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NewEgg Confirms Shipping Fake Core i7s

Posted by kdawson on from the making-good dept.

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."

20 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake! by Dragoniz3r · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:Glad Newegg confirmed they're fake! by c++0xFF · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. NewEgg handled it well, by SpazmodeusG · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:NewEgg handled it well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:NewEgg handled it well, by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Informative

      > 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.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  3. Re:Caveat Emptor by Etrias · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. D&H Distributing by ptbarnett · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    1. Re:D&H Distributing by bfagan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  5. Re:Glad by Konster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  6. Re:Lost customer by maxume · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  7. Re:BS by characterZer0 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    --
    Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
  8. Re:What about the legal threats? by richardellisjr · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  9. Re:Glad by Spewns · · Score: 5, Funny

    Welcome to the entitlement mindset.

    And rightfully so.

  10. Who is IPEX? by eepok · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Who is IPEX? by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  11. Re:Caveat Emptor by spun · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  12. Re:Glad by Thaelon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  13. Re:Lost customer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:Caveat Emptor by irieken · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  15. Re:New Egg by flatrock · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.