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Crime Intel Hardware

Some Newegg Customers Received Fake Intel Core i7s 447

Several readers have mentioned the strange goods that some customers received from Newegg in place of the Intel Core i7 920 processor they ordered. Word on the problem first surfaced on TribalWar on Thursday evening. Newegg still hasn't commented on this. It's not known whether it happened as a result fraud by another Newegg customer, in shipping, or where. The "processors" are made of aluminum, and the "fans" are some kind of synthetic molded material. The "factory seal" was printed onto the box; the holographic stickers on the boxes were also faked. The first part of this video shows the bogus goods. At this writing Google News lists a handful of blogs mentioning the fakes.
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Some Newegg Customers Received Fake Intel Core i7s

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  • Not me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Captain Splendid ( 673276 ) <`capsplendid' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:00PM (#31384316) Homepage Journal
    I buy AMD!
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:05PM (#31384350)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Video Games (Score:4, Informative)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:11PM (#31384396) Homepage

      Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect a factory worker took home a little souveneir... but who knows?

      Most retail stores have their own shrinkwrap supplies in the back somewhere. If a product comes back in good condition, they'll just wrap it up and put it back on the shelf. That's not to say I suspect any malfeasance on the part of the retailer. An employee could have stolen it without the company's knowledge, or the employee who accepted a return could have just re-wrapped it without opening the box to see if there really was a product in there. Or someone could have just as easily bought the product, swapped it out with the bolt to approximate the weight, then brought the box into their own retail job, where they used their boss's shrinkwrap machine to re-wrap it before returning it.

      • You can normally tell when stores have tried to resell a returned game cartridge (say, for the DS) as new, because they nearly always forget to wipe the saves on them. Of course, you don't discover that until you get home, when it's too late. On the other hand, I'm the sort of person who'd be happy to buy a good-condition returned game anyway, but there aren't any because they're all being sold as new...
        • Re:Video Game (Score:4, Informative)

          by paeanblack ( 191171 ) on Sunday March 07, 2010 @09:37AM (#31389664)

          Of course, you don't discover that until you get home, when it's too late.

          It's never too late. If you got ripped off by a store, take that product back and bitch. It's not a court of law, you don't need to have proof that you are right. Just stand your ground, and they will cave. The more expensive the item, the longer they will argue with you, but you'll win in the end. It is simply not worth the money to argue with you.

          However, don't make it personal. Don't blame anybody specifically. Don't piss anyone off. You want the manager to be able to walk away happy that he/she made a rational and correct cost-benefit decision (i.e. feeling like a winner)

          • Re:Video Game (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Sunday March 07, 2010 @10:22AM (#31390082) Journal

            I bought a $50 broken laptop for parts.. The wife searched through the carry case and saw paperwork for an extended warranty (gotta love her). It was on the last month, so I took it back to Best Buy (gotta hate them), who offered the warranty, not the manufacturer. They were being asshats and trying to tell me that they could only give me a replacement that was a very low end no-name laptop with a smaller screen, while the one I had was middle/higher end Toshiba. They using the CPU speed as the only metric, and the "new" one was faster, so it was better, and I was "lucky". I told them I wanted the exact same model (as per the extended warranty paperwork), which was of course, impossible. I just wanted something that was in the same original price range, to be fair, not something half the price.

            Long story short, I was polite but direct, didn't get personal, and just happened to have a very loud speaking voice that was asking why they weren't going to honor their own extended warranty, in a reasonable way, over and over, while the place was crowded. After 30 minutes, I walked out with a $1300 gift card, which was the original cost minus warranty/tax. It doesn't matter that I bought it used or knowing it was broken, it was the fact that it had a warranty and I expected them to honor their own agreements.

      • by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @08:48PM (#31385578) Journal
        Anyone can get a shrink wrap machine [ebay.com]

        I always figured a good slight-of-hand magician could get away with all kinds of "at the cash register" mischief. No shrink wrap machine required...

        "Hey! You just saw me open it, and there was nothing in the box but this rabbit!"
      • Re:Video Games (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AmberBlackCat ( 829689 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @09:14PM (#31385706)
        Gamestop is worse, in my opinion. Because they sell new games for a higher price than the used games, but they remove all of the games from the cases. So both new and used games are out of the shrinkwrap and they expect you to trust that your game is one of the new ones. Also, there is no option to return the game because it was taken out of the shrinkwrap before you bought it. Is that even legal?
        • Re:Video Games (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Radish03 ( 248960 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @10:06PM (#31386012)

          They even do this with games like World of Warcraft, where the CD key itself is what's worth the price on the box, and removing the discs from the sealed box lets anyone with access to the discs to see the key. I bought a copy like this, and while it worked out OK, I was rather suspicious and considered going elsewhere to get it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Don't know about the US but in the UK and AFAIK all of Europe your consumer rights override the EULA. If there is a problem with it you can return it for a working replacement or a refund, end of.

          They will try to tell you otherwise, that opened software cannot be returned because you might have copied it (despite all the DRM) but your consumer rights trump all their own little rules. That's why "sold as seen" is meaningless too, no matter what the item still has to be "fit for purpose" so at best they could

    • Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect a factory worker took home a little souveneir... but who knows?

      I would think a factory worker could do it without troubling a customer like that. More people than factory workers have access to shrinkwrapping machines, iirc, in the 1990s, some stores had them so they could sell returned games as new... but then a worker would steal a game and cover it up like this. It's also entirely possible that a previous customer returned t

      • Re:Video Games (Score:4, Insightful)

        by interval1066 ( 668936 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:09PM (#31384796) Journal
        Agreed, seems a little elaborate for a customer or even Newegg insider, I wonder if their supplier is playing fast and loose with the merchandise. A white plastic mold of a fan with a sticker of flan blades on top? That's going far for a simple return.
        • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @11:43PM (#31386546)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Re:Video Games (Score:5, Interesting)

          by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@@@jwsmythe...com> on Sunday March 07, 2010 @12:15AM (#31386720) Homepage Journal

              It's the magic of supply chains. People buy from other people for almost everything.

              Newegg may buy some items directly from Intel, and others from other vendors who get a better wholesale price.

              I'd suspect one of their suppliers offered a slightly better price and/or earlier shipping date, so they bough X pallets of them. Who knows where they were injected into the supply chain. Products aren't opened (or even uncased) until the get to the destination.

              There were some very interesting writeups on the same thing happening to the pharmaceutical supply chains. Almost no pharmacies buy directly from the manufacturers. It's more work than the manufacturer is interested in.

              The chain can go something like this:

          Level 1) Manufacturer, with a few plants.
          Level 2) A dozen (or a few dozen) major distributors.
          Level 3) Hundreds or thousands of other distributors.
          Level 4) Regional distribution companies.
          Level 5) Retail distribution centers (like, the DC for CVS/Rite Aid/Walgreens/Walmart/etc/etc/etc)
          Level 6) Your local store.

          Level 3 may shop around between Level 2 distributors for better pricing.
          Level 4 definitely shops around between all the Level 3 distributors.
          Level 5 shops level 3 and 4 distributors, depending on the quantities they're ordering.

          and Level 6... Well, that's the level Newegg is at. They're just a retail outlet.

              If I, producing some counterfeit product, made a contact with a Level 3 distributor, and I could move 10,000 units of a $500 product that cost me $5 to product, it may be worth it to kick back $100k to the "purchaser" to get this in. What salesman wouldn't want to make their regular commission, plus get $100k in small unmarked bills? Sure, you could try to follow the supply chain back, but as the trails run all over the world it'll probably be a lost cause.

              Someone's going to eat these losses, and it won't be the guy who injected the counterfeits into the supply chain.

              Unfortunately, sales contacts are carefully guarded secrets as you work your way up the chain, so the counterfeiter will just move around without the word getting around too much. They'll change names, locations, and faces, so they won't get caught.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Dumnezeu ( 1673634 )

      Ah, so you're the one who found it. Sorry about that...

    • by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:08PM (#31384790)

      Sounds a little excessive for "fraud by another Newegg customer." Another customer would at least have had real stickers (from the original box).

      In fact it reminds me of a childhood experience. Back when Final Fantasy "II" came out for the SNES, I bought it at Toys R Us. It was shrink-wrapped and everything. When I opened it, instead of a cartridge it had a bolt with a couple nuts screwed on so it would weigh the same as a cartridge. Fortunately, the manager was willing to swap it out for me--but from then on, I always opened my cartridges at the register after paying. Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect a factory worker took home a little souveneir... but who knows?

