NewEgg status stuck on "Processing" & my opinion about VerifiedByVisa

[babachoo]

First, I would like to ask Newegg reps how much money they get for each person they force to sign up for Verified By Visa. I was checking out, spending $1700 at their site on 1-14-10 at around 3am (1am their time, well before they opened for business that day), when I was suddenly taken to some offsite link located at www.verifiedbyvisa.com, where I was told that I needed to create a password to supposedly "protect" my visa information. My jaw dropped and I wondered how on earth my browser had been hijacked and I had been redirected to some phishing scam site pretending to be Visa, or if this was somehow legitimate, why would Newegg literally FORCE me to hand over my most sensitive financial information, all the way down to the 3 digit code on the back of my debit card, to this site that I've never f**cking heard of?


So I googled around for half an hour, trying to figure out if this VBV crap was legitimate, a scam, or what. After determining that it was an extremely inappropriate time/place to spring such a decision on me, the consumer, and a pretty terrible thing overall to do to someone who knows quite well just how easy it can be to lose your identity or bank account to some hacker in China, I decided that it appeared to be somewhat accepted by a few people, but it just didn't feel right to me so I tried to cancel that part and not sign up for it. So I tried to go back (I know it warned me not to, but I wasn't about to be forced to hand over my financial livelihood to some site I had never heard of. So I went back to newegg to find that my shopping cart had been completely emptied, what a pain in the ass. Now I had to go through and find every single item of the $1700 cart I had filled up earlier, and add everything else yet again. After doing this, I went back to my account page to make sure that the previous order did not mistakenly go through, and it hadn't. So I proceeded to start the checkout process again.

This time I very regretfully conceded to the forced signup of the VBV crap, since the last go-round taught me that I didn't have a choice. I could sit there and and refuse to sign up and refill my cart all day long and never get the stuff I wanted to buy, or I could just shut up and take one for the team, knowing that someone is making a kickback at Newegg by forcing me into this disgusting situation. So I filled out all of the extra forms and finally my order went through.


Then, as soon as I hit my account page again, I see two identical orders have now hit my credit card. I frantically tried to contact Newegg, but since they hold bankers hours (which is quite odd for an online retailer these days), I was left with the only option of using their automated support to send them an email requesting to cancel one of the orders, hoping that when they opened for business later, they would see it and realize the error and fix it. This did absolutely no good, because at 9:30am my time (7:30 their time), I get a call from my bank wondering why Newegg is trying to bill me twice for the same $1700 amount. Luckily, my bank was smart enough to approve one and VOID the other, before they even contacted me. Much better service than VerifiedByVisa or Newegg, who either didn't read my email, didn't feel my reason was good enough, or just sent through both charges for whatever reason... I don't know.

Now, it has been well past the 48 hours Newegg says it takes to ship an item, and my order status is still stuck on Processing, it hasn't even been charged yet, despite my bank preapproving the charge as soon as it was sent, meaning my bank got a request from Newegg that morning to charge that much money from my account, bank approved it, and Newegg has done nothing since. So WTF is the holdup Newegg? On top of the terrifying, life-changing, traumatic events that I described above, now I have wait until Monday morning for you guys to finally getting around to taking my money and THEN work on shipping it out? I ordered it at 3am (1am your time) Thursday the 14th, nothing has been done since you got the bad news that you couldn't bill me an extra duplicate $1700, so now I wait until next week for you to ship it, and probably have to wait until sometime around Monday the 25th to finally get it?

I could say even more about this thus-far-discouraging experience, far far more that would probably cause a lot of problems, but I'll temper myself for now and give the people at Newegg a chance to respond here. Maybe they have just one person who actually works on Saturday who can assure a new customer that they didn't make the wrong choice by abandoning a 9 year loyal relationship with TigerDirect to try a new vendor that had slightly better prices.

 

[babachoo]

So I just contacted customer support since my order is still stuck on "Processing" and 5 days have passed since placing the order. Here is the result, they said they would refund my shipping costs ($20 and some change) as soon as my order has shipped. So I'll give them a few points for trying to make things right.

 

[Newegg_Support]

babachoo,

Verified by Visa is set up by Visa and the customer's bank or credit card company. You can read more at the link you provided to Visa's website. You are not "forced" to sign up as your first order went through even though did not follow through with it. This was set up by Visa simply as an extra security step for online ordering.

We do advise 1-2 business days for processing so the weekend does not count in the calculation, but since you placed the order on Thursday, you should have received some sort of indication regarding your order by now. Just as Visa has their security steps, we have ours. As stated during check out, both billing AND shipping addresses need to be listed with the Card Issuing Company so we can confirm that the order has been authorized by the card holder. They don’t have to be the same, but they both have to be listed. We can not verify identity over the internet so we rely on the Card Companies to take the appropriate steps. Since we take these extra steps, it can take some time to verify the information and is why we advise our processing time. With this said, if you have still not heard anything about your order or if you have and need some assistance, I welcome you to contact Newegg Rep Joshua at Joshua.l.key@newegg.com or 800-390-1119 ext 25092.

