Last week I ordered a complete set of parts from Newegg to assemble a desktop computer. I was able to get very good deals for cheap and was awaiting the shipment with bated breath. It arrived this Wednesday, June 22, and I immediately started putting it together. First thing I realized: I was only sent 1 SATA cable and I needed to connect a hard drive and a CD drive. That might have been my fault. Who knows. I would have certainly appreciated it if the web site had warned me of my stupid oversight, but that’s a very small complaint in view of the larger issue.
Later in the process, I was about to insert the CD drive into one of the outward facing slots. It didn’t quite fit, and I noticed the metal framework of the CD drive was bent out of shape a little. I assumed it was a cosmetic problem and just pushed the dent back in, so that the drive slid snugly into the case. I didn’t get to use it that evening because I didn’t have a cable to connect it. Tonight I was able to try it out though. It gave out such a heart-wrenching noise when I fed it a CD that I jumped out of my seat. It was worse than nails on a chalkboard. Needless to say, it didn’t read the CD. There must have been some mechanical damage to it after all.
Back to my story: instead of installing the OS from a CD, I had to find a way to install it from a spare external hard drive I had. I figured out how to do that. It wasn’t too hard. The trick is that it has to be a FAT32 file system because the BIOS wouldn’t read anything else, and in order to get a FAT32 file system you need the volume to have a pretty small size. I don’t know exactly how large, but certainly not the whole 250 GB my hard drive had. That didn’t work. I created a partition only large enough to fit the install files: around 5 GB.
Anyway, I got to use my new machine on Wednesday night and I was beside myself with joy. It was working like a charm. The next morning, I started transferring about 100 GB from my old computer. The machine froze partway through the process and wouldn’t respond to any input. A hard reboot later, the BIOS told me that the hard drive has failed according to S.M.A.R.T. and it needed to be replaced. So much for my happiness. Newegg’s return process is as long as it can possibly be so that they can avoid any possibility of being swindled. I have to send in the hard drive first, then they’ll look at it, and only then will they send me a new one. They assure me each of these steps will take some number of days, and their sum seems to be about 2 weeks. Great. I have this wonderful machine next to my desk, and it’s worthless to me for another 2 weeks.
Now, It’s not really too hard for me to wait a little longer, but there is a catch. Newegg’s return policy states that I must return everything within 30 days of the invoice date. Funny how these days are measured in actual days whereas all of Newegg’s days are measured in business days. Whatever. The kicker is that now that I have sent in my hard drive, I have to wait two weeks. Meanwhile, I can’t really put the other parts to use to make sure they’re all in perfect working order until I can get a hard drive! These 30 days will not be extended on account of the failed hard drive, so basically by the time this new hard drive arrives, this trial period will have expired. What’s more, by my reading of the terms, if the replacement hard drive were to fail in a similar way to the last one, I will have no recourse but to buy a new one because the 30 days are up.
I am pretty upset about all this and I don’t think I’ll be using Newegg again. It might not be their fault that UPS banged up the shipment well enough to destroy the only two devices in it that have moving parts, but Newegg’s return process is not robust enough to deal with that possibility. It’s too much of a risk to take. I’m not planning on asking for a replacement CD drive because that only cost $20 and I don’t feel like dealing with the return process anymore. They ask that I return it in the original packaging “with all accessories”. Well, the CD drive came with no accessories and it was just bubble-wrapped and thrown in a much bigger box with other things. I’m not going to go look for packing material and boxes. I’m done. I’ll find a CD drive elsewhere. It’s next to worthless as a part in today’s computer world anyway.
Enough ranting.