      Hopefully Newegg follows through, I'd be interested to know what happened here. At the very least I imagine they will be inspecting their shipments a little more closely for a while. I buy from them all the time, they have a great reputation, and I doubt they are doing to ignore these claims (whether we hear about it or not).

      That's freaking uncanny. When I bought A Link to the Past at Toys R Us, I opened the box in the parking lot and found two bolts instead of a cartridge.

      Come to think of it, years later I crunched down onto a much smaller bolt in a soft taco at Taco Bell. Is bolt-related crime this common in everyone else's life?

    • by IICV ( 652597 )

      Just after they started selling games in those new small boxes, I was looking around in a Gamestop. I noticed that almost all of their copies of Morrowind looked kinda weird - kinda rough around the edges. I picked one up and looked at it.

      Someone had come in, cut the seal open, and snuck the game CD out of the box. From the looks of things, this had happened to almost all of the boxes they had in stock.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jarik C-Bol ( 894741 )
        gamestop does this itself. they open the boxes, take the disc, and keep it behind the counter. that way people don't open the boxes and steal the disc. when you buy it, they go into the drawer, find a disc, let you inspect it (for scratches and whatnot) then put it in the box for you.
    • by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @08:12PM (#31385268) Homepage Journal

      Your story reminds me of a teenage experience. In 1991, I had a small project that required small bolts and nuts, so I bought a few boxes of those at Home Depot. The boxes were shrink-wrapped and everything. When I opened one of the boxes, instead of bolts and nuts it had a few E.T. game cartridges in it so it would weigh the same as bolts and nuts. Fortunately, the manager was willing to swap it out for me--but from then on, I always opened my bolts and nuts boxes at the register after paying. Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect Atari was looking for creative ways to get rid of their failed game... but who knows?

    • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday March 06, 2010 @09:15PM (#31385708) Homepage Journal
      Twice recently I've found someone else's obsolete merchandise in boxes of purportedly new equipment from a hardware store. One was a 10-year-old smoke detector in a box for a different model, one was a non-combination arc-fault circuit breaker instead of the combination arc-fault model now required by electrical codes. In both cases I assume this was a previous return by someone defrauding the store. Both merchants were happy to take the merchandise back. In the Home Depot I had to tell the sales clerk "please don't restock this", and then she put a sticker on the box.

      What bothers me is that in both cases, the bad merchandise could have compromised someone's safety.

  • by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:07PM (#31384362)

    Probably not on Newegg's part, but somewhere up the chain. According to HardOCP (http://hardocp.com/article/2010/03/05/newegg_selling_fake_intel_cpus) the CPUs came from D&H Distributing. Now currently it is trying to be passed off as "Demo units." Bullshit. No way these things, complete with misspellings, are legit demo units from Intel. Seems more likely that D&H has been buying some things from gray market channels and got burned. Likely to go poorly for them, as Intel may stop distributing to them.

  • Maybe they were just display models, or mockups for shipping or something.

    How's that bit about incompetence being more likely than malice go?

    • Re:Display models? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jonbryce ( 703250 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:13PM (#31384412) Homepage

      The display models would come in real boxes with correct spellings, possibly with some disclaimer about the parts inside not being real.

      Also the parts inside would probably be real ones that failed quality control so they would look a lot more realistic.

      • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

        The chip may not be real in a demo, but the fan would be at the least...

      • by Tsu Dho Nimh ( 663417 ) <abacaxi&hotmail,com> on Sunday March 07, 2010 @02:09AM (#31387266)

        The display models would come in real boxes with correct spellings, possibly with some disclaimer about the parts inside not being real.

        Also the parts inside would probably be real ones that failed quality control so they would look a lot more realistic.

        No, I've worked with Intel's display boxes. Intel's display boxes, such as are used for making stacks of product at trade shows or for ads and store displays, would be a real box (no typos and no hologram) with clearly fake parts inside only if necessary (anything that fails QC is supposed to be chopped in half!). For trade show decor, real boxes with a cardboard filler for strength is all they get, maybe a chunk of wood for weight.

        That font and type quality on the box is NOT Intel ... too fuzzy, like a cheap screen printer was used. When you are making thousands of boxes at a time, you can use better printers.

        My guess is that someone in the supply chain made up a batch of these - enough for a case or two of them - and quickly switched the case for a case of genuine parts. Newegg is reporting 200 fakes, that's $80,000 which would be plenty to pay for cheap boxes and some filler bits.