Edit: No, we do not make money when people sign up for Verified by Visa.

Thank You,
Newegg.com

 

[babachoo]

Thank you for the reply, Newegg. Everything will hopefully go smoothly now. You failed to mention if Newegg gets any money for getting their customers to sign up for Verified By Visa, I'm still curious about that. And while it may not be mandatory to sign up for VBV, it definitely appears that way to the average Joe like myself, since when navigating away from that part of the checkout, my order was wiped clean and I had to start all over again.

I have calmed down since the original post because of the quality service I have gotten so far today, and I am pretty assured that your service will be much better than what I estimated before today. But I feel that more transparency and forewarning about the VBV stuff might serve your site well, to allay any fears the consumer may have about protecting their identity. And, as you somewhat noted, the lack of communication and progress up until today caused a little anxiety. I forgive you for nothing getting done over the weekend, but it's still very odd for an online retailer.

So overall, no worries, but I would have been a lot less stressed had these speedbumps not been included in the process.

Thanks again for your time, and have an eggcellent day.

 

[Dirtman73]

I had a similar experience with VBV, Babachoo. Attempting to verify a purchase I made through NewEgg, the VBV window crashed. Not a big deal, but the problems started when NewEgg decided to finalize the transaction without their normal verification screen (you know, the one that shows your card has been approved along with the transaction total). I even checked my account status to make sure that they hadn't charged me right after the VBV crash. Thinking I was in the clear, I tried the purchase again. It worked the second time through, but it was only after the second purchase was completed that Newegg also posted the original transaction.

NewEgg couldn't void the first purchase despite the fact that I called them not more than five minutes after the charges were made. My only option was to refuse the first package when it showed up at my door. This added ten days to the refund process. Even after all that, I was told later by NewEgg's crappy 1st level support that I would have to wait an additional 7-10 days for the refund because of turnover issues.

It took five conversations with NewEgg's 1st level CS, a letter to their customer service department, and a complaint with the BBB before they finally started taking the issue seriously. I finally got the refund, along with a discount on my next purchase, but the whole experience left a really bad taste in my mouth.

You and I aren't the first customers to complain about how NewEgg handles the Visa verification process, and they basically admitted to me that their returns & refund system needs a serious overhall. Here are the problems as I see them:

1. Verified By Visa is crash-prone (google it and you'll see how many complaints the system has gotten). This leads to the next problem-
2. NewEgg's policy is to charge your credit card regardless of whether or not you decide to use VBV. Basically, if VBV works properly, or if you opt out by closing the page, or if it crashes, none of that matters because NewEgg is gonna charge you anyway. This defeats the whole purpose of using VBV to begin with. It's there to make sure no-one else is using your card to make fraudulent purchases. NewEgg bypasses this safety measure regardless of what happens.
3. NewEgg's 1st level CS is horrible. They use the standard canned responses, and it's pretty obvious they're only trained to do that much. Every time I talked to one of their CS people, I was given conflicting information. It only got better after I bypassed those idiots completely and emailed the higher-ups.
4. NewEgg's returns & refund policy is horrendously, painfully mismanaged. The amount of hoops they force their customers to jump through in order to make a return or request a refund is offensive.

I should mention that this incident wasn't the first time I've had problems with NewEgg, but it may very well be the last. I have most likely made my last purchase from NewEgg. Unless they make some changes, they'll be seeing a lot more complaints in the future.

 

[babachoo]

I should add, now that everything is resolved and I received everything...

Newegg made every attempt to make things right.

They refunded my shipping

They refunded $40 worth of rebates that expired due to the delay. I found out later that I can actually still mail these in because though the rebates were removed from the individual product pages at Newegg, I still meet the requirements as far as date of purchase and such, thus I'm getting double rebates on those items. I of course didn't foresee this, and was not trying to take advantage of Newegg, it was just a nice surprise that I didn't expect.

They also refunded $10 in the form of a gift card, the difference in price on my HD 5870 which dropped in price before I received it. So all in all, my running total for my order looked something like this...

Original price $1676.57

-$40 for MIR's that expired but I can still get

-$20.69 for shipping refund due to delay

-$10 due to price drop of HD5870

Subtotal =$1605.88

-$20 MIR HAF 922

-$30 MIR Corsair 850tx PSU

-$20 MIR OCZ memory

Grand total after all rebates and discounts

$1535.88

So now, I've got an amazing computer and got a great deal on it. The customer service and shipping did have some hitches and delays, but they more than made up for it, and won a customer. And the stuff with the VBV seemed rather shady at the time, but I had forgotten about it as soon as I booted up my system for the first time and nothing was DOA. So kudos to Newegg for the way they handled my situation.

