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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."
Want to find even more? Try buying some flash on ebay sometime.
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.
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...
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.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
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.
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?
...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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
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 !".
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.
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
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.
Question everything
Ah gee. Here's the appropriate response to the fp: http://instantrimshot.com/
cat
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.
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.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
When Paypal works for everyone else who uses Newegg, but not you...the problem is probably not with Newegg.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Correct. The problem, as usual, is with PayPal.
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?
zosxavius photography
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...
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.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
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.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?