    • Anyone else reminded of This Island Earth? Perhaps it would be worth ordering some more parts from this supplier?
  • by Czmyt ( 689032 ) <steve@czmyt.com> on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:10PM (#31384388) Homepage
    This reminds me of the time that I ordered a notebook hard drive from Newegg and the unit that I received came in an opened protective sleeve. The drive failed the first read/write test that I use to check all new hard drives. So I think that Newegg sometimes ships out used equipment, which is not a good idea with a company like this whose tech-savvy customers know when they receive something that does not work.
    • by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 ) * on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:40PM (#31385016)
      That's nothing unusual when it comes to hard drives. I ordered four from Newegg and two were bad. I returned the two bad ones and received one good and one bad. Returned that one for replacement and finally I had my 4 drive RAID. The only other time I bought a hard drive it failed within a week. Maybe it's just my luck but out of total of nine drives received including all the replacements (7 WD, 2 Seagate) from Newegg four were either DOA or failed soon after (click of death). At this point if I had to buy another hard drive I would consider buying two, fully expecting one to fail and if by any chance I happened to get two good ones just return one for a refund.
  • Newegg has responded (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:13PM (#31384410)

    ... on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Newegg/status/10050889498 http://twitter.com/Newegg/status/10050906222 And others.

    • by spydabyte ( 1032538 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:55PM (#31384700)
      That's a very interesting case of customer service via twitter.
      http://twitter.com/Newegg/ [twitter.com]

      Looks pretty much like it's replacing a contact number. Contact support and complain to your friends at the same time!
    • by interval1066 ( 668936 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:13PM (#31384826) Journal

      The first link says "After investigating the issue internally it appears one of our long term partners mistakenly shipped a small number of demo boxes..."
      My ass. Demo units with misspellings? Give me a break.

      • by Captain Spam ( 66120 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:35PM (#31384986) Homepage

        It's called "diplomacy" and "dodging potential legal charges". Yes, a statement like that, given what people are saying, sounds ridiculous and utterly absurd to us, but what are you expecting them to say on official or semi-official channels? "After investigating the issue internally, it appears one of our long-term partners are fucking retards who thought they could get away with blatant fraud"? Saying anything like that would get them run up on slander in a heartbeat. Even implying it was anything remotely illegal on their distributors' ends could get them in legal hot water. Even if they could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was willfully fraudulent and a company-wide conspiracy at the distributor to screw over Newegg and its customers, they'd still have legal fees and time wasted to deal with it. Sorry, man; that's the legal system for you.

        And after all is said and done, that distributor, who may have served them well for years and was suffering a single isolated incident at the time, wouldn't be so eager to continue doing business with Newegg, costing them a chunk of their supply chain. Not to mention the PR disaster that would result as cooler-headed customers would start to wonder what's going on with a company that flies off the handle and calls out their partners publicly like that.

        Rather, the better answer would be to appear as diplomatic as possible in official channels, not assign blame directly, offer refunds or exchanges as customers demand, and quietly drop the distributor under breach of contract grounds if Newegg finds reason not to trust their cheating asses any more. Demanding any more from them is just letting petty bitterness boil over.

        And alternatively, how much more detail were you expecting them to give in one tweet? :-)

  • Dropship? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:15PM (#31384424) Homepage

    Does Newegg warehouse their stuff themselves or have it drop-shipped?

  • by crazybit ( 918023 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:17PM (#31384444)
    They won't shoot themselves on their foot like this. As someone said, problem must be in some other part of the distribution chain.

    Newegg's reputation is a critical part of their business, people buy on newegg because they expect that - on these type of situations - newegg won't screw the customer.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:20PM (#31384462)

    Fire up Excel and open any spreadsheet that has a fair amount of numeric calculation. If results greater than 65535 are shown as "#MANY", then you most likely have one of the fake Intel chips.

  • by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:23PM (#31384476) Homepage

    There is no way they are directly involved and there is no way they won't make good on the substitute goods. NewEgg will likely ship out replacement processors to those who got fakes and deal with the matter themselves. From all my experiences with them, they have given me 0.00 trouble when dealing with a return or exchange. There are few companies I recommend to anyone, but newegg is one of them. There will be no "egg" on their faces when this is all settled. Above everything else, newegg values its reputation and treats its customers right.

    (Should they not send replacement processors to the customers, I will presume there is good reason... they have always treated me well.)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ...I'm an American and it's my patriotic duty to blame the Chinese.

