NewEgg Confirms Shipping Fake Core i7s

adeelarshad82 writes "After originally rejecting the story, online retailer NewEgg confirmed that a shipment of Core i7s were indeed fake, and apologized for the affair. NewEgg has also broken off its relationship with IPEX, the supplier of the phony lot. The retailer said that it has already contacted affected customers and would continue to reach out and replace the counterfeit parts. We discussed the fake Core i7s over the weekend."

Comments

Counterfits are everywhere

[colin_faber]

Want to find even more? Try buying some flash on ebay sometime.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Ihmhi]

Trivially easy to find. Took me all of five seconds to find this item, and it's by a good quality company like Nikon!

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[ILuvRamen]

This isn't memory chips. This is high end, new intel processors. I've never heard of someone faking processors ever. It just seems completely insane. I can't wait to find out who made these and where and how they ended up "in the line" to newegg. It probably wasn't the intel factory and nobody at newegg's supplier would be stupid enough to purposely try and rip them off with something that would so obviously get caught. That's a great way to destroy your own business! So that begs the question...how many damn people get these processors on the way from Intel to Newegg? What a waste of time and money if it's anything but Intel -> distrubutor -> Newegg. I especially don't want to pay an extra $20 for my processor to have it shipped to 8 different people first, one of which decided it was a good idea to add in or swap out some fakes. Time to cut out the middleman!

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[kimvette]

or, try buying Windows 2003 Server from any seller on feeBay or Amazon. There is a good chance every single Windows 2003 product on either site is counterfeit. I bought from six different sellers and every single one was counterfeit (same exact style packaging, etc.) and I reported each instance in detail (including detailed descriptions of the media, packaging, the COA decals, what software was actually on the media, etc. and even tested the product keys with a known-legitimate system builder kit. Each amazon storefront/ebay seller has since been shut down/disabled). I've since turned to buying Windows 2008 and installing Windows 2003 via downgrade rights with our last remaining system builder kit for the install. Right now I consider that media to be worth its weight in gold.

Counterfeits abound. The sad reality is people and vendors who "pirate"[sic] cracked torrents have a superior experience from beginning to end.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[kimvette]

This YN-460 can NOT work on TTL mode

Without TTL/E-TTL it's pretty much useless. You may as well use the built-in flash and a couple of standalone optically-triggered flashes and probably get better results.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Your story does not seem logical. Why did you keep buying from questionable places? Did it take you 6 times to realize there was a problem?

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[billcopc]

The real question is: why is a distributor involved in the first place ? You'd think Newegg gets enough volume to buy direct from Intel, why bother making some useless (and now unreliable) middleman rich ?

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[kimvette]

six different vendors all with good feedback. I would have expected the Amazon vendors in particular to be reputable.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[ZosX]

Why? Because they are listed on amazon? Google shopping has hordes of scammers that run for a week or two until the feedback starts going really south. I'd imagine that you would have been better off just buying server 2003 from microsoft direct, or just downloading an ISO if you have a good key....

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What is interesting about this case is that the processors in question were totally fake, just rather crude physical models of processors.

Much more common in tech related gear is partial fakery. The classic flash memory trick is 256MB(or whatever the value) of actual flash(and probably bottom bin stuff, at that) with the formatting or firmware claiming to be 4GB(or whatever the larger value) and doing various things certain to make the customer sad when you write more than 256MB to the device. If you get lucky, you'll get an actual 4GB of bottom-bin crap, with an "OMG LExar high speed!!11!" sticker on it.

With CPUs, basically no counterfeiters have the technical capability to produce plausible fakes from scratch for less than intel or AMD can produce the genuine article. However, there is a long history of selling overclocked and remarked low-end parts as higher end ones. That has become more difficult these days(with multipliers locked on all but the most expensive chips, you really can't overclock without the connivance of the motherboard. Intel's fancy new power-control microcontroller probably makes it even trickier). However, there is a cute way of getting around that: Modifying CPUs is hard and expensive. You need careful technique and serious rework kit. Basically not worth it. Modifying a motherboard's BIOS just a bit, to change the values that it reports for certain processor related parameters and maybe does some silent overclocking, is within the reach of a few decent software/firmware engineers. Thus you do sometimes see for sale(usually aimed at unscrupulous small computer shops, rather than retail users, CPU + motherboard combos consisting of a cheap CPU(bottom of whatever the range is at the moment) and a none-too-exciting motherboard with a BIOS hacked to claim, in all visible ways, that the CPU it is paired with is actually a much faster and more expensive unit.

Frankly, I much prefer complete fakes. They are a nuisance, certainly; but they are immediately obvious on inspection. The dangerous fakes are the ones of commodities where quality and realness are matters of degree, rather than binaries. Real/Visibly just a crude model is easy. 4GB/512MB+firmware lies can easily take some data loss to discover. Real/cheap under-specced capacitors were used, resulting in a higher 3 year failure rate can take ages to diagnose. Real/diluted to 25% of its actual dose and sold as real can get people killed and encourage drug resistance in various nasty pathogens.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[kimvette]

2003 media is unavailable from the major distributors, including Ingram Micro and MA Labs. I ordered them all at once from vendors which appeared to have media in stock so I had no way to know OK, one was fake, so order another, and so forth. It wasn't a matter of trying to find Win2K3 cheap, it was an issue of being able to get the media to go with the license for the client. Period.

Nice of you people to make assumptions though. But then again, this is slashdot.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to find even more? Try buying some flash on ebay sometime.

Yeah I've fallen for that scam before. 3 times :( Don't buy USB sticks off EBay unless you only want to store a single Word document on them (with no pictures) because that's all you will be able to fit. I've heard that there are actually large corporations in China whose income relies on producing counterfeit items and suckering people in :\

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is "you people", you dumb slut?

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying online requires some precautions.

Check negative ratings, which country they are from, how long they've been in business, how serious they take local regulations concerning warranty and mandatory information, don't go for the cheapest seller if a slightly more expensive business looks more reliable, rely on your hunch when going for really cheap item, etc.

I haven't encountered any fakes, bad products or scams among all the stuff I bought via various small businesses aggregate sites (Amazon, eBay, price comparison sites, etc.). Of course there are lots of dubious sellers I wouldn't buy from. You just have to know what to look out for.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Richard_at_work]

Buy a media kit from any Microsoft large account reseller - you could also buy your licenses under an Open Agreement at the same time. Just checked with both my LARs account handlers and they both have Windows 2003 and Windows 2003 R2 available for immediate sale, and media kits are still available for both.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[jonadab]

> That has become more difficult these days(with multipliers
> locked on all but the most expensive chips, you really can't
> overclock without the connivance of the motherboard.

You kids these days. It hasn't been that long since all processors ran at the same speed as the motherboard. Effectively, in today's terms, the multiplier was always 1. Put that in your overclocking pipe and smoke it.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Ecuador]

Oh, man... you will love this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100308/tc_pcworld/fourreasonstobewarefakeintelcpus

Authentic Intel Core i7 processors contain a number of innovative technologies to improve performance. Core i7 chips have an integrated triple-channel memory controller. They also replace the archaic front-side bus architecture with Intel's new QuickPath Interconnect system, and use hyperthreading to turn the Core i7's four physical processor cores into eight virtual cores.

A fake processor would most likely not have these cutting edge advantages, resulting in inferior performance compared with the authentic Intel processor.

Apparently for some people the difference between an i7 and a piece of scrap metal is some innovative technologies that improve performance!

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[SpinningCone]

hardly useless. even a canon 420ex can run more than $100. you can use these with a cheap RF-602 wireless trigger setup and get great off camera lighting on the cheap. you could get like 3 of these and the triggers for less then the cost of one 580exII

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That article makes me cry. A mixture of marketing puff, likely pulled nearly verbatim from Intel talking points, and fearmongering that manages to convey essentially negative information.

It essentially insinuates the existence of counterfeit chips that aren't just inert chunks of metal, something that(to the best of my knowledge) is basically nonexistent in the retail CPU channel, then provides absolutely no information on how to avoid these hypothetical threats; but reminds you to carefully avoid them. Good work, really good.

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[rhook]

I've never heard of someone faking processors ever. It just seems completely insane.

Its actually been a common scam since at least the days of the 486. What would happen is a processor will have its markings scrubbed and then get labeled as a faster processor. This doesn't just happen with CPU's either. http://www.cpushack.com/2010/01/14/counterfeit-ics-a-growing-problem/

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[Rabbanah]

Half the human race is middlemen, they don't take kindly to being cut out..

Re:Counterfits are everywhere

[vuffi_raa]

A fake processor would most likely not have these cutting edge advantages, resulting in inferior performance compared with the authentic Intel processor.

heh, I would think that the first giveaway was the solid block of plastic with a sticker on it that was supposed to be the fan/heatsink

Caveat Emptor

[Nefarious Wheel]

"But... if you can't trust the Government, who can you trust?"

- Yahoo Serious, Young Einstein

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Etrias]

I'm not sure quoting Yahoo Serious will get you +5 Funny. Maybe +5 What the Hell?

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

"But... if you can't trust the Governments of the world, who can you trust?"

FIFY

YEAH! I know it by heart! You got a problem with that?

Re:Caveat Emptor

[spun]

"But... if you can't trust the Governments of the world, who can you trust?"

FIFY

YEAH! I know it by heart! You got a problem with that?

No sir! Anyone who will admit to knowing Yahoo Serious by heart is a tougher hombre than I.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[OzPeter]

"But... if you can't trust the Governments of the world, who can you trust?"

FIFY

YEAH! I know it by heart! You got a problem with that?

No sir! Anyone who will admit to knowing Yahoo Serious by heart is a tougher hombre than I.

Know it by heart - yeah I know it too. I also have the soundtrack CD

Re:Caveat Emptor

[mybecq]

How about someone with much higher credibility?

"If you can't trust the Governments of the world, who can you trust?"
- Albert Einstein (Young Einstein)

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Anonymous Coward]

I had it on vinyl back in the 70s.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[irieken]

The fact that such obviously counterfeit parts made through Newegg's supply chain is a little bit unnerving... I know that Newegg said that these were "Demo Boxes"... but from the video that I had seen, these boxes included badly made tamper-evidence stickers and holograms. This leads me to wonder if "functional counterfeits" of Intel/AMD processors have been sold by Newegg.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Techman83]

Or Australian...

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP.

'... wonder if "functional counterfeits" of Intel/AMD processors have been sold by Newegg.'

Re:Caveat Emptor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the relatively pathetic state of non Intel/AMD x86s(VIA, a few oddball embedded guys, crickets...) I would be very surprised if there were anybody out there who could make money by fabbing chips close enough in function to be mistaken for the real thing for the price of the real thing or a bit less(since you usually have to offer the buyer some savings to induce them to go grey). Particularly given the mess of x86 extensions that intel(particularly) and amd(sometimes) are introducing. Even AMD is always lagging intel's latest SSE v.N+1 for a bit.

Back in the day, before this became a lot harder, there were quite a few low end(but authentic) CPUs with faked high end markings on them, and sometimes with multiplier tweaks to match, floating around. That was back when there were more CPU vendors that were socket compatible and actually vaguely competitive, so there was probably some rebranding going on as well. I don't know if Newegg was around early enough to have been at risk of those.

These days, the only really viable way of making "functional counterfeits" of either Intel or AMD would be to have insider access to their lower binned dice before their inferior model status is lasered into them. If you have that kind of access, sneaking chunks of quite valuable product out of some of the world's most sophisticated fabs, you could probably make more money selling secrets or suitcase nukes...

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Nefarious Wheel]

Dealing with Intel is as close as I prefer to get to the government.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Nefarious Wheel]

He did invent surfing and rock & roll, for example.

But the thing he will forever be enshrined in my heart for is splitting the beer atom and putting the bubbles in.

Look up the origin of the cloud chamber...

Re:Caveat Emptor

[eelke_klein]

If you read the article (no i'm not new here) you would know that the claim of demo boxes was made by neweggs supplier and that newegg rejected that story. Ofcourse the summary here on slashdot changed that into newegg rejecting the story of fake cpu's all together.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[FuckingNickName]

OK, name me your Intel/AMD CPU and post your output for openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc, a critical benchmark if you're using AES full disk encryption (is anyone not?).

For comparison, my Via C7:

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 74460.94k 232735.57k 492246.70k 689808.04k 780957.01k

Re:Caveat Emptor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hey, I'm not denying that the VIA Padlock engine is quite handy. It can even, for some applications, make paying more than the approximately equivalent Atom board would cost, and putting up with VIA's trully ghastly GPU/graphics drivers worth it. And, unless intel or amd have recently added crypto extensions(I haven't checked), I'm sure that it still stacks up impressively well, as long as you stick to crypto and stay away from ints and floats.

That doesn't change my point, though, which was that essentially nobody possesses the technology to produce plausible counterfeits of Intel or AMD CPUs at low enough cost to be remotely worth it. VIA, for instance, currently has no dual-core offerings. With the exception of Atoms, and certain bottom-of-range cutdowns and specialized embedded stuff, neither Intel nor AMD even bother with single core CPUs anymore. A lot of applications don't actually require multiple cores; but good luck hiding the fact that your "Core2 Duo" only shows up as one CPU when the client loads an OS.

The only economically viable counterfeiting strategy(at least at present) for CPUs involves rebadging genuine vendor silicon, either purchased in the form of low-end variants of the chip you are knocking off, or possibly stolen from the rejects pile, if you have an inside source).

Re:Caveat Emptor

[FuckingNickName]

The Intel Core i5 and i7 have AES crypto extensions with the AES-NI; I've not yet experimented with them. The AMD Geode's support is limited to 128 bit. The VIA is ideal for low usage NAS, e.g. for a home server or small office backup - it's a cheap way of poking people to protect their data with full disk encryption. I was countering your "pathetic" rather than attempting to claim that a VIA could outpace an Intel $ for $ under general usage - although people could ride on the back of Intel's name to sell an Atom device which isn't.

Lying about CPU is not impossible - just add a driver/hack to the OS you ship it with. Anyway, aren't all such operations about selling to the clueless 95%, not the enthusiasts/professionals who will identify a discrepancy (before they've left +ve eBay feedback to the HK/China outfit)?

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Coren22]

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 101509.41k 110031.31k 113013.47k 113753.64k 113895.68k

Mac pro, 2 X quad core Xeon, under normal load, not idle.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[yuhong]

The Intel Core i5 and i7 have AES crypto extensions with the AES-NI

Actually, on the desktop side, only the i5 600 series.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[irieken]

When I think of "functional counterfeit" CPUs, I think of lower performance parts being marked as higher performance parts. This popped into my mind, because I purchased a few Core2 Duo E8500 CPUs last year, that refused to automatically show up as E8500s... Instead, they showed up as a lower end processor (E8200, I think), despite external markings, but showed up as E8500 when I manually set the multiplier and clock in the BIOS.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[FuckingNickName]

Indeed: on the smallest block size, your machine is about 1/3 faster, probably thanks to overhead of support code, memory speed, etc. On every other size, my VIA is faster - approaching an order of magnitude at 8192 byte.

Considering that my motherboard+CPU combination cost $68 new, there's an obvious potential.

Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Dragoniz3r]

It was a little up in the air there for awhile!

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they might have been real after all.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[John Napkintosh]

They were leaning on that "oh, our bad, we got some 'demo units' by mistake" excuse pretty hard.

Demos? C'mon, demos are supposed to work, not be a blob of aluminum.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[c 0xFF]

Depends on the demo.

Chip manufacturers will often give away defective chips as demos to those thinking of using them in circuit boards. Non-functional demo chips are used in the design phase as the boards are laid out and the first parts are placed.

Imagining wasting a working chip just to find out if you're soldering things on correctly.

Partially-functional chips (might work but still failed testing for obscure reasons) are also used as demos for building prototype boards.

Neither case applies for NewEgg, however.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Anonymous Coward]

These weren't demo units, they are nothing like demo/sub-standard products. Search them out on the youtube posts on it. Basically they're just squares of aluminum (no pins) and a plastic mold for the fan with a sticker on it for the blades. Most people are assuming they're duff but real CPUs, they're not, they do not function, cannot function, and do not look like the real parts.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[martas]

what if they were testing their packaging pipeline?

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Skuld-Chan]

Look at the closeups for the box - the "sealed box" usually reserved for the stick tape is actually printed on the box. The box has typos in the text itself on the outside. Its like someone photocopied the original box, or something.

Above all - Intel officially said these were counterfeits.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[petermgreen]

They were leaning on that "oh, our bad, we got some 'demo units' by mistake" excuse pretty hard.
My guess is they were just passing on what thier supplier had told them until they could prove otherwise.

It's kind of a difficult position to be in. Newegg probablly didn't want to lie but they probablly didn't want to be publically seen as doubting thier suppliers either until they could prove that the supplier was indeed shipping fakes.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[The MAZZTer]

Then why put the sticker on the "heatsink" to make it look passable when viewed from outside the box?

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Anonymous Coward]

These weren't demo units, they are nothing like demo/sub-standard products. Search them out on the youtube posts on it. Basically they're just squares of aluminum (no pins) and a plastic mold for the fan with a sticker on it for the blades. Most people are assuming they're duff but real CPUs, they're not, they do not function, cannot function, and do not look like the real parts.

The processors faked do not have pins, the motherboard has them. The fan is not a fan, but to be a floor room demo unit nothing has to be functional.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[mako1138]

My friend once snaggged some nVIDIA chips at a MacWorld Expo. This would've been around 2000, 2001? I took a hammer to one later and it was definitely real.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Mr. Freeman]

MARKETING demos, not engineering demos.

The marketing team doesn't need to pull out the processor, install the HSF, etc.
They just have to look at the box and see if the packaging is appealing. You don't need functional equipment for that, you don't even need dead equipment for that, you just need something that looks like the product.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Mr. Freeman]

Yeah, but it was probably completely nonfunctional even before you used the hammer. They can either throw out the chips that fail or they can give them away.

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[Nefarious Wheel]

"We don't know why you wanted 1% defective chips" said our Japanese supplier, "But here they are; we packaged them separately".

Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake!

[u38cg]

Speaking as someone who's packed stuff for a living, I doubt it (apart from the other arguments posters have raised). The boxing is almost certainly done by hand - the boxes themselves may be machine folded, though I doubt it. In the kinds of run sizes typical for this kind of thing, cheap labour is far more effective than machinery.

Intel Inside...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure liked the typos on the box. All that effort to duplicate holograms and what not, and they blow it on spacing and spelling.

Criminals, you gotta love their chutzpah.

Re:Intel Inside...

[Darkness404]

...Because everyone reads the back while shopping? Lets say this was inside a store, you say "Hey, I want a Core i7 model XXX, they find the box, it looks official, same model XXX you wanted so you buy it and take it home. You aren't going to read the blurb on the back about it, because you know what you want. Its only after you realize that you've been scammed that you would realize some of the typos.

Re:Intel Inside...

[c 0xFF]

And in the case of NewEgg, it's just somebody in the warehouse filling boxes. As long as it looks like the real thing when sitting next to it, it'll get shipped to the customer.

In fact, I bet there would have to be several significant differences before anybody would pause to make sure they're packaging a genuine product.

Re:Intel Inside...

[Darkness404]

Exactly, if the average person isn't going to notice it in a store, Newegg isn't going to notice it when they deal with A) A basic employee B) Coming from a supplier they think they can trust and C) The pressure to box 200-300+ of them in one sitting.

Re:Intel Inside...

[Surt]

And in the case of newegg, 'somebody' is usually a robot.

Re:Intel Inside...

[RsG]

I've worked in an electronics store. Let me tell you - typos on the box? Not a sign of phony merchandise. At least not in and of itself. A surprisingly large number of legitimate items have such errors, and usually the only people who notice are the depot/stock/merchandising/receiving staff.

Half the time the products or packaging in question are made somewhere in southeast asia (china, usually) so the culprit is the language barrier for the QA people. The other half, the problem is they just didn't care. A few thousand boxes get shipped with a minor typo in the fine print, because nobody bothered to check. Usually they'll just sell the ones with the error, since the customers almost never notice, and correct the spelling/grammar/whatever the next time the packaging gets redesigned.

Also, having different packaging for the same SKU isn't unusual, due to the frequency of redesigns. So you have an item, which looks identical out of the box, but which comes in two or three different types of box. This is doubly true of anything going on display, since the packaging is supposed to by eye-catching, and never stays the same for long.

Re:Intel Inside...

[billcopc]

No, because, if you're going to counterfeit $100k worth of merch, I expect you to spend the $300 and buy a real one so you can copy it accurately. It's like those assclowns selling burned copies of Windows 7 at full price... in a regular DVD case with inkjet labels :P For fuck's sake, buy a goddamned color laser printer at the very least! If I were going to counterfeit stuff, I'd put some hearty effort to make it undetectable.

It always blows my mind how stupid the counterfeiters always turn out to be. They shouldn't be jailed for fraud, they should be jailed for criminal stupidity. It should be a felony to be that retarded.

Re:Intel Inside...

[rworne]

It got all the way through the supply chain to the end-users. I'm pretty sure that proves they did a good enough job to make it undetectable. If they really wanted to make it really undetectable,they would need a functional chip in it - like rebadging a cheaper/slower model to a higher model. But that costs time and money. This was a quick and easy scam, and the responsible parties are long gone with 300+ perfectly good i7;s.

Re:Intel Inside...

[jellyfrog]

Maybe they're not actually retarded. Maybe they just get a kick out of making the shittiest most obvious counterfeit they can make that would still not be detected. Wouldn't you feel so superior if you could write "$10" in texta on a blank piece of paper and actually buy stuff with it? When you can sell windows 7 at full price with inkjet labels in a regular dvd case, it becomes a sort of game - maybe they just enjoy screwing with stupidest 10% of the population!

Or they could just be stupid/lazy, of course.

Re:Intel Inside...

[Bert64]

But people buy these shoddy copies, why should they bother making more effort?
Besides, upon receipt of these fake goods it's blatantly obvious they're fake and the victim can demand a refund, if the fakes were more convincing they might not get anything.

Re:Intel Inside...

[mcgrew]

I've worked in an electronics store. Let me tell you - typos on the box?

Jamal's groceries We accept Link, lottery, cold drinks, sandwiches

The one down the street (Google streetview hasn't updated, it shows a laundromat there) says "Grocery's, cigurats". So it's not just product boxes, it's the stores' signs, too.

Rejecting??

[Anonymous Coward]

When did they reject the story??

They never denied shipping fake units... the only difference between their story then and now is WHY the fake units existed.

Re:Rejecting??

[Gordo_1]

Yes they did. Against all common sense, NewEgg had been insisting the CPUs were "demo" units until today and hardware enthusiast sites like HardOCP were calling them out. Intel came out yesterday and basically said, if the web photos are legit as represented, then the CPUs are most certainly fakes. I suspect NewEgg was waiting until they could confidently pin the blame on a 3rd-party distributor before letting the truth out.

Shameful PR stunt if you ask me.

Re:Rejecting??

[blankinthefill]

I'm not so sure it was all about a PR stunt. The original thread had quite a few response pointing out the defamation laws that could have been used against them if they had moved too quickly to out a supplier. I'm sure the legal team had a few days of hard work making sure they were (reasonably) safe from a suit before they allowed any statement out that named names.

Re:Rejecting??

[brandished]

From what I've read, "demo units" is what IPEX (the NewEgg supplier that shipped the parts in question) was calling them, not NewEgg itself. NewEgg only relayed what information they initially received from IPEX, saying that they themselves were still "unsure and investigating".
It's still a bit odd how neither NewEgg nor Intel wouldn't outright deny they were fake. This whole fiasco sounds quite a lot like the recent Micro SD issue that Chumby ran into a few weeks earlier. An interesting read about the "grey" market and "ghost shifting".

Even weirder

[Anonymous Coward]

Even weirder, investigators who arrived at the IPEX distributer address found no actual office, only a dirty water hotdog cart under a bus stop.

Lost customer

[Anonymous Coward]

After originally rejecting the story

And there's the problem.
All they needed to do when the story broke was say "We are looking into it".

By rejecting it while it was obviously true, I've lost faith in them.

Re:Lost customer

[maxume]

They acknowledged that they had shipped non functional units on Friday:

http://twitter.com/Newegg/status/10050889498

They probably would have done better to say less, but they never denied the issue entirely.

Re:Lost customer

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd seriously lose faith in a company that blows everyone else away in customer service because of this one thing? Are you serious? So it doesn't matter that they exchanged the fakes and bent over backwards to fix the problem?

Grow the hell up and come back to reality. This entitled generation crap is beyond annoying, expecting everyone and everything to be absolutely perfect and cater to your every need and the second they don't then BAM they're horrible and evil.

Re:Lost customer

[Bruinwar]

OK by me, please support the competition before Newegg buries them.

Re:Lost customer

[Knara]

Welcome to the Internet, where people fly off the handle in rage at individual incidents that aren't handled perfectly and feelings of entitlement reigns. Particularly on "technology enthusiast" sites.

Re:Lost customer

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of instances, in my experience, in which Newegg has been abusive. With shipping prices, for example.

Re:Lost customer

[clarkkent09]

A agree. It's unreasonable to expect perfection from anybody. I've had some bad experiences with Newegg, received bad hard drives one after another, been charged a restocking fee for returning an item that arrived broken. The other fifty times I've been very happy with their service though and I tend to trust them more than other online retailers (Except for B&H Photo. They really do blow everyone else away in customer service).

Re:Lost customer

[mike2R]

And there's the problem.
All they needed to do when the story broke was say "We are looking into it".

By rejecting it while it was obviously true, I've lost faith in them.

As someone who works in computer component retail, I can tell you with 100% certainty that they don't want your business. You are obviously a twat, and any retailer in the world will tell you it isn't worth dealing with twats. They are a source of aggravation and financial losses that you can't do anything about, since in this ecommerce world you can't spot them in advance (sometimes, if you get them on the phone, you can manage to send them to your competitors).

A twat removing himself from your pool of potential customers is excellent news, and I'm sure NewEgg will appreciate your generous offer.

NewEgg handled it well,

[SpazmodeusG]

Newegg were on top of this pretty early.
They never denied there being a problem although they took a day to figure out what was happening.
They have already apologized, announced they are sending out replacements and announced they are getting a new distributor a couple of days ago.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Anonymous Coward]

True, that's an amazing amount of professionalism and quick action on their part. Pity shame that for some Slashdot readers, that won't be enough, and they won't be happy until they see Newegg executives' heads on pikes, even if it wasn't their fault. Mmm, tasty, frothy bile...

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

I don't order parts online that often, but because of this, Newegg is getting put right to the top of the list of places I look at first when I do.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[eepok]

Yep. Newegg has never done me or anyone I know any wrong. They've done a couple things incorrectly over my massive number of purchases with them (like sending me some ddr266 instead of ddr300 ram), but the day I told them was the day they told me to send it back and they'd replace it.

This entire ordeal has only further solidified my loyalty to checking them first and giving their products a premium preference.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[noidentity]

Hell, I've never ordered from NewEgg, but they're the first place I go for reviews, and to leave my own reviews of products. I haven't found any other "review" site that isn't mostly ad-laden crap and pages with the title "Reviews of ", only to be empty and say "Be the first to review !".

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[bhtooefr]

Except Newegg reviews are the YouTube comments of the review world.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Anonymous Coward]

You Sir, are now a public relations case study.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Skuld-Chan]

Newegg kinda did try to shift the blame on Intel calling these "demo units" - Intel was quite quick to say they don't ship "demo units" like this. The pictures however reaked of fraud (the sealed text on the box was printed on the box, not the tape, there were typos on the box etc). Newegg's demo unit press release came out *after* the pictures did. Their second release however called their vendor out and owned up to them being counterfeit - something I believe they should have done from the start.

It was only after they were called out on that they owned owned up to shipping counterfeit units. Who knows the rational for that, maybe it was just ignorance or whatever.

Still - glad they realize that their reputation is worth something more than a couple hundred cpu's - not many hardware companies in this business realize this.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[John Hasler]

> It was only after they were called out on that they owned owned up to
> shipping counterfeit units. Who knows the rational for that, maybe it was
> just ignorance or whatever.

When they said that the junk was demos shipped by accident they were repeating what their supplier told them. Would have been better to have just said "We acknowledge that they are real will replace them, but we are still investigating" until they heard from Intel. Still, they handled it fairly well. The important point is that they did not at any point try to deny that there was anything wrong.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[cynyr]

from what i read, they were told by their distributer that they were demo units. Newegg of course releasd its innital statement with that info, and said they were going to look into the matter farther. TBH I'm not sure what more newegg could have done in this case, except make the products(or be a direct authorized distributer for all of the stuff they sell. I'm assuming that they did not knowingly ship these units out. The people packing these things probably don't carefully inspect every unit that ships.

I'll still try and buy most of my next order from them. but they don't really carry much in the way of mini-itx stuff, although there is that nice 1156 socket DFI mini-itx board.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[MMC Monster]

I've ordered several things from newegg over the years. Always very easy to complete the order online. The couple times I returned things (one was a video card that the manufacturer admitted to putting a different model in the box, the other was a DOA video card), I had no hassels at all with customer service reps.

Definitely recommend them to others, including my dad on the rare times he orders electronics online.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Anonymous Coward]

I wont be happy until they stop charging people for return shipping when its their fault. Sure theyre covering these because of the publicity, but I have multiple friends who have been shipped the wrong item or shipped defective items and been required to pay return shipping.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[Skuld-Chan]

Fair enough ;).

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[flimflammer]

It wasn't NewEgg that claimed they were demo units. They said that's what their distributor called them.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[B1oodAnge1]

When I was shipped a non functioning video card I chatted with the online rep for about 10 minutes and was emailed a label to put on my package which then I left on the front porch for the UPS guy to pick up.

Since they were out of stock on that card I got my money back the same day, before I'd even got the email.

Re:NewEgg handled it well,

[MistrBlank]

You should try talking to someone. It's newegg's policy to not print you a free return label unless you talk to someone.

I've done a number of RMA's on open box items and at first glance I would have had to pay for return (and restocking fees). I called up and they were more than nice enough every time to remove the fees and send me a label without asking.

Glad

[Renraku]

Glad to see NewEgg confirming that the problem exists and that they're fixing it. Now they have to take responsibility for their actions, what will they offer as compensation to those affected? All problems a company encounters are opportunities in customer service.

Yes, I realize you fucked my steak up, but mistakes happen. How are you going to fix it? Replacing the steak, fine, but keep in mind I had to wait for it to be cooked, now I have to wait for it to be cooked again. Free dessert? Sure. In the end, they ended up better off than they started. Because now I know they're willing to make up for their mistakes.

Re:Glad

[Konster]

Welcome to the entitlement mindset.

Newegg is doing their share by rush shipping replacements. This whole affair isn't their fault and they got on top of the situation quickly enough, what more do you expect?

Re:Glad

[Elshar]

Dessert, of course. Or, well. A second processor!

Re:Glad

[MarkvW]

The CONTRACTUAL entitlement mindset is a VERY good thing. Commerce depends on it.

Parent is naive. Corporations will try ANY legal argument to get money from consumers and the government. The idea that a citizen should foreswear such BS entitlement arguments while they are exploited by corporations that freely make (and benefit from) them is ridiculous and absurd.

Re:Glad

[dbcad7]

The scenarios you describe are nice.. But it's kind of like tipping.. It's an accepted practice, but not required. There are oh so many people who abuse the niceties of customer service, at restaurants in particular.. Many people call customer service lines in ballistic mode, because they have come to expect something free offered.. These situations should be a pleasant surprise that something extra was done to make someone happy, not am expectation.. Someone "working the system" really isn't going to appreciate it anyway.

Re:Glad

[Idbar]

what will they offer as compensation to those affected?

Maybe the affected people can keep the fake ones? ;)

Re:Glad

[eepok]

Thank you!

They're distributor screwed everyone and Newegg is trying to fix it all. That's plenty. That's loyalty and doing the right thing as quickly as possible. That's all that's needed.

Re:Glad

[ArsonSmith]

The relationship of taking advantage is two way.

Re:Glad

[Spewns]

Welcome to the entitlement mindset.

And rightfully so.

Re:Glad

[noidentity]

Maybe as compensation they can send a T-shirt that says "NewEgg sent me a counterfeit Intel processor and all I got was this stupid T-shirt".

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect that cake will be served. And it will be delicious.

Re:Glad

[LWATCDR]

They are RUSH shipping the customers replacements. That is good enough to be fair. Lets put you in the same situation. You bump into me you say I am sorry. Well you wrinkled my shirt. So you should pay for my dry cleaning.
You cut me off in traffic and cost me five minutes because I hit a red light. I want cash.

Yes it is nice if they bend over backwards. In this case if you paid for rush shipping I could see them refunding it. In the end if you think they didn't do enough then don't buy from them. But this give me this or that is just a case of mistaken entitlement.
It is nice when they do it but it is not a requirement.

Re:Glad

[Thaelon]

They vetted the supplier.

It turns out they did a bad job of it.

It's their responsibility because the items were sold on their site.

Now, making good on their fuckup isn't the entitlement mindset, it's excellent, self-serving business sense. Allow me to explain, it's really quite simple:

You can buy a customer for life far cheaper than you can think by simply owning up to the problem, fixing it, then going beyond that.

It could be as cheap, and as easy as free overnight/cross shipping of the replacements. You absolutely lose money on the spot. But you're very likely to see the customer again. It's simply thinking long term.

That kind of service will get noticed and will bring people back next time because they know that even if shit goes wrong, they'll be well taken care of.

It's the same reasoning why most of my video cards are eVGA. Their customer service to my friends has been so stellar I know I'll be taken care of if their shit breaks. Yes, I wrote that correctly, I've never even had to deal with their customer service, yet they're my first choice for video cards. All because of stellar service they gave two of my friends. For a paltry $300 or so they bought three repeat customers. It's just another form of investment, and I'm living proof that it works. Hell, I just gave them great PR, and I hate PR.

Re:Glad

[coolgeek]

I think your judgment is a little premature. It could be some guy on the dock at IPEX swapped a pallet for his criminal cronies.

Re:Glad

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Well I wouldnt say thats entirely entitlement. There was once a time in this country of America, that businesses would go out of their way to make sure the customer was happy by doing things such as the poster's example.

It would be entitlement to expect anything MORE than a replacement CPU (authentic of course) + Free overnight shipping...

But it certainly would be nice if Newegg threw in something extra for their troubles. No one expects them to, but by doing so, newegg would be going out of their way to save face and earn back the respect and trust of those effected and others spectating.

Again, there's no need to expect it but such actions benefit the business failed the customer. Certainly, free overnight shipping of the cpu replacement would be at the least... expected.

A local pizza place here... throws in free stuff all the time for me. They're nice folks. Sometimes for no reason, they'll give me a couple extra stuffed garlic knots, slices etc. They've done it for no reason, and they've done it for reasons such as me waiting a while in the store for my food, or accidently forgetting an item... etc.

Businesses do go out of their way at times to be kind to teh customer. It's not as common as it once was, but when a business does so... they earn big respect points.

Re:Glad

[martas]

REALLY?

Re:Glad

[BikeHelmet]

what more do you expect?

Well, I'm Canadian, and I deal with NCIX primarily, but...

1) A free T-Shirt
2) A $10 gift card
3) 2500 points redeemable for free shipping on any order.

Pick three.

Newegg has acceptable customer service. There are companies with incredible customer service. I remember NCIX mispriced some Atom boards when they were first released - $70 rather than $170. It was fixed within 20 minutes, but there were still ~30 very happy customers. :)

Re:Glad

[BaronHethorSamedi]

What are you talking about?

Anyone making noise about contractual entitlement had better be prepared to point to a contract detailing that to which he is entitled. I'm not sure any contractual provision between NewEgg and its customers provides for a "counterfeit CPU" scenario. Closest match would probably be a defective product, which requires you to submit to a return process, obtain an RMA number, etc. NewEgg is acting fast for something that doesn't seem to me to be their fault. Sellers like NewEgg should be able to trust suppliers, and there probably is an agreement between NewEgg and IPEX that has been violated (hence NewEgg's termination of that relationship). I'm not sure the affected consumers are "contractually entitled" to anything more than what NewEgg is doing to rectify the problem--can you point to something that says differently?

Re:Glad

[ThrowAwaySociety]

The CONTRACTUAL entitlement mindset is a VERY good thing. Commerce depends on it.

Commerce got along just fine for thousands of years under the simple disclaimer "Caveat emptor."

Re:Glad

[fermion]

Welcome to the corporate entitlement culture. Firms are entitled to do as they please, and are only required to apologize if caught red handed with no other way out. If the common excuses, like someone else messed up, or the customer misunderstood does not work, then they are required only to do the minimum to correct the problem, thereby providing no incentive to make sure the same problem does not happen again. After all, only the peasants got hurt.

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is naive. He thinks that everyone who is unintentionally wronged should get something.Were the parent's standard applied to the parent, the parent would be in debtor's prison.

Re:Glad

[gyrogeerloose]

Welcome to the entitlement mindset.

Newegg is doing their share by rush shipping replacements. This whole affair isn't their fault and they got on top of the situation quickly enough, what more do you expect?

In a word: bullshit. Regardless of whether or not it was their fault, there's no sense of entitlement at all in expecting NewEgg to make good on replacing the product and compensating the people who received the bogus chips for lost time and inconvenience--they warranted a product to be something which it was not. That makes them responsible to their own customers.

I've never purchased anything from NewEgg but their handling of this affair makes me think well of them. Companies are nothing more than large groups of people working together; people sometimes make mistakes, therefore so will companies. The question is this: will the company own up to their mistakes and make things right? NewEgg has done that.

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

Konster: This was Newegg's fault; it was Ipex' fault; it was the fault of whoever signed for delivery at Ipex.

The fact that such obvious fakes made it to end users means that expensive items were NOT INSPECTED.

It's good that Newegg is rushing our replacements, because it minimizes damage to their brand... since it was Newegg's their poor choice of supplier and apparent lack of QA, that caused the inconvenience to customers. However, the parent is right; if Newegg doesn't throw in a little bit extra, why should we bother to buy from them in the future?

The "free extras" that come with the correction of a screw-up are what let us know that the company is less likely to make the mistake in the future; if they keep making mistakes like this (not keeping tabs on their suppliers), then it’ll cost them (freebies+customer loyalty).

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

The "CONTRACTUAL" entitlement is properly termed a "right", not "entitlement".

Rights in contracts are freely chosen, and *earned* via trade or production. Entitlements are not rights, but are instead an unchosen obligation on the part of someone else to provide X good. Entitlements are not earned, but stolen... as such, they are the antithesis of rights.