 

[Newegg_Support]

NewEgg's policy is to charge your credit card regardless of whether or not you decide to use VBV. Basically, if VBV works properly, or if you opt out by closing the page, or if it crashes, none of that matters because NewEgg is gonna charge you anyway. This defeats the whole purpose of using VBV to begin with. It's there to make sure no-one else is using your card to make fraudulent purchases. NewEgg bypasses this safety measure regardless of what happens.

Dear Dirtman73,

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by your order experience.

I would also like to point out something. We cannot "bypass security measures" and take money without being authorized to do so. Your bank and/or Credit Card Company have the ability to decline purchases so this is something you need to take up with them since they are the ones who authorized the payment to process in the first place.

I'm very glad to hear that everything worked out, but if you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Thank You,
Newegg.com

 

[Dirtman73]

Dear Dirtman73,

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by your order experience.

I would also like to point out something. We cannot "bypass security measures" and take money without being authorized to do so. Your bank and/or Credit Card Company have the ability to decline purchases so this is something you need to take up with them since they are the ones who authorized the payment to process in the first place.

I'm very glad to hear that everything worked out, but if you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Thank You,
Newegg.com

I'm glad to see that NewEgg is monitoring these forums. It shows that you guys are a bit more willing to go the extra mile than some of your competitors .

That said, I'm not quite sure how else to describe what happened to my account other than how I explained it in my previous post. VBV problems aside, NewEgg should seriously have some kind of safety measure for situations like the one I encountered. No matter how you want to put it, ultimately NewEgg's system prematurely charged my credit card without proper security approval and didn't make me aware of the charge until it was too late. You guys need to fix that, and Visa needs to fix their authorization webpage. That's all there is to it.

 

[soldierofthelam]

I think its sad that your are basicaly getting an auto reply from newegg on these forums and i have yet to see a direct answer reading from these forums from newegg,


And for newegg to cop out and to say "Your bank and/or Credit Card Company have the ability to decline purchases "
is absolutely untrue,
if you've already put in your card info newegg does bypass and still charge your card,
its happen to me quite a few times,
the only thing your bank offers is reverse transaction,
or to dispute the charges.

newegg your are completely wrong about this,
and other people might be satisfied with your generated answers but some of us know better!!!!

 

[soldierofthelam]

I would also like to add that newegg deletes any negative comments on thier website post on a product
making their track record good, and claiming you didn't follow their post guidlines,
newegg is an online company just like anywhere else,their are going to make mistakes and screw up, but that doen't give them the right to take your money and then say oh well if he gets his product he gets it,


newegg only offers fedex as secondary shipping, but be carefull with prices, fed ground on a 12 pound monitor is only 18.00 to ship but yet newegg only offers you the 3 day express saver at 35.00 dollars which is the exact same as 3 day ground,

ive ordered 3 day express saver b4 through newegg using fedex, and got the 3 day ground package of fedex when it arrived somy question to newegg, if you only offer express 3 day saver fedex, then why was it sent ground and why did you over charge? as im sure if answered it will be another generated answer, and the package had the shipping cost right on the package.

 

[Newegg_Support]

somy question to newegg, if you only offer express 3 day saver fedex, then why was it sent ground and why did you over charge?

Dear soldierofthelam,

Without looking at your order, I cannot confirm for sure, but in general if the shipper can guarantee us (Newegg) delivery within the time frame paid for by the customer, they may default to ground service.

In other words, both Newegg and the customer pay for 3 day service and if the shipper can get it to the location within the specified time frame by ground, they will sometimes default to this service. Please note that the choice to go ground is made by the shipper, not Newegg.

In addition, you will find many negative product reviews on our website. We do not sensor them for any reason other than what we specify when you submit the review.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact us by the information in our first post or PM us!

 

[soldierofthelam]

It doesn't need to be a specific order to understand that, fedex 3 day ground for a 12 pound 19" lcd monitor is $ 18.79 which you do not offer, but yet fedex 3 day express saver for the same 3 day shippn as 3 day ground is $34.21 dollars,

fedex ground and fedex express saver 3 day shipping is exacly the same!!!!

newegg only offers the fedex express saver 3 day at $34.21 dollars for a 12 pound 19" lcd monitor.

once again why do newegg not offer regular fedex 3 day ground at half the shipping cost?

 

[soldierofthelam]

and as far as negative reviews goes where is mine on this item then

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236077


i was the first to post a review yet three times it has been removed along with others that people and myself have left?



"Not to which such things exist, But in what manner of life."