  • Huh (Score:3, Funny)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:24PM (#31384486) Homepage
    Guess it's a good thing I opted for a better GFX card instead and went with an i5...
  • by SimonTheSoundMan ( 1012395 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:26PM (#31384502)

    I once bought a Lexar 4GB USB flash drive from a major online store. When it arrived and I plugged it in, it was a 16MB flash drive within a Lexar case.

    Fake USB flash drives seem not to be uncommon. I have heard it happen to some of my friends too.

  • by unix_geek_512 ( 810627 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:31PM (#31384532)

    These look like professionally done asian counterfeits to me. It's quite likely organized criminals are involved since it took a lot of resources to custom print the boxes and labels, and make the foam HSFs and fake cpus.

    This isn't something the average joe or jane can do in his or her grandma's basement, you've got to have access to professional printing equipment at the very least.

    Chances are a substantial number of real CPUs were stolen and replaced with these fakes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      Its not THAT hard to do this at home. Good color laser and good paper could do the box. The rest, any highschool student with some basic tools could do.

      Rather funny if you ask me, I'm surprised its taken this long for something like this to happen in the mainstream

  • by viking80 ( 697716 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:38PM (#31384588) Journal

    This is what Intel gets from assembling these boxes in Elbonia. The CPUs are $300, and the pay to the Elbonian packer is $0.17. You were hired from the mud farm, and told to put these little green squares with metal into a box with a plastic propeller in it. Now you discover that these squares you are handling is worth 1 full years salary, and your family is starving.

    Maybe your even think the little squares you make will work just as fine as the original ones, and that the end user will not notice. Your cousin tiled his entire bathroom with all the extra P4, and to him, they where all the same. And for the fan, a little plastic toy is pretty much the same whether the car wheels spin around or not, as long as it looks fine.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:39PM (#31384596)

    ya like this is what they really should be focusing on organized CRIME
    not some kid downloading a music or tv episode.

  • They've been extremely fast and very responsive. And no, they don't build it for you. That's the point of buying from them so you can have the pleasure of building it yourself. My guess is Newegg got taken on these goods and didn't even know it. I guess we'll see...

  • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:44PM (#31384630)

    chances are that newegg was similiarly duped, if they did this deliberately the cost to their business would be unrecoverable. went through something like this years ago with fake maxtor hard drives. turned out someone at the factory got a bunch of rejects, sent them to a shop and they had there firmware crudely rewritten along with professional labels. that is someone from the Western Digital factory.

    Maxtor worked with me on it and they were able to tell by the circuit board who really made the hard drives. if memory serves they came from provantage and once I got provantage involved they replaced the entire lot of hard drives.

  • Reputation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:55PM (#31384698) Homepage Journal

    Look at all the comments here. Reputation is a major thing.

    If a company has a reputation for doing right by its customers, as long as addresses a situation like this, it will be OK.

    Now compare this to the reputation that Fry's or Tiger Direct had (don't know if either has improved). Would they get the benefit of the doubt this way?

    Just goes to show that doing good is just good business.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Well... to be a credible fraud by the company it has to be something they could get away with, like say if this was some tweaked/unlocked/flashed/whatever that'd actually boot if you put it in a computer. This is more like buying a car and finding out the engine is a cardboard prop. Some fly-by-night eBay scammer could do something like this, but no I don't think Fry's or Tiger Direct would be treated that differently.

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      I see it more as careful marketing. New Egg is The Geek store. In my observation they are no more or less legitimate than Fry's or Tiger Direct. All three operate to minimize cost to the customer, and sometimes when one does that things go wrong. At the minimum. one attracts customers that are only interesting in price. Such customers will inevitably cause problems, which is why it is better to shop for service than price, when possible.

      I would think that it is not completely New Eggs fault. I am su

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ChrisMaple ( 607946 )
        It's been 10 years since I lived near Fry's, but back then they had a reputation for putting stuff returned as defective back on the shelves untested. Fry's is a lot of fun and has some good deals, but it's strictly buyer beware.
  • by viking80 ( 697716 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:00PM (#31384744) Journal

    "Newegg is aware of a shipping error that occurred with certain recent orders of the Intel Core i7-920 CPU. After investigating the issue internally it appears one of our long term partners mistakenly shipped a small number of demo boxes instead of functional units. Our customer service team has already begun proactively reaching out to the affected customers. In line with our commitment to ensure total customer satisfaction, we are doing everything in our power to resolve the issue as soon as possible and with the least amount of inconvenience to our customers."