The "entitlement mentality", accordingly, is best symbolized thusly.

Re:Glad

[ffflala]

It's not their fault in the sense that they didn't package the fake parts, but it certainly is their responsibility.

Newegg profits off of the relationships with their distributors, and they accepted payment from customers in exchange for their promise to ship real parts by a certain time. They were unable to honor their promise. Looking for reimbursement for the time wasted by a late shipment is not an entitlement mindset. Paying customers' time and effort was *actually* wasted, and that can translate directly to money lost.

Giving these customers something additional to recognize their inconveniences would simply be good business -- it would cost them a minute fraction of the value of good will and reputation that doing so would buy.

Re:Glad

[Belial6]

Make it "NewEgg sent me a counterfeit Intel processor and all I got was this a replacement and a stupid T-shirt", and it might just be worth while.

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the local coffee shop just loves it when you come in to lecture them...

Re:Glad

[Knara]

Please read up on the history of financial markets before regulation before making stupid comments like that.

Maybe in the days of "hey this does indeed look like a chicken egg" you could rely only on caveat emptor. Not so much anymore.

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

no, flat wrong. once the merchant has put you right with the original purchase agreement, contract over. no need to go over and above. in the restaurant, they have no obligation to bring you a free desert or offer a free entree next time, or even bring you the steak properly repaired while refunding the cost. as per the contract, cook it right and bring it to you is all that is required. anything beyond is an attempt to have you leave happy and come back again.

as far as the newegg.com incident, ship the proper item, no charge for the extra shipping and the deal is done. newegg didn't put fake chips in the boxes. their only obligation is to put the proper item in the customers hands.

expecting extra things has nothing to do with a contractual obligation.

Re:Glad

[cbhacking]

Random anecdotal example: A friend of mine bought a PAX 08-branded Razer Deathadder gaming mouse at (surprise) PAX 08. Turns out these mice had a defect: the scroll wheel doesn't glow! Mind you, I didn't even know it was supposed to (maybe my friend did, not sure) but in any case, Razer immediately apologized for the "defective" batch of mice (that were produced one time, in limited quantity, specifically for one event) and shipped everybody a replacement without the cosmetic defect. Two high-quality, fully functional mice, for the price of one, on a special one-off production run no less.

Why yes, I do recommend buying gaming peripherals from them. Who would have guessed?

Re:Glad

[flatrock]

Yes they vetted the suplier, and from everything I know they haven't had significant problems with them in the many years they have been doing business with them.

However, sometimes good suppliers go bad.

It is their responsibility to make good on what they promised to sell customers, and from all indications they are doing so. They should then go after the supplier to recoup their costs in taking care of their customers.

Now if customers expect unreasonable compensation for the inconveience of not getting what they ordered, that's part of the entitlement mindset. Overnight shipping of the replacement and return shipping costs for the fake is reasonable. Expecting a refund and the replacement or something along those lines isn't reasonable.

Good customer service is good business, but mistakes happen, and passing these chips on from their distributor is a mistake. If companies have to bear a high burden for mistakes and problems that aren't really forseeable, it become cumbersome and unreasonably expensive to do business. Newegg has low prices because they have low profit margins. To keep prices low they have to keep costs down.

A well run company has lower costs in general, but if you have unreasonable expectations, you should expect to pay for them. If you want good prices, accept reasonable solutions to mistakes.

Re:Glad

[stimpleton]

The entitlement mindset is often quite incidious.

Here in New Zealand we are rather famous for it. Thus if a person escapes from prison then inturn shoots someone in a robbery, the NZ way is to immediately look past the person who pulled the trigger and to the prisons/parole board or other entity that they might be able to get some entitlement(money) from.

(PS in NZ, financial libilities do not fall onto individuals)

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

and I've used eVGA's support when one of my SLI'd video cards went bad and started causing all sorts of issues. No fuss call and had a identical replacement of a then-expensive now long retired card (7800GTX KO) was at my door within two days. Problem solved. I'll buy from eVGA again and again because they back up their no-bullshit lifetime warranty.

Re:Glad

[phantomfive]

You can try getting that if you ever have that problem with NewEgg, see how it works.

As for me, because of how NewEgg handled this problem, they now have me as a new customer.

Re:Glad

[Anonymous Coward]

exploitation?

There's no exploitation here. Two parties agree to a transaction. One values the dollars more than the CPU, the other values the CPU more than the dollars. Were this not the case the transaction would not occur. If you ever feel like you've been exploited by a corporation who didn't hold a gun to your head then it's you that doesn't get how markets work.

They refunded very swiftly because they know that if they get a reputation of screwing customers over they'll lose out to their competition.

But hey, why let economics get in the way of a good anti-capitalist rant?

Re:Glad

[DrVomact]

They vetted the supplier.

It turns out they did a bad job of it.

It's their responsibility because the items were sold on their site.

Now, making good on their fuckup isn't the entitlement mindset, it's excellent, self-serving business sense...

It's good sense, but I think "excellent" is going a bit far. After all, not making good on the fake product would have kind of gotten them on the wrong side of the law, wouldn't it? Newegg may not have known the CPUs were fake when they shipped the product, but once they were made aware of the fact, failing to remediate the situation would have put them in some pretty deep legal juju. Replacing the fakes was the minimum action they were required to take. I don't think they deserve to be congratulated for doing what is both morally and legally mandatory.

Had I been a recipient of one of these fakes, I would have been pretty disgruntled. I would have calmed down once I got the real thing from Newegg, but if they wanted me to feel really gruntled again, they'd ship me a little something extra, or maybe give me a $15 gift certificate toward a future purchase. Now that would be "excellent".

For the record, I've ordered lots of stuff from Newegg for years, and have never had an untoward incident in my dealings with them. I'll certainly be considering them as a possible source for future purchases.

Re:Glad

[mcgrew]

Welcome to the entitlement mindset.

If I'm entitled to something then goddamn it, I'm entitled. You fuck up my order, you better make it good plus some, because you are NOT entitled to my repeat business. And rush-shipping a replacement for a bogus shipment is NOT making up for it.

You want my business, you have to work for it. It seems YOU are the one with the entitlement mindset. I don't HAVE to buy your product; you are replacable. Piss me off and you'd damned well better placate me; it's MY money.

Re:Glad

[mcgrew]

I think you have them pegged. "There are six billion prospective customers on the face of the earth, there's more where you came from. Shut up and go away."

Re:Glad

[mcgrew]

Your examples are strawmen. I wrinkled your shirt, so what? You have no power to do anything. I'm a dry cleaner who returns your shirt wrinkled and you DO have the power to do something -- take your dry cleaning business elsewhere. If I want to keep you as a customer I'd damned well better make you happy, or I won't be in business long.

Re:Glad

[LWATCDR]

Yes you can walk away from Newegg. Thing is they have already done what they can to rectify a problem that was not of their making. They are just as much a victim as the customer is.
So as a business they have done what they think is right to fix the issue. What are you going to do? Go to ZipZoomFly?
You probably already cross shop them and go with who is lowest. It is unlikely you will no do the same again. They did more than was required by law which is a good thing. At this point people demanding anything more are in the long run not worth keeping as customers because odds are they where not great sources of profit to begin with and most will be back.
The people that feel most entitled are the worst customers and are not worth keeping.
The only power you have to go someplace else. Odds are you went to NewEgg in the first place because their price and customer service. Odds are tiny you will find better so you will be back. Right now you are just strutting round actting like a big shot saying "The better do this for me" People that do that are just more pain than they are worth.

Re:Glad

[Shabazz Rabbinowitz]

I wouldn't complain too obnoxiously, or they might pee in your processor.

Re:Glad

[mcgrew]

Thing is they have already done what they can to rectify a problem that was not of their making.

From the customer's viewpoint it WAS of their making. The customer didn't choose NewEgg's supplier, NewEgg did. "It wasn't my fault" is no excuse. When it's your responsibility it doesn't matter whose fault it is, it's your responsibility.

They did more than was required by law which is a good thing.

The law has nothing to do with it. Customer relations has everything to do with it. If you sell me bogus goods that don't work, no matter whose fault, you damned well better do more than expedite a replacement if you ever hope to get my business again.

And no, I don't have a dog in this fight; I've never bough anything from NewEgg, and this news makes it less likely I will. Had they bent over backwards for these customers they fucked over, I might consider them for my next purchase, but this makes them look like first, they're not very competent, and second, are uncaring about their customers.

They lost customers they could have had but now don't. I'll stick to JDR, who does it right. At one time I bought a "bare bones" with a case, power supply and motherboard, and also bought a new video card for it since I wanted to plug it into the TV's S-Video. The card physically didn't fit the motherboard. I called them, and they not only overnighted a new vid card, but one that was far better than I paid for. After that it will take a LOT to get me to change suppliers, especially since I've always gotten excellent service from them.

Re:Glad

[LWATCDR]

Again you say they cheated the customers.
Not at all. New Egg was a victim of fraud. They paid for the chips and now they are replacing them and rush shipping them as well at their cost. They are replacement the chips and rushing them to the customers. The Customers are out nothing but a little time. The problem might not have even been the distributer but could have been the shipping company or even just a few employees along the chain.
I am glad you have gotten good service from JDR and that they have so far won you loyalty. However to claim that Newegg screwed over it's customers in this case is simply unfair. They may not have bent backwards far enough for your taste but to vilify them is just wrong.

Re:Glad

[mcgrew]

Again you say they cheated the customers.

Not cheated, but made a maistake and inconvinienced them. My dad always says "one 'oh shit' wipes out a whole lot of 'attaboys'". It wasn't their fault, but it WAS their responsibility. They shouldn't be FORCED to do extra for the affected customers, but it is in their best interests to do so.

After following this....

[Anonymous Coward]

After following this story early friday from hardocp.com, I still have 1 question. At what point in the process, did the fake processor's enter the supply chain? This, afaik, has still not been answered.

Was it between the Intel fab. plant and the wholesaler? Wholesaler and frontline sales (ie. newegg)? Or, Newegg and customer? There may be more links in the chain, but I'd still like to know where the swap was made. Will we ever know? Newegg dropping IPEX doesn't tell me where the counterfeits entered the supply chain.

Re:After following this....

[eepok]

If IPEX was tossed out, I'm guessing it was someone at IPEX who was swapping processors out for dummies (for sale elsewhere, I assume) and then sending the fakes to Newegg.

Re:After following this....

[tlhIngan]

If IPEX was tossed out, I'm guessing it was someone at IPEX who was swapping processors out for dummies (for sale elsewhere, I assume) and then sending the fakes to Newegg.

This isn't a mere case of "swapping out". It's outright fraud.

First, the boxes has typos:

This box contains an Intel(R) processor ans a thermal solution for use ina Desktop PC. The full text of a Three-Year Limited Warranty, installation instructions, and the system requirements for Intel(R) Hyper.Threading Technology and Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology are contained in the booklet enclosed.

Not to mention the French and other languages have similar errors. (The errors are "ans", "ina" and "Hyper.Threading" (dot, not Hyper-Threading)).

Next, the "heatsink fan" was a piece of foam plastic with a paper representation of an Intel fan stuck on it.

Third, the "processor" was a slab of metal shaped like a processor with a sticker on the top to represent the green parts. Not sure if the laser etching is also a sticker or actual laser-etching.

Whoever did this, it wasn't just mere swapping out, they literally manufactured the fakes from scratch. Printed their own boxes, made the blank paper booklets, the pieces inside. I don't know if the barcode stickers were simply copied originals.

Re:After following this....

[Not_Wiggins]

There's an alternative way of looking at this situation (ala Hanlon's razor): "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

I wouldn't be surprised if it was simply a mistake due to lack of adequate inventory management/controls; a theft of this nature will absolutely be detected immediately which makes for a very ineffective theft.

That isn't to say it can't be intentional theft and deception; I just think it is also feasible to be simple human error.

Re:After following this....

[CorporateSuit]

And then they swapped out the real packages for the fake ones!

Srsly -- no need to be pedantic :)

Re:After following this....

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd best hope that intel doesn't find them, each processor has a serial number, and every serial number is accounted and tracked.

Re:After following this....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and then those fakes were 'swapped out' for originals.

fake fakes?

[Sporkinum]

I wonder if anyone who got an i7 will try to make a fake fake to get another i7. Some one in Newegg's shipping will have to check the fakes to make sure they are real fakes. My head just exploded.

Re:fake fakes?

[MonsterTrimble]

I think that's a non issue. First off, without RTFA or the previous discussion, I'm pretty sure there are telltale visual signs if it's fake or not. Second, the only way you would know is by plugging the sucker in and why bother disassembling half your computer, repacking the CPU and sending it back for ANOTHER i7. I fail to see the logic in it.

Re:fake fakes?

[MartinSchou]

Not true. We aren't talking "fake - not the correct part", we're talking "fake - not a cpu but a hunk of metal, not a cooler just a piece of plastic with a sticker on it".

If you are buying cpus, you'll know they're fake when you see them.

Re:fake fakes?

