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Comment by excuse-me | Hacker News Reader

I bought 10 identical Shuttle PCs from newegg.

One was DoA and I returned it with an RMA - they sent it straight back to me because I had returned it in the wrong box. The serial # on the machine didn't match the barcode on the box!

They seriously expect you to keep the individual box for every unit? Or are they just a scam that try and stop you every returning anything?

Anyway - haven't bought anything from them since.

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If you had said you were returning a two year old unit for warranty repair, and it was denied because you did not use the original box, I would sