, a little plastic toy is pretty much the same whether the car wheels spin around or not, as long as it looks fine.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
ya like this is what they really should be focusing on organized CRIME
not some kid downloading a music or tv episode.
Sometimes they will even hack the FAT to make it look like a much larger drive, although obviously you will start getting errors if you try to write beyond its actual capacity... A lot of people get caught out by this because it takes them some time to fill the drive.
Yep, and most of the time even the retailer doesn't know about it. They buy from gray market, and that's what they get.
It's a worldwide huge issued already as you can see.
There's even a "white list" of good USB sellers in eBay.
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
I was at a swap meet a month ago and saw a *pallet* of Core I7 processors. I used Red Laser to scan the UPC codes (they were "Extreme" models selling for $650+ on the open market), and a quick volume computation (the pallet was about 12 high, about 20 horizontal each way) suggested that I was looking at about $3 million worth of processors.
Except, they weren't actual processors. According to the person selling them, they were "fake" processors, but the heatsinks and fans were real and could be used with other processors and motherboards.
Uh-huh. Carrying the original UPC codes. I'm still not sure what to make of it.
Sounds a little excessive for "fraud by another Newegg customer." Another customer would at least have had real stickers (from the original box).
In fact it reminds me of a childhood experience. Back when Final Fantasy "II" came out for the SNES, I bought it at Toys R Us. It was shrink-wrapped and everything. When I opened it, instead of a cartridge it had a bolt with a couple nuts screwed on so it would weigh the same as a cartridge. Fortunately, the manager was willing to swap it out for me--but from then on, I always opened my cartridges at the register after paying. Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect a factory worker took home a little souveneir... but who knows?
Hopefully Newegg follows through, I'd be interested to know what happened here. At the very least I imagine they will be inspecting their shipments a little more closely for a while. I buy from them all the time, they have a great reputation, and I doubt they are doing to ignore these claims (whether we hear about it or not).
That's freaking uncanny. When I bought A Link to the Past at Toys R Us, I opened the box in the parking lot and found two bolts instead of a cartridge.
Come to think of it, years later I crunched down onto a much smaller bolt in a soft taco at Taco Bell. Is bolt-related crime this common in everyone else's life?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
No, I think your incidences were just isolated incidents of a couple nuts screwing everyone else over.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Your story reminds me of a teenage experience. In 1991, I had a small project that required small bolts and nuts, so I bought a few boxes of those at Home Depot. The boxes were shrink-wrapped and everything. When I opened one of the boxes, instead of bolts and nuts it had a few E.T. game cartridges in it so it would weigh the same as bolts and nuts. Fortunately, the manager was willing to swap it out for me--but from then on, I always opened my bolts and nuts boxes at the register after paying. Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect Atari was looking for creative ways to get rid of their failed game... but who knows?
I'm a customer (or I was in the past, or a potential customer) and I have little time on my hands for such foolishness. The typical customer has time on his hands so he fakes return merchandise? With a plastic mold of a cpu fan, a clearly fake aluminum cpu, and a clearly fake intel seal? I don't think so. That's an operation, you don't make ONE fake shrink wrap of product with all that plus misspelled words. That's a Chinese or Singaporean designed to deceive vendors with pallets of faked merchandise.This was designed to appear as a shipment of valid goods, not one returned product.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Anyone can get a shrink wrap machine
I always figured a good slight-of-hand magician could get away with all kinds of "at the cash register" mischief. No shrink wrap machine required...
"Hey! You just saw me open it, and there was nothing in the box but this rabbit!"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
My friend bought a Motorola phone which came with a "free" USB cable from ebay. Connecting the phone to his PC didn't work at all. After a certain amount of fooling around, he found the cable did not have any wires in it. It had connectors, but the cable was just made of insulation. My explanation? It was a wireless cable.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
We had a problem with some Intel dual port gig cards and NewEgg about five years ago. We had ordered them shipped directly out to the data center (800 miles away) because of an urgent need, but upon installation, we were seeing various odd problems. Suspecting a driver issue, we left them in and returned home. Never resolved the problems. Pulled them a few months later on the next visit. Further research showed that they were phony Intel cards. Apparently several resellers had been hit with these. However, NewEgg maintained that it was no longer their problem because of their return policy (30 days, maybe, I don't remember), and refused to make an exception for goods that they knew were knock-offs. This was really too bad, as we started buying less stuff from them after that.
What bothers me is that in both cases, the bad merchandise could have compromised someone's safety.
Bruce Perens.
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.
It's the magic of supply chains. People buy from other people for almost everything.
Newegg may buy some items directly from Intel, and others from other vendors who get a better wholesale price.
I'd suspect one of their suppliers offered a slightly better price and/or earlier shipping date, so they bough X pallets of them. Who knows where they were injected into the supply chain. Products aren't opened (or even uncased) until the get to the destination.
There were some very interesting writeups on the same thing happening to the pharmaceutical supply chains. Almost no pharmacies buy directly from the manufacturers. It's more work than the manufacturer is interested in.
The chain can go something like this:
Level 1) Manufacturer, with a few plants.
Level 2) A dozen (or a few dozen) major distributors.
Level 3) Hundreds or thousands of other distributors.
Level 4) Regional distribution companies.
Level 5) Retail distribution centers (like, the DC for CVS/Rite Aid/Walgreens/Walmart/etc/etc/etc)
Level 6) Your local store.
Level 3 may shop around between Level 2 distributors for better pricing.
Level 4 definitely shops around between all the Level 3 distributors.
Level 5 shops level 3 and 4 distributors, depending on the quantities they're ordering.
and Level 6... Well, that's the level Newegg is at. They're just a retail outlet.
If I, producing some counterfeit product, made a contact with a Level 3 distributor, and I could move 10,000 units of a $500 product that cost me $5 to product, it may be worth it to kick back $100k to the "purchaser" to get this in. What salesman wouldn't want to make their regular commission, plus get $100k in small unmarked bills? Sure, you could try to follow the supply chain back, but as the trails run all over the world it'll probably be a lost cause.
Someone's going to eat these losses, and it won't be the guy who injected the counterfeits into the supply chain.
Unfortunately, sales contacts are carefully guarded secrets as you work your way up the chain, so the counterfeiter will just move around without the word getting around too much. They'll change names, locations, and faces, so they won't get caught.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I bought a $50 broken laptop for parts.. The wife searched through the carry case and saw paperwork for an extended warranty (gotta love her). It was on the last month, so I took it back to Best Buy (gotta hate them), who offered the warranty, not the manufacturer. They were being asshats and trying to tell me that they could only give me a replacement that was a very low end no-name laptop with a smaller screen, while the one I had was middle/higher end Toshiba. They using the CPU speed as the only metric, and the "new" one was faster, so it was better, and I was "lucky". I told them I wanted the exact same model (as per the extended warranty paperwork), which was of course, impossible. I just wanted something that was in the same original price range, to be fair, not something half the price.
Long story short, I was polite but direct, didn't get personal, and just happened to have a very loud speaking voice that was asking why they weren't going to honor their own extended warranty, in a reasonable way, over and over, while the place was crowded. After 30 minutes, I walked out with a $1300 gift card, which was the original cost minus warranty/tax. It doesn't matter that I bought it used or knowing it was broken, it was the fact that it had a warranty and I expected them to honor their own agreements.
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