[tnk1]

Newegg has to track outgoing inventory to prevent internal theft, so it is a good bet they probably associated an inventory item with an outgoing order. So, if they know which order the customer is returning, they can probably trace it back to the original supplier in some manner. If they have a good tracking system, they could probably bring up that detail immediately.

Re:fake fakes?

[Anonymous Coward]

He was suggesting that people that got REAL processors would try to build one of the fake ones and return it for exchange so they'd have 2 real ones for the price of 1.

Re:fake fakes?

[Darkness404]

Sure, but how many people are going to look for typos? Sure, if you are boxing 2 or 3 Core i7s a day its realistic you can look at them, but lets say that you have to stuff 200-300+ a day while having to put others in boxes?

Re:fake fakes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they don't quite have that capability, though, they should still be able to know roughly which shipments potentially had a fake i7 (by date range, for example). Depending on the volume of i7 sales, that's probably good enough to just write off any fake RMAs.

Besides, I bet NewEgg isn't even asking for the fakes back. When I had a defective product once, they just sent me a new one without making me pay for return shipping. That sure made my day!

Re:fake fakes?

[Anonymous Coward]

use a video camera with OCR/image match capability. the food industry does.

Re:fake fakes?

[Darkness404]

It would be far too much to invest in to save a small amount of money. Plus, it wouldn't work too well with multiple packages for the same item.

Re:fake fakes?

[John Hasler]

That will only work if the supplier did not ship fakes mixed in with good parts.

Re:fake fakes?

[kimvette]

Newegg has to track outgoing inventory to prevent internal theft,

How do you propose that they do that when some items are blind shipped from their suppliers? What you are suggesting will probably work for CPUs (they probably buy in bulk so they can beat even many distributors' pricing) but what about items they contract their suppliers to drop ship? Also, keep in mind that this will increase costs, and Newegg will have to either raise prices, cut back customer service, or both. Or, they could do what they continued to do and give customers the benefit of the doubt while they quickly investigate.

About D&H's actions

Now, D&H is in the right to protect their information. The only problem I see is their C&D letter goes too far; they demand that any and all references to them be removed from the sites. That's going further than they need to. They may "feel" like they are justified in doing so, but they are not really. They are justified in demanding that the false accusations be removed, but that's about it.

Re:fake fakes?

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant - buy i7, receive (non-fake) i7. Claim to have received fake i7, make a fake, and return that for a replacement- you now have 2 i7s.

Sorta like when a game console breaks out of warranty, one might buy a new one, swap serial number labels and return it as defective.

Re:fake fakes?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

My head just exploded.

Aren't fake fakes real? Because if they weren't real, they'd be fakes, that is real fakes, and thus they wouldn't be a fake fake; they'd really be a real fake.

Re:fake fakes?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you see them, you'll shit bricks.

Re:New Egg

[Etrias]

I've bought a lot of stuff from Newegg and they've been really good. They often get good marks for their RMA policy and returns on DOA equipment. Looks like to me they took the right steps here including stopping the relationship with the supplier who gave them the phony i7s and working to replace the ones that went out. There's nothing here that would prevent me from shopping with them again.

D&H Distributing

[ptbarnett]

HardOCP was apparently the original source of the allegation that D&H Distributing was the source of the counterfeit CPUs. They have since apologized to D&H, claiming that their source of information was someone inside NewEgg.

Counterfeit Intel CPU Saga Comes to a Close

At no time did HardOCP speculate as to what company was supplying the counterfeit processors to Newegg. Our source that informed us of the supplier being D&H Distributing came from within Newegg's organization. We belived the information to be accurate and reported it to our readers. Newegg is stating that IPEX shipped it the counterfeit processors. I am not sure as to why we would get conflicting information, and we will further investigate that.

At this time we offer our apologies to D&H Distributing for naming it as the supplying distributor. HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate. We would NEVER "speculate" on something of this nature, as there is NOTHING for us to gain by misinforming our readers. We will be investigating further as to why we were misinformed on this detail.

Re:D&H Distributing

[bfagan]

This is exactly why trustworthy reporting outlets try to verify sources before reporting as fact. However, this becomes difficult in this time of now, faster, beat the other guy, instant publishing.

Re:D&H Distributing

[ElectricTurtle]

They did verify the source. That doesn't mean the source is infallible (or if you're into conspiracy theories, maybe D&H was more important to NewEgg than IPEX, and so they're scapegoating the latter for the former, and the original source was right...).

If you have a news item about something that happened at company, and low level person there gives you some information, are you just going to ignore it? Please.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is a great example of why HardOCP isn't a trustworthy reporting outlet in my opinion. I kind of hope D&H sues them anyway.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

Established news organizations usually confirm insider information with documentation or alternate sources prior to publication. Insider information is often misleading as the sources typically have personal or political motives for releasing the items. No doubt HardOCP did believe what they were told. Perhaps they will be more skeptical in the future. Note that what is important here is not what HardOCP believes but what is the truth.
Internet news site editors have the arrogance and foolishness of youth. Hopefully they will improve their reporting accuracy with experience.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Klinky]

I am not a fan of HardOCP, once they were posting eBay auctions on their front page from one of their sponsors as being a "Hot Deal", specifically advertising the starting bid price as though it were the actual price of the product being sold. Misleading big time, this was cross posted into their Hot Deals forum as well. I posted a message on their forum asking when did eBay auctions suddenly get allowed into the Hot Deals forum(the rule previously was that eBay auctions were not allowed at all). I got banned for "thread crapping in a sponsors thread". Glad they value their sponsors misleading advertisements over their readers.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

Got news for you: the press has been like that, since LONG before the invention of the Internet. In fact, even before the invention of the telephone ...

Re:D&H Distributing

[flatrock]

I'm still waiting for their appology to Newegg. They insisted that the original statement about demo processors was some kind of coverup. Apparently HardOCP shouldn't be held accountable for passing on incorrect information from their sources, but it's just fine for HardOCP to bash the hell out of Newegg for doing the same, and to not even appologize to them for it.
The way things stand now, Kyle deserves to get sued for libel. Either he needs to admit he accused Newegg without good cause, or he needs to accept fault for not doing a better job of verifying that D&H was at fault. He can't have it both ways.

Re:D&H Distributing

[flatrock]

I'm still waiting for their appology to Newegg. They insisted that the original statement about demo processors was some kind of coverup. Apparently HardOCP shouldn't be held accountable for passing on incorrect information from their sources, but it's just fine for HardOCP to bash the hell out of Newegg for doing the same, and to not even appologize to them for it.
The way things stand now, Kyle deserves to get sued for libel. Either he needs to admit he accused Newegg without good cause, or he needs to accept fault for not doing a better job of verifying that D&H was at fault. He can't have it both ways.

I was unreasonably harsh in my previous post. Kyle doesn't deserve to get sued. He's been around a long time and has built up a lot of well deserved credibility over they years. It's a shame to see that credibility tarnished by him not holding himself to the same standard he held Newegg. He owes them an appology.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also called libel and someone published libel because it was *easier* than verifying sources.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a news item about something that happened at company, and low level person there gives you some information, are you just going to ignore it? Please.

The choices are 1) don't report the information but keep digging until you can come up with a second independent source with with the same information or 2) report the information-- and risk getting burned if your single source turns out to be bad.

Now, if your "number one goal [of your website] is to provide [your] readers with accurate reporting", the choice should be clear.

For your amusement here's a story about single source reporting and blogger credibility.

Re:D&H Distributing

[Anonymous Coward]

HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate.

HardOCP are a bunch of childish morons who think that they are serious journalists.

I am simply reporting the information that I believe to be accurate. It's a pretty low standard, isn't it?

Re:New Egg

[Darkness404]

...And what do you do to prevent this? Go through every single Core i7 to find the fake ones? Quite honestly, when you get told that you are buying a Core i7, the box looks genuine (unless you are reading everything) it looks like the correct weight, etc. In short, there isn't much Newegg could have done short of opening up every box.

IPEX is not an authorized Intel distributor

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like Newegg was buying i7's through a grey market channel and got burned. It's good that they ditched IPEX, but why were they buying from them in the first place? Who knows what channels their other stuff is coming through, and who has gotten to handle the equipment (with an opportunity to install malicious firmware, for example) before Newegg gets it and sells it. Is there ANY place to buy equipment with assurance of getting it through a 100% manufacturer authorized supply chain?

Re:IPEX is not an authorized Intel distributor

[bughunter]

Is there ANY place to buy equipment with assurance of getting it through a 100% manufacturer authorized supply chain?

Umm... Maybe.

Re:IPEX is not an authorized Intel distributor

[eepok]

Is there ANY place to buy equipment with assurance of getting it through a 100% manufacturer authorized supply chain?

If there's humans making less money for their work than they think they should, then there will be no place with 100% authorized (secure) supply chain.

Re:IPEX is not an authorized Intel distributor

[ooshna]

I know a guy that got a brand new Macbook Pro from a crackhead for $40 I don't think he would be considered an authorized retailer.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The supplier that Newegg got rid of was the one threatening to sue journalists. Again Newegg did the right thing by getting rid of them.
Newegg themselves never denied the incident nor did they threaten to sue anyone.

Re:BS

[characterZer0]

According to that article Newegg did not threaten to sue, Newegg's supplier did.

Re:BS

[brunascle]

Not Newegg. That was D&H Distributing, the company that was originally (falsely) accused.

Ipex website returning blank pages

[RocketJeff]

NewEgg identified IPEX as the distributor of the phony chips. Their website, http://www.ipexinfo.com/ , is now returning empty pages. Google shows a cached page that was available earlier today.

Don't know if it's just overloaded or if they took it down on purpose.

Re:Ipex website returning blank pages

[eepok]

http://web.archive.org/web/20071020045918/http://www.ipexinfo.com/

Oct 20, 2007 wayback cache

Re:Ipex website returning blank pages

[adolf]

Hmm. So much for my reasonably-quick, inexpensive ground shipping for Newegg orders from Edison, NJ to Ohio.

*sigh*

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. The company that sent the cease and desist letters is D&H Distributing, which had nothing to do with this case. It's reasonable for them to have sicked their lawyers on journalists making baseless accusations.

Re:What about the legal threats?

[richardellisjr]

That wasn't NewEgg, one of their suppliers (not the culprit) threatened to sue.

Re:What about the legal threats?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't. D&H did: http://www.techeye.net/business/company-threatens-journalists-over-fake-intel-cpu-reports

No need for NewEgg to apologize for something they didn't do.

Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Why can't they buy direct from Intel?

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[swb]

I get why Intel doesn't want to *retail* them, but what's the point of a wholesaler when you have a retail distributor as huge as Newegg?

And the same is true of other products sold via other retailers.

It almost seems like "we/they" put up with a needless set of middlemen who only mark stuff up.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how the market works. They do not want to peddle small amounts to individual online stores. They are not in the distribution business. They want to sell huge lots to OEMs and distributors.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[Rockoon]

Volume discounts.

Resellers would benefit from getting together and purchasing in very large volumes, but in practice they just dont get along. Thus creates the need for Distributors.

Distributors supply many Resellers, so they act as a proxy of that deal the Resellers can't agree on amongst themselves. The Distributor gets a much better volume discount than any Reseller can individually, so both Distributor and Reseller can gain from this arrangement.

The manufacturer gains because their operation is much more efficient when they have large negotiated orders to meet, instead of an unpredictable stream of small orders.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[coolgeek]

They probably do, but I imagine everyone is still on allocation with the i7, so newegg is forced to go to the open market to meet the demand.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[martas]

so you're saying newegg should become walmart?

i know, i know, -1 flaimbait...

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Distributors, wholesalers or middle men if you prefer provide both inventory and financing for retailers, even large ones. The goal in a business like Newegg is to receive funds from customers before you have to pay your suppliers. In other words you don't want your capital tied up in inventory if you can help it. Of course not having inventory can mean lost sales so there is a balancing act required.
Its all about terms and conditions.
 

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[jabelli]

Believe me, Newegg has plenty of inventory. Most of the stuff I order from them ships from their NJ warehouse and arrives at my employer's loading dock in upstate NY before the email with the tracking number hits my mailbox. The UPS truck usually arrives around 10 AM Eastern, and the email seems to be batched at 8 AM Pacific. This is with the standard 3-day shipping.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[dfsmith]

There is a good reason. [Puts on business hat.] When you sell around your distributor (i.e., if Intel were to sell directly to NewEgg) then you really annoy your distributor. When this happens, you get in the situation where your distributor's salespeople are telling the retailers, "You know, we really recommend [say] AMD, and can offer you a lower commission". Now, Intel is almost a monopoly, so they could get away with this, but they know they won't always be. They still have a competitor, and while AMD is still around, Intel can't afford to lose its distribution sales force.

Re:Why does NewEgg even need a distributor?

[Fnkmaster]

Newegg isn't just an individual online store. They are a very large operation. Estimated revenues of over $2B and over 2000 employees. The question is why should a multi-billion dollar retailer purchase through a distributor rather than direct, not why Joe's Mom and Pop Online Shop does so. And clearly processors are one of their major products (they must sell several hundred million dollars a year of Intel processors). Intel's revenues are something like $40B a year, but even so, a company that sells something on the order of 1% of their total product isn't tiny.