 

[soldierofthelam]

lol this letter from newegg basicaly says,
sure say whatever you want,
but you can't say anything bad,lol
ok newegg




Dear Customer,



Thank you for contacting Newegg.
Unfortunately your review does not fall under our review guidelines and cannot be posted as a product review. We invite you to carefully read our review guidelines and submit a new review on our website if you'd like. Please understand that it is not Newegg's intention to censor your reviews; however we must ensure that product reviews only contain information relevant to the product and the actual performance of the product. Please note that product reviews should only discuss the performance of a fully functional item, and should not include information on the service of the retailer or the manufacturer, mail in rebates, or defective products. Unfortunately items arriving defective are beyond the control of Newegg, and for this reason it is not relevant to the actual performance of the unit itself. We apologize for any inconvenience and we appreciate your input. Thank you and have a great day.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please visit our FAQs page. If you still need assistance, please feel free to email me directly and I will be happy to assist you.

 

[flipflopgirl7888]

I placed an order with New Egg around 1:00 am on wend Dec 14th. like others i was redirected to the verified visa web page. this pop up came up with an error. so i went to my account there were no pending orders so i assumed my order had not gone through. so i hit continue and this time the verified visa site went through fine. i went to my new egg account to double check and make sure my order went through. i had 1 pending order. the next morning i checked my online banking and i had duplicate charges. i went to new egg.com and sure enough i had duplicate orders. i then voided one and called them and they said this happens all the time mam i show that you voided one order and it will take 1-5 business days for the items to stop pending depending on your bank. . It is now Friday and my order is still in the processing stage. I contacted 2 New egg representatives and they said its still in processing and it takes 2 days to process. I read that on line and i was fine with that except the fact that it is now day 2 and its still processing. I called them and the Representative assured me that my order with ship today. Fact is it didnt!!! I will never use this company again!!! Customer service is horrible! Processing time is over kill!

 

[tigsounds]

Dear Dirtman73,

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by your order experience.

I would also like to point out something. We cannot "bypass security measures" and take money without being authorized to do so. Your bank and/or Credit Card Company have the ability to decline purchases so this is something you need to take up with them since they are the ones who authorized the payment to process in the first place.

I'm very glad to hear that everything worked out, but if you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Thank You,
Newegg.com

What a bunch of CRAP! Newegg.com simply must be run by a bunch of lawyers, keen to twist the words in any way beneficial to them.

Listen that guy....

Your bank and/or Credit Card Company have the ability to decline purchases so this is something you need to take up with them since they are the ones who authorized the payment to process in the first place.

NO WAY... YOU submit the payment request to the bank. If the card is not registered as stolen, and hasn't passed it's credit limit, the bank pays you, simple as that. There's the security.

The bank isn't going to call the customer and ask "Do you really want to buy this junk?" There is no final confirmation for the customer to make with the bank at purchase time. Newegg.com grabs the money and runs.

Whatever goes wrong at the checkout will always be in favor of Newegg.com. Example: Double-orders when the checkout page crashes from VBV. The customer is left in the dark on the order status, doesn't see the order went through and tries again. How convenient for Newegg.com. I know your rules: "A fool and his money are soon departed," and one more "There's a sucker born every minute."

I wouldn't even buy fuses from Newegg.com, they'd probably be blown already when I finally got them.

Newegg.com and Amazon.com are the two sleaziest online companies in the world.

Notice I put Newegg.com first. At least Amazon.com screws their sellers but not their buyers.

 

[kaal]

previously quoted by Newegg Support Unfortunately your review does not fall under our review guidelines and cannot be posted as a product review. We invite you to carefully read our review guidelines...

(the above & below bold emphasis is mine) I just carefully read the review guidelines. First off, guidelines (as per definition) are usually a partial highlight description of policy. So the whole policy is not described in the guidelines. Newegg confirms this with its guideline statement: "Here are some of the things that can cause a review to be denied:". That means they can censor whatever they want.

again, as previously quoted from Newegg Support Please understand that it is not Newegg's intention to censor your reviews; however we must ensure that product reviews only contain information relevant to the product and the actual performance of the product. Please note that product reviews should only discuss the performance of a fully functional item, and should not include information on the service of the retailer or the manufacturer, mail in rebates, or defective products. Unfortunately items arriving defective are beyond the control of Newegg, and for this reason it is not relevant to the actual performance of the unit itself.

It's newegg's intention to not look bad and it is its intention to censor the reviews so they do not look bad. Newegg Support advises that one mustn't comment about defective products. I'd like to see them explain how that's not relevant. Particularly when they know down to a fraction of a per cent how much of an item they sell is defective and even when it turns bad. A lot of stuff out there can have failure rates in excess of 5% with a significant percentage being dead-on-arrival. The claim that it's beyond its control is nonsense.

We consumers will stick with newegg for as long as there isn't another supplier with better service, price & doesn't pile the BS as thick on us.

 

[Difolen]

I used to be an employee in Newegg....