    Why would Intel make a demo box with multiple spelling errors like a poor chinese user manual, and include stapled blank paper and broken plastic parts, and then get it mixed up in the mfg. channel? NO CHANCE. PERIOD.

    This is obviously corporate communication lies. I wonder why Newegg, with a large set of loyal customers feel the need to lie so blatantly to its customers. Do they think they are idiots, or is lying just accepted?

    • by icegreentea ( 974342 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:10PM (#31384804)
      They're probably repeating exactly what their supplier told them. Yeah, sure it sounds fishy to Newegg. But until they have actual proof of what happened, its not very nice to go about accusing a long time partner of naughty deeds (or broadcasting that to the whole world... they're probably sending some really angry emails and phone calls right now). Remember, when you have long term suppliers and buyers like this, you actually create a real relationship, and that relationship is worth more than just the money and product changing hands. You don't want to terminate or damage that relationship more than you have to.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ryanw ( 131814 )

        Remember, when you have long term suppliers and buyers like this, you actually create a real relationship, and that relationship is worth more than just the money and product changing hands. You don't want to terminate or damage that relationship more than you have to.

        Agreed, but how many people are going to be skeptical to order from newegg now due to trying to protect the relationship with the partner. Newegg might want to not reitterate whatever the supplier is saying in protecting themselves a little m

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by noidentity ( 188756 )
      No, it makes perfect sense. Just yesterday, a cashier stopped me and called the police, claiming I was using counterfeit money. "No, no" I said, "I just mistakenly gave you some demo money. Haven't you ever heard of demo money? It looks almost exactly like the real thing, and used for demonstrations." Unfortunately the police didn't believe me either.
  • My swap meet story (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RickRussellTX ( 755670 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:01PM (#31384754)

    I was at a swap meet a month ago and saw a *pallet* of Core I7 processors. I used Red Laser to scan the UPC codes (they were "Extreme" models selling for $650+ on the open market), and a quick volume computation (the pallet was about 12 high, about 20 horizontal each way) suggested that I was looking at about $3 million worth of processors.

    Except, they weren't actual processors. According to the person selling them, they were "fake" processors, but the heatsinks and fans were real and could be used with other processors and motherboards.

    Uh-huh. Carrying the original UPC codes. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by daverk ( 38859 )

      Actually I saw this pallet of Core I7 processor boxes too, they were not fake processors, just the factory heat sinks & fans. The boxes were all ripped open and processor had already been removed. They were selling for $5 each. I bought one of the i7 975 extreme ones.

  • This is how the china gov get's it's pc parts and they uses there own cops / army to pull it off.

  • microcenter has them for $60 - $80 less.

  • I want one! (Score:3, Funny)

    by deathguppie ( 768263 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:32PM (#31384956)

    This is sooo sweet!

    I've been wanting to build a fake computer for quite some time now. It will go perfectly with my fake Italian leather chair and fake wood desk!

  • by sootman ( 158191 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @07:44PM (#31385034) Homepage Journal

    I've been very happy with my purchases there--a Panaphonics TV and Sorny monitor. Shop there with confidence.

  • by cvtan ( 752695 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @08:51PM (#31385594)
    My friend bought a Motorola phone which came with a "free" USB cable from ebay. Connecting the phone to his PC didn't work at all. After a certain amount of fooling around, he found the cable did not have any wires in it. It had connectors, but the cable was just made of insulation. My explanation? It was a wireless cable.
  • by jgreco ( 1542031 ) on Saturday March 06, 2010 @09:00PM (#31385640)
    We had a problem with some Intel dual port gig cards and NewEgg about five years ago. We had ordered them shipped directly out to the data center (800 miles away) because of an urgent need, but upon installation, we were seeing various odd problems. Suspecting a driver issue, we left them in and returned home. Never resolved the problems. Pulled them a few months later on the next visit. Further research showed that they were phony Intel cards. Apparently several resellers had been hit with these. However, NewEgg maintained that it was no longer their problem because of their return policy (30 days, maybe, I don't remember), and refused to make an exception for goods that they knew were knock-offs. This was really too bad, as we started buying less stuff from them after that.

As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one. -- Dave "First Strike" Pare

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