One possible answer is that this is because new products get allocated and there is scarcity of high end processors and video cards (often due to yield issues with new products). Newegg can't afford to be out of inventory, they have to both buy directly and buy on the open market from distributors to get enough supply.

Or maybe it's just that Newegg relies on these distributors for a lot of their lower volume products that they can't really buy directly, and they have to funnel their processor purchases through these distributors to keep the relationships intact.

Re:BS

[eepok]

Read the article you linked. It's the distributor D&H that these sites accused without evidence and as such it was the D&H lawyers that sent the cease and desist. As it turns out it was a completely different distributor (IPEX).

"A company called D&H Distributing doesn’t consider it legitimate for the free press took umbrage to this. In fact, the legal beagles over at D&H Distributing got so worked up over the horrifying gall and chutzpah of Icrontic and HardOCP for daring to ask a question that the company slapped both publications with a “cease and desist” order.

Sent by the lawyers representing D&H, Creim Macias Koenig & Frey, it reads in part..."

Re:BS

[bem]

Your link says that D&H, not Newegg threatened legal action.

Considering that D&H did not sell the fakes to Newegg, well, they are justifiably upset that people are wrongfully blaming them.

IANAL, so I don't know if they have an actionable complaint, but your link doesn't show a Newegg legal threat, and, again, D&H is understandably pissed off that they were blamed when they had nothing to do with it.

Re:What about the legal threats?

[bem]

Citation for this?

I've only seen D&H with legal threats (and since they didn't ship the fakes in question, it's very understandable that they are upset with the "fact checking" that wasn't done).

... really close to ASI

[Lead Butthead]

The address is right on top of ASI... what's up with that?

Re:BS

[idontgno]

No, actually, one of NewEgg's distros threatened to sue the bloggers. And justifiably, since the accusation as made was mistaken.

Oh, in related news, NewEgg threatened to sue YOU for falsely accusing them of suing journalists.

Ok, no, not really.

But it's pretty obvious a LOT of people need to be more careful tossing around accusations.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

And it seems D&H was rightfully pissed.

Re:BS

[Mr. Sketch]

Did you even read that article you linked to? It says that the legal threats came from a company called D&H Distributing that the sites claim sold the counterfeit equipment to Newegg:

In fact, the legal beagles over at D&H Distributing got so worked up over the horrifying gall and chutzpah of Icrontic and HardOCP for daring to ask a question that the company slapped both publications with a “cease and desist” order.

Sent by the lawyers representing D&H, Creim Macias Koenig & Frey, it reads in part:

“It has recently been brought to our attention that you are responsible for publishing on the internet, and specifically on your websites, untrue statements respecting allegedly counterfeit Intel Core i7 processors which you allege were sold to Newegg by D&H.

“This letter places you on notice that these statements are false. You have no basis for publishing these false and malicious statements about D & H. These false allegations are defamatory and disparaging to D&H”s business and business relations and have caused grave and irreparable damage to our client.”

Emphasis mine.

That article also mentions that Newegg had already started issuing replacements and they were just trying to figure out where those chips came from:

Tech community site, Icrontic, picked up the HardOCP story and noted that Newegg had shipped replacements for the fake CPUs quickly to affected customers and that both the e-tailer and Intel were in the process of investigating where the chips came from.

Emphasis mine.

New 'bad analogy guy'

[Anonymous Coward]

You bought at NewEgg for price. You want to continue buying at NewEgg for price. To continue that relationship with customers they're going to replace the bum parts, and they are not going to send you a visit from the magical blowjob pony. The economics of computer retail are nothing at all like restaurants.

Re:New 'bad analogy guy'

[sconeu]

You bought at NewEgg for price.

That's not the only reason I buy at NewEgg. In my experience, their customer service is the best I have ever seen.

Examples:

1. My first purchase from NewEgg was from a brand new email account. 2 hours later, it had spam. I complained to NewEgg, and they apologized and gave me some swag -- EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NOT THEIR FAULT (coincidental timing on a dictionary attack).

2. Several years later, I purchased a rackmount LCD/Keyboard from them. The vendor put the wrong gender cables in the box -- don't ask me how. NewEgg, at their own expense, shipped me the correct cables, without even asking me to return the bad ones.

I originally bought from NewEgg on a buddy's recommendation for price. I now recommend them to others for their service.

No wonder my PC wouldn't boot.

[cosm]

Let this be a warning to all you rig builders wearing blindfolds! Hopefully those fakes are casted with a cheap, non-conducting alloy, otherwise break out the popcorn.

Hooray to NewEgg

[phorm]

Congrats to NewEgg on getting onto this quickly. I'm in Canada and they haven't had a presence here for that long, but I've been fairly happy with their service, especially compared to some competitors (yes, I'm looking at you, TigerDirect).

This action will keep them at the top of my A-list. Even if they aren't always the cheapest, customer service has value too!

Re:New Egg

[UnknowingFool]

Also opening every box would break the seals. Technically the item is now longer considered "new" under applicable laws.

Who is IPEX?

[eepok]

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?s=d01ac05d09e4f3d3bfb4364cdbc5d2af&p=1035432866&postcount=927

From [H] Forums:

I just want to clear up something Paul keeps bringing up in this thread: Ipex is a division of ASI. Ipex isn't ASI.

Full disclosure: I worked for ASI for some time back in the 90's (God, I feel old).

ASI is a legit Intel distributor (one of only a small handful) and is one of Newegg's biggest sources for Intel CPU's. Ipex, on the other hand, is the division that deals in gray market CPU's, RAM, etc.

Re:Who is IPEX?

[citizenr]

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?s=d01ac05d09e4f3d3bfb4364cdbc5d2af&p=1035432866&postcount=927

From [H] Forums:

I just want to clear up something Paul keeps bringing up in this thread: Ipex is a division of ASI. Ipex isn't ASI.

Full disclosure: I worked for ASI for some time back in the 90's (God, I feel old).

ASI is a legit Intel distributor (one of only a small handful) and is one of Newegg's biggest sources for Intel CPU's. Ipex, on the other hand, is the division that deals in gray market CPU's, RAM, etc.

WHAT? so ASI has a division specializing in counterfeited goods?

Re:Who is IPEX?

[stupidflanders]

I've always been a fan of IPEX: http://www2.victoriassecret.com/images/prodpri2/V267700_RC093.jpg

Re:Who is IPEX?

[hey!]

No. Gray market does not mean counterfeit. It is just as legal as "normal" channels, although manufacturers don't like it.

Let's say I manufacture a widget in Indonesia and sell it to US distributors for $100. I sell the same widget to Indian distributors for $10, because you can't sell this widget for as much there. I make the Indian distributor promise he won't sell back to the US and undercut my official channel price. But I can't control what people downstream do with the widget. Indians being smart and enterprising, somebody there figures out he can buy a boatload of widgets from the distributor, ship them back to the US, and sell them at a profit for $40.

That's gray market. It's the legitimate goods, made on the same assembly line, and passing from hand to hand by completely legal sales. The manufacturers don't like it, and I may cut off my Indian distributor if I think he's involved with this or turning a blind eye. That means the incentive is for gray market sellers to be secretive, and therein lies the potential for a black marketeer to step into the process and represent himself as a gray marketeer.

When somebody steals widgets from the Indonesian factory, or repackages rejects being thrown out and represents them as good, or sells a non-functional plastic knock-off and represents it as functional, that's *black* market.

You may end up buying black market goods from somebody who represents himself as a gray marketeer. It could be because he is a fraud, but not necessarily. Goods pass from hand to hand in the gray market, and the fraud may be removed one or two transactions from your purchase.

Re:Who is IPEX?

[Attila Dimedici]

How does a "legit Intel distributor" have a division that deals in gray market chips?

Re:Who is IPEX?

[Akardam]

We used ASI at my last job. Given how seedy their will call area was (been there more'n a few times), and some other things that occured over the years, I can't say as I'm surprised by this.

Re:Who is IPEX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite honestly, HardOCP has to be one of the biggest "fudging" technical publications that exists today.

Full disclosure (and my reason for posting AC) - I wrote for some time for a competing website. I won't name it, but it has a much larger base than HardOCP ever did (and no, not Tom's). We used to joke very frequently that someone would "use the HardOCP method" when they were getting frustrated with results not repeating (ie. the "HardOCP method" being just to arbitrarily choose a result and move on). We never DID that, mind you. :)

Even their "retraction" is a load of horsecrap. "This should settle where we were right, and where we were misinformed". Bullshit. Man up, Princess: ***YOU*** f*cked up by regurgitating information you got. You know EXACTLY what you did, what you were trying to do, and you got burned by (ostensibly) a bad source.

I've nothing personally against HardOCP as a website, but I'm really nauseated by their handling of this. It's cute when you fudge things because you don't know how to review a product properly - everyone just kind of snickers, rolls their eyes, and moves on... but it's awful when you're jeopardizing the livelihoods of people at innocent companies (the distributing company) because you wanted a few extra page impressions. Looks good on you, and I hope their lawyers cause you a few sleepless nights.

Re:Who is IPEX?

[klui]

Clearly written by someone who only read the quote and not the actual post in the link.

Re:New Egg

[coolgeek]

Ah gee. Here's the appropriate response to the fp: http://instantrimshot.com/

Re:What about the legal threats?

[coolgeek]

Does anybody know how to read?

Re:BS

[BikeHelmet]

Seems like they're justified. HardOCP's blunder probably just cost them millions - but there's no way to measure it exactly.

The media seems to wield its power haphazardly at times.

At least with sites like TheInquirer, the damage is small if the article is wrong. They have a reputation, after all.

This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[rts008]

That's because they let *gasp* even MERE MORTALS post reviews!!! I mean, Joe Sixpack and Mary Mundane can purchase goods and post reviews at Newegg!!
It would be different if only we Tech Gods and Wizards could post reviews, I tell you!

Like is said:
'A picture is worth a thousand words.'

Forget the comments, just look at the videos on YouTube...crotch bats, toolbox surfing in a suburban neighborhood, etc.
The same type of people that are making the comments are also posting videos, shopping online, and yes, even voting.

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[Mashiki]

That's bloody insightful in my book. Not even with sarcasm, personally if idjit joe can figure out how to make it work and work well. And there's a low failure rate it means that it's safe to use with half of my family.

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The internet went to hell when we started letting the commoners on. When it was academics & rich people, it was a utopia!

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

That would explain Senator Tay Zonday

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[Anonymous Coward]

i know and I hate this

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this system is some products get way overvalued.

I'm still suffering with a horrible gigabyte motherboard. I only bought it because the asus motherboard I wanted was out of stock three weeks running and this was considered comparable and was much higher rated. After two replacements and finding out that gigabyte lies about their ram support I managed to get my ram working. It only double boots to fix their crappy "ZOMG WE HAZ TWO BIOSSESSSS" system about once a month after some fiddling with the hardware.

I'd blame incompatibility and crappy parts, but I don't think and intel quad, corsair ram, nvidia card and western digital hdds are really that non-standard...

Re:This is sarcasm....somewhat....

[mcgrew]

'A picture is worth a thousand words

Try saying that in pictures.

Told ya so...

[interval1066]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1573900&cid=31384826
A shipment meant to deceive.

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe some guy at newegg had a chip on his shoulder and D&H rubbed him the wrong way so he 'leaked' that they did it.

Re:BS

[Falconhell]

I dont know if they are related, but a company called IPEX went broke a year or so ago in Australia. They were a major supplier to Govt and Education-most inconvenient.

Re:New Egg

[RoFLKOPTr]

I've given a couple thousand dollars of my hard-earned cash to Newegg over the years, and I haven't been anything but satisfied. They have a fantastic RMA policy, and a very helpful customer support team, and when you order before noon, items will normally ship the same day (and are guaranteed to ship same-day if you give them an extra $4). I'm sure that they will take good care of every single customer that received a fake product from them.

Re:New Egg

[jim_v2000]

When Paypal works for everyone else who uses Newegg, but not you...the problem is probably not with Newegg.

Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience is that Newegg takes little or no responsibility for the quality of what they sell. They sell everything, and stop selling something only if there are a lot of returns.

Also, my experience has been that Newegg plays games with shipping prices. It has often happened that the same item has had two different shipping prices. One shipping price will include a huge amount of profit for Newegg. The last time this happened, it was cheaper to make two orders of an item than to make one order for two.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[ffreeloader]

In my experience Newegg is head and shoulders above any other online retailer I've ever dealt with. Their customer service goes above and beyond on a regular basis.

Here's just one anecdote of what they've done for me. I bought a cheap monitor from them. Six months later it died. I needed a new monitor immediately as at that moment not having my computer available would have cost me quite a bit of money. I told NewEgg my situation and asked them what could be done.

I ended up buying a better monitor and NewEgg paid overnight shipping on the new monitor(I'm a couple of shipping zones away so it was fairly spendy), plus paid return freight on the old monitor. They made the offer. I didn't even have to request it.

They ended up paying out more than $100 in shipping costs on a $350 order to make things right for me. That's not the only time they have paid shipping costs for returned products either. Plus, they've never balked at any request to return anything. It's always been, "what can we do for you", no questions asked.

I've never run into changing pricing or shipping charges with NewEgg either. I have with Amazon. I've been surfing checking prices and when I've gone back to Amazon 1/2 hour later to order because they were the cheapest, the price has gone up as much as 20% the second time I enter their site.

The only other big retail establishment that I've ever done business with that is as serious as NewEgg is about customer service is Costco. They'll take anything back at any time. They even took an opened 25lb bag of cat food back because our dang cat wouldn't eat the stuff even when I mixed it with canned cat food. I didn't think they would take it back but figured I'd give it a try, and they did. The bag was still full so maybe that's why, but it was open.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

I order from Newegg a lot and have never had a problem with them. You might have gotten two separate shipping bills because they sometimes have to ship items from two completely separate warehouses. As far as I know, they notify you in the checkout process if this is the case and you have to option to wait and have everything shipped at once or to receive some items sooner from a closer warehouse and wait for the rest in a second shipment.

In all my years buying from them, never once have I felt they were trying to rip me off. Everything is up front and clear.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[FuckingNickName]

I needed a new monitor immediately as at that moment not having my computer available would have cost me quite a bit of money.

People who are careful to back up data still seem to think that the the rest of their hardware is invincible.

Whyyyy does anyone who uses a computer for business not have a backup of every piece of equipment? Even if it's just a 6 year old FleBay PC and CRT. Glancing under my desk I have a pIII-550 system for testing parts in, a Celeron 700MHz CPU+mobo which formed my previous home server, a ready-to-go 1.6GHz P4 desktop, a 1.5GHz Althon XP laptop and a PSU. I have, by merely requesting what is other people's garbage, paid about $15 for all this. I also have too many CRTs to be healthy. Mind you, some selling/giving away/recycling of these is in order over the next month!

(Don't forget to turn it on every few weeks to make sure it's working.)

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because not everyone is a pretentious fuck who likes to horde things.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Coren22]

Have you seen their LCD monitor return policy though? If you have dead pixels, it has to be quite a few to return the monitor. I can't believe anyone would buy a LCD with this kind of policy as I have never had a dead pixel not be fixed from HP/Dell purchases.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[b0bby]

Whyyyy does anyone who uses a computer for business not have a backup of every piece of equipment?

Because generally, if something breaks, Newegg will have a brand new one delivered the next day. And if that's not good enough, Microcenter is half an hour away. And I don't have to look at all that old crap, which I give away on Craigslist.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[ffreeloader]

Yeah, I've seen it. To tell the truth though, I've yet to see a decent LCD monitor that came with dead pixels. Maybe I'm just extremely lucky in that regard, but that's the way it's been for me.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[FuckingNickName]

Microcenter is half an hour away.

No sale. If my system breaks in the next minute I want to be up and running again in 5 minutes. I don't want to have to diagnose, wait until opening hours, purchase at high cost from a local store (if your local PC shop sells precisely the motherboard/CPU/whatever you need, you're more urban than I am), skip testing and install, just because I'm too anal to have to "look at" a couple of small boxes under my opaque desk.

And I don't have to look at all that old crap, which I give away on Craigslist.

Ah, I remember when /. was a geek site. Now a perfectly usable (assuming average use case) testing rig, spare desktop and spare laptop are "old crap which I give away"! I wonder what proportion of /.ers today haven't even touched a soldering iron.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[FuckingNickName]

If one spare of everything so I never experience downtime (except precisely when I want to) makes me a pretentious fuck, I wear the label proudly.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretentious fuck, prepared fuck. Tomato, tomahto. :P

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me not to get a web site from stuartsilver.com! "Sorry, I know your site is down, but Microcenter is closed so I can't do anything for a few hours..."

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[b0bby]

I wasn't addressing the "testing rig, spare desktop and spare laptop" - of course I have that stuff. I was addressing the "have a backup of every piece of equipment", which is just unnecessary in most cases.

Re:Little or no responsibility for the quality...

[b0bby]

I know, shouldn't reply to AC but... stuartsilver.com sites are not hosted in my basement.

Re:BS

[Mashiki]

Okay let me put it this way. You're an idjit, D&H has the right to protect their name from being sullied when they didn't ship anything like that because in this day and age: Name recognition means all.

Re:New Egg

[Bureaucromancer]

Except that NewEgg didn't send any cease and desists. They were sent by the distributor who shipped the units.

Re:New Egg

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, just wow. I'd respect your sentiment if this were some sort of paranoid fantasy, but the problem is you obviously trust paypal with your credit card number and/or bank account number so this can't be the case.

A guess about what happened:

[Futurepower(R)]

That's a good question, and it worries me also. Certainly Newegg sometimes orders directly from Intel, I suppose.

This is a guess about what happened: A salesman from a distributor said they were giving a very good price because they were overstocked. The Newegg buyer bought from that distributor because the price was lower than the price from Intel.

Certainly it would be good to have a promise from each supplier that they bought directly from the manufacturer.

Re:A guess about what happened:

[ZosX]

I don't think newegg is big enough to order direct. No, there are much, much larger suppliers out there. Newegg is essentially an online retail middleman. They are really cheap, but you are still certainly paying a slight markup. You have to realize that these chips are made in china, malaysia and taiwan. I would imagine most suppliers have shipped operations overseas or are just plain chinese to begin with. Look at canon. I tried to call canon to order a part for a large format $8000 printer. They wouldn't deal with me, but were happy to replace a part under warranty and even shipped an part invoice with it. Unless newegg is buying in the thousands at once, I really doubt they buy direct.

Re:A guess about what happened:

[Khyber]

"You have to realize that these chips are made in china, malaysia and taiwan."

Not one single of my processor packages has any of those countries you mention - All of them say Singapore or Israel.

COUNTERFEITS might be made in Malaysia, Taiwan, and China. Intel's fab plants are NOT located in those countries. They are located in places like Ireland, and the United States.

Re:A guess about what happened:

[u38cg]

The fabs tend to be in countries with good infrastructure and a pool of skilled labour, but assembly and packaging can be done anywhere you can load containers.

Re:A guess about what happened:

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel do packaging (not fabbing) in Malaysia, Taiwan and China.

Re:A guess about what happened:

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. I worked at Intel Malaysia for 5 years. Only the FABS are in Ireland/US. They make wafers. We make chips. Globalization means that what it says on your package means very little nowadays.

IPEX Denies Being Original Source

[eepok]

http://www.crn.com/hardware/223300173;jsessionid=B1V040G2ULN1LQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN

"Ipex has been supplying computer components to the technology industry for over 10 years with the goal of providing quality products and services to our customers. Recently we were referenced in connection with some counterfeit Intel Core i7 920 Microprocessors sold within the US market. While we purchased these products in good faith from a supplier we are very disappointed to learn of the questionable status of these products and are taking appropriate action to resolve the issue for any impacted Ipex client as well as are fully cooperating with Intel's investigation in to determining the original source."

Re:IPEX Denies Being Original Source

[AndrewBC]

Dirty deals, done dirt cheap?

Re:IPEX Denies Being Original Source

[Skapare]

IPEX needs to name their source for those "demo units". That, and fire the guy who made the claim to NewEgg that they were "demo units". They need to cut off their relationship with that source.

And WTF is this distribution chain so long? Can't IPEX buy directly from Intel?

Re:New Egg

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. The problem, as usual, is with PayPal.

Re:New Egg

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the distributer who shipped the units (IPEX) sending the cease and desists. It was D&H Distributing who went the legal route when they were falsely accused.

Re:New Egg

[flatrock]

Actually the cease and desists were sent by a different distributer who was incorrectly named as the culprit and was justifiably upset. The cease and desist letters by D&H were appropriate, and their claims that they were being falsely accused were accurate.

I think Kyle at HardOCP was honestly misinformed, but he didn't exactly handle if well. He accused Newegg of being dishonest and trying to cover things up. He appologizes to D&H but defends himself by saying "We would NEVER "speculate" on something of this nature, as there is NOTHING for us to gain by misinforming our readers." However, he never gave Newegg the same benefit of the doubt he claims he deserves. He adamantly accused Newegg of a cover-up when they originally relayed IPEX's story about demo processors. Newegg had no more to gain by lying than HardOCP did.

Kyle has been around a long time and should know better. He owes Newegg one hell of a public appology, and hopefully after a little more thought he will man up and make that appology.

Re:New Egg

[rhsanborn]

The cease and desist was sent by a NewEgg supplier, but not the supplier who shipped the chips. D&H Distributing sent the cease and desist, as they were being accused of shipping fake chips. It was later found out that IPEX was the company that shipped the fake chips.

Re:New Egg

[ZosX]

just use your cc. you can get a prepaid cc for like $5-10 if security is that much of a worry. They charge you like $1 a transaction or so and $3 to add cash. Not a terrible deal for a completely anonymous credit card......

I mean seriously. You are far more likely to be fucked over by paypal than you are to have your credit card # used for something illegal when you buy from newegg. Unless you totally don't trust SSL or anything.....don't they have a phone number too?

Re:New Egg

[Jurily]

Paypal works for everyone else

[citation needed]

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, a jackass blogger finds out what real media has known for years: confirm your sources or don't publish. Oh, wait - that's THIS news...

I don't even see him making an apology

[Anonymous Coward]

"At no time did HardOCP speculate as to what company was supplying the counterfeit processors to Newegg.

Yeah it did - it didn't have hard proof. At best it had hearsay.

Our source that informed us of the supplier being D&H Distributing came from within Newegg's organization.

A source whom he will not name, no doubt. How convenient. I have no reason to believe this source is real - I don't know why Kyle thinks it is.

We belived the information to be accurate and reported it to our readers.

No - he believed the information to be plausible based on the idea that D&H were known suppliers of Newegg. His 'source' could have named -any- of them, and he would have taken that as 'accurate'.

Newegg is stating that IPEX shipped it the counterfeit processors.

Note the subtle "they say this, we say that" stance there...

I am not sure as to why we would get conflicting information, and we will further investigate that.

Probably because one 'source' is supposedly somebody 'within Newegg's organization', and the other -IS- the official Newegg response. Unless he's alleging further supposed coverup efforts, I'd put my money on Newegg's official statement - which is subject to major legal ramifications if -they- are wrong.
Quite unlike Kyle, who...

At this time we offer our apologies to D&H Distributing for naming it as the supplying distributor.

...who thinks an "oops, my bad" will do. Although it's not even that, because he is only offering his apologies 'at this time'. He may very well retract them later, then?
( by the way - what's with the identity crisis? Is he representing himself (I) or HardOCP (we)? )

HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate.

From a questionable source - if there was even a source.

We would NEVER "speculate" on something of this nature

Too late - he already did.

as there is NOTHING for us to gain by misinforming our readers.

Sure there is - being (one of) the first with the news. Getting linked to by a hundreds of bloggers and others news sites as a result (instead of a competing website who might manage to get the news out 30 minutes earlier if he'd spent that time following up leads). Which, in turn, means potential ad clicks, new steady readership, etc.
HardOCP has lots to gain from posting any story - even if it's a blatant lie. Heck, some sites thrive on posting stories about alien abductions and "Bigfoot impregnated me" stories.

We will be investigating further as to why we were misinformed on this detail.

Please, by all means. he should make some heads roll in his investigation's conclusions. With any luck, it's his own if D&H pushes through instead of accepting the absolutely laughable 'apology' post and shrugging it off.

Again, my apologies to D&H Distributing. Our number one goal at HardOCP is to provide our readers with accurate reporting.

No it isn't. It hasn't been ever since a published article can be edited, or rectified in a new post just hours later, and news sites have hidden behind that as an excuse for poor publishing standards to begin with. That has been the case at least since the GeForce 3 Tech article snafu; the apology for which was also rather weak and ended with an off-color joke.
The goal has been drawing in readership (and thus ad impressions, clicks, etc. - or even just a boosting of his ego) - if pushing an article through early, or ill-researched, then so be it.
( This is not unique to HardOCP )

Grow up and own up, Kyle.

Re:BS

[sjames]

It could be actionable (note that IANAL) depending on just how much reason they had to believe that "unnamed source". After all, no matter what it is, you can find some unnamed source who will swear to it but whose doctor will tell you you shouldn't believe him.

Re:BS

[TheLink]

> because in this day and age: Name recognition means all.

Yeah especailly when many bloggers and slashdotters couldn't read well enough to tell the difference in names. IPEX, D&H, NewEgg they look all the same right? :)

I also found it slightly amusing to read the posts which said that people in NewEgg should have noticed the fakes because of the typos...

Spelling and grammar errors are so common nowadays, and more and more people seem to take offense when someone points out the errors.

Re:New Egg

[smash]

doesn't work for me.

Counterfeits would come from Intel's trash.

[Futurepower(R)]

Counterfeits would come from units that tested bad made by Intel that were supposed to be thrown away, but were instead marked and sold by a counterfeiter.

Intel is extremely careful about security, so I imagine there is little chance of that happening.

some info about ipex

[bogolisk]

http://ipex-infotech-inc.tradenote.net/

1,000 per week is only 52,000 per year.

[Futurepower(R)]

I guess differently. My guess is that Intel allows orders of a minimum of 1,000 processors, and Newegg would sell that many of each kind in less than a week. That's only 52,000 of each kind of processor each year. I'm guessing that Newegg certainly sells that many, almost certainly more.

Example of poor quality from Newegg

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice from the reviews how many people who have had this ASUS VH242H monitor more than a month have had severe problems.

I garbled that.

[John Hasler]

> "We acknowledge that they are real will replace them, but we are still
> investigating"

Should read "We acknowledge that they are not real and will replace them, but we are still investigating"

Re:New Egg

[batkiwi]

kyle is an asshole. This has been proven by anyone who's attempted to read hardocp for more than 12 months. I stopped reading 5-6 years ago after he flamed me over email for daring to comment on a story they had on the front page.

ASUS has been reluctant to honor the warranty.

[Anonymous Coward]

ASUS has been reluctant to honor the warranty, they say.

Re:BS

[batkiwi]

No one at HardOCP is a journalist, so that's not 100% true.

Re:New Egg

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

The deal here goes probably along this lines:

D&H has some exclusive Intel deal with Newegg. Newegg probably buys all of it's Intel stock from them. Neweggs success depends 100% on their relationship with their providers. Getting a good deal usually involves getting a few executives in a nice golfing trip, promising big sales volumes, and buying certain products exclusively from $company.

Some smartass at newegg said "Hey, we are paying X for this Intel processors, but this guys are selling them 15% cheaper!, I can increase our revenues substantially, and get a promotion!". They bought from the wrong guys. When the news got out about the fake processors, the guys at D&H immediately thought "hey, that's us", and tried to (stupidly) bully people to shut them up (while double-checking all their deliveries to Newegg for fake units). Newegg will probably has a lengthy apology to give to D&H, and will have to suck a few cocks to get things back in track.

Re:New Egg

[Cylix]

At one point I used to purchase strictly from newegg and recommend all of my contracts purchase through them as well.

However, they completely have blocked me on shipments to work. (I try every once and a while). I'm just not willing to fax in my drivers license to prove who I am. I've made several thousand dollars in valid purchases over the years and occasionally I want to ship the more expensive items to a location with a live shipping/receiving area.

When shipping to my home address I generally use newegg because of all the perks mentioned. However, I can get exactly the same benefits when purchasing through amazon and they will ship to my work address with no fuss.

Regardless, one bad pallet of processors does not deter me from shopping with them. Perhaps I misread somewhere, but I didn't believe they were not accepting the units on return.

there's more to grey market than reimports

[YesIAmAScript]

You are speaking of reimports. They're just one aspect of the grey market.

There are other grey market goods. For example, Intel might give out a sample of an i920 to a distributor or retailer for free as a gift. They say not to resell it, but you know, maybe they just do anyway. This becomes a grey market good too.

Basically, any a good is resold against some agreement (borders as you say, NFR in my case) it becomes a grey market good. As you mention, it's typically still a perfectly good item, it's not counterfeit or anything.

I don't really agree on your definition of black market. Black market goods are typically anything that is illegal to sell, they can still be legit goods, just you're not supposed to be able to buy/sell them. If I buy illegally imported liquor that the government didn't get their taxes on, it's black market liquor, even though it's still legit. It also can be a legit good that was stolen and resold. And it's still a legit good, but you might not get a warranty (you might not on grey market goods either!). These two examples are the most typical things people think of when you hear black market.

Re:New Egg

[Psychotic_Wrath]

Discover has an interesting feature with their credit cards. I can call them and tell them I am making an online purchase. They will give me a credit card number that is good for 1 use. I can even set the max price for that 1 use. The number is obviously tied to my card, but after I use it the number is worthless and nobody can use it ever again. This is also free, and I have no annual fee on my card. Its kind of nifty

Spoken like a true uneducated consumer.

[Khyber]

"There's nothing here that would prevent me from shopping with them again."

Pricewatch.com - newegg advertises there and is beaten regularly by better and faster companies, usually by an easy 20%.

Re:Spoken like a true uneducated consumer.

[Andy Dodd]

My experience is that overall (there are occasional exceptions), if a vendor is consistently offering better prices than NewEgg across the board, there's a good chance you are going to have LOTS of fun if anything goes wrong with the transaction.

I once ordered a video card from a vendor that beat NewEgg's prices by a pretty decent amount. NEVER AGAIN. The card was defective on arrival, and the return process was HELL. The vendor immediately tried to pawn me off to PNY, and of course PNY said to contact the vendor for the first 30 days.

So yeah, NewEgg is not the cheapest, but they're the cheapest reputable vendor with acceptable customer service there is. (Not that I would call NewEgg's CS merely acceptable, it is better described as excellent.)

Also, as another person said, if you do the "individual component shop-around", you'll lose any cost advantages when those multiple vendors nail you for shipping.

Re:Spoken like a true uneducated consumer.

[Khyber]

Almost EVERY SINGLE pricewatch deal I'm looking at right now has FREE SHIPPING.

Sorry, even TEN years ago when dirt cheap drives and pricewatch were the big kings on the internet, most shipping was free even then.

The real cause of the problem is Intel ...

[Skapare]

... selling chips cheaper outside of the USA than inside. That's why there are so many shady distribution channels overseas, to bring the cheap market chips into the USA (where Intel is otherwise boosting the pricing to cover their loses of extreme discounts in other countries). If Intel sold chips directly to retailers like NewEgg at the same price as they sell them everywhere else, with no further volume discounts above the volumes NewEgg and the like buy them in, then there would be no need for NewEgg to buy those chips from questionable distribution channels.

Re:New Egg

[Vectormatic]

i tend to agree that HardOCP and especially Kyle are a wacky bunch. Especially around hardware reviews, the [H] folk tend to revel in trash-talking other sites for not using 'real world' benchies... Just about any review that slightly contradictes what the mighty Kyle says is flamed down as using 'canned benchmarks' at best, or paid for at worst...

and any criticism on the forum is quickly covered up.

I like the hardforum for general stuff, but when it comes to hardware reviews and Kyle in general i tend to stay the fuck away

Re:New Egg

[IICV]

Also, if you live in Southern California, you usually get next-day shipping for free since their main warehouse is down here. I've ordered stuff Monday morning, paid $3 extra for rush shipping, and received it Tuesday afternoon.

Depends on your education

[Etrias]

Interesting. Funny though that I used to do all of my shopping through Pricewatch ages ago and got tired of having to order each separate part from a different company to get the lower price which was almost always compensated by outrageous shipping prices.

There's something to be said about paying a bit more (usually trivially more) for good customer service. Price is not the end all/be all for me as a consumer. You should notice that not once I mentioned price as a reason to shop from Newegg. As a company, they have my trust and that's difficult to do with people just slashing prices. And as another poster mentioned, if I order a part in stock, it is usually out the door that day. Also, I don't have to keep little pieces of paper everywhere from separate retailers to find out exactly what part I ordered as Newegg keeps a record of my purchases with my account that's easily accessible.

If price is your only yardstick for measuring, then you would be right. Fortunately for me, I educated myself on their other offerings and chose a company that delivers more than simple price breaks.

Re:Depends on your education

[cbreaker]

While I also order most things from NewEgg now (mostly because they ship FAST and you get your stuff in a couple of days even from the California warehouses (I live in RI) and their prices are usually very resonable) I still use PriceWatch to check prices and sometimes order things.

Pricewatch had a HUGE problem a few years back with vendors selling things at low prices but then charging huge shipping on the back end. It ruined Pricewatch because you couldn't tell which vendors were actually cheaper.

Now, Pricewatch requires all vendors that list there to include shipping costs, and if you try to charge something other than what is advertised on Pricewatch they will pull all of your items.

The sucky part about ordering everything via Pricewatch vendors is that you end up ordering from 5 different vendors and it can take a long time to get all your stuff.

Re:New Egg

[Coren22]

You may want to check with your credit card bank. My understanding is that they make you do the fax thing if the address is not listed on your credit card, and it should be pretty trivial to add your work address to your credit card.

Not a first for Newegg.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a first for Newegg. They were shipping counterfeit Intel PRO 1000 GT NIC's a few years back.

HAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason for me be glad I ordered a Quad Core Phenom II 965 instead of an Intel chip from them just a few weeks ago!

Re:New Egg

[Andy Dodd]

Your PayPal account is probably, like the GPs and mine, broken somehow.

I've had a bank account linked for years, and starting this year they started rejecting PayPal transfer requests from the account. (I haven't had a chance to call the bank about this yet.)

I tried to add another bank account, but PayPal's confirmation system is apparently broken. There are a LOT of people reporting not seeing their confirmation deposits. I know the routing number and account number are correct as I've successfully linked 3-4 other services to that account in a similar fashion.

It's just another example of PayPal sucking.

(I've never tried to execute a PayPal order from NewEgg, I avoid PP whenever possible, so it's pretty much for eBay transactions and occasional purchases of "obscure" stuff like group buys of circuit boards.)

Your scenario isn't legal

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Gray market does not mean counterfeit. It is just as legal as "normal" channels, although manufacturers don't like it.

No. In your example, the manufacturer sold product to Indian distributors with the understanding that the product would be sold in India. In real life this sort of limitation would be codified using a legally binding contract. So, in your example, if these products ended up being sold in the US, it would not have been legal.

So you could say NewEgg...

[MrTripps]

...has egg on their face? Seriously, I really like NewEgg. Doesn't seem to be their fault.

newegg was bad in this whole thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Because newegg was so quick to dismiss the issue with the purchaser of the fake proc, and was so quick to not take responsibility for the situation (at first and for much too long), I am not happy with newegg. It's like they're only just now admitting guilt because their on the PR hotseat and otherwise would have just turned their back on the customer and pretend it never happened. This is a very poor business practice and because of their treatment of this situation and of the poor guy who went through the situation with them, I'm sanctioning newegg for all purchases, personal and business related, for two years. They need to realize that the way they treat their customers does have repercussions. The company I work for, for which I'm the primary person in charge of all IT purchases, will no longer do any more business with newegg for two years (and we did a lot of business with them) because of their quick judgment of the customers who tried to tell newegg that this was a real situation and for which newegg at first basically told them that they are lying. Customers must be given the benefit of the doubt, at least at first, and shipped a another copy of the product in question (either cross ship or return ship after receit of the bad/counterfeit product.

Re:New Egg

[cbreaker]

No, that's not correct, but it may depend on the card - I'm not sure.

I use alternate addresses for NewEgg. I have my home address which I never use because it's an apartment and nobody is home during the day, I have a friends house which UPS will just leave packages out at (it's pretty remote) and I've used various work addresses throughout the years.

Never seems to be a problem. Maybe the credit cards I use don't have a special instruction to the vendor, or maybe NewEgg has never "audited" me when I ship to the non-billing address.

The only time you'll always have a problem is if you don't provide the correct billing address when asked. NewEgg does not require billing and shipping addresses to match.

Re:New Egg

[spire3661]

I like Kyle, but in recent years hes gotten a big head and he often doesnt think completely clearly. Plus all the ads on the site made me stop going to it years ago. I stopped going when they started using keyword advertising in articles. Why yes Kyle i would love to be sold X brand video card while reading in the middle of this article, thank you!

Re:New Egg

[Coren22]

This is not what I said. The person I was responding to was saying he wanted to use his work as his shipping, I was suggesting having this added as an alternate address. NewEgg looks up the shipping address with your CC too and will sometimes ask you to do the fax confirmation of the address.

Re:New Egg

[kirkb]

I share the same thoughts and experience as P and GP. Other sites in the same vein (anandtech, arstechnica) do a much better and more professional job than HardOCP. It's fair to say that Kyle drove me away from the site.

iBrick

[mahsah]

http://consumerist.com/2009/04/216489-paving-stone-in-a-macbook-pro-box-looks-nice-but-wont-run-photoshop.html

Well, not always.

Re:New Egg

[cymen]

Have you tried adding your work address to your credit card account? Call them up and ask to add an address as a valid shipping option. Should work and should get approved via NewEgg without needing to do anything special at NewEgg or other sites once the address is on the account for the credit card.

Re:New Egg

[cbreaker]

Actually, it is what you said. You said that it was your understanding that if the address is not listed on the card, they would require extra steps.

That's an incorrect understanding. I simply responded that I don't have my various shipping addresses listed on my cards, and I've never had a problem from NewEgg.

I did say that perhaps I've never been "audited" by NewEgg. They probably randomly verify non-billing shipping addresses. But they've never looked up my shipping addresses because my card companies know nothing about them and NewEgg has shipped to wherever without a question.

Re:New Egg

[Coren22]

Ahh I misunderstood what you were saying, I read your comment to mean that you had alternate addresses listed on your card. I have had to do this procedure with them for shipments to my work, but never thought it was odd, they are just trying to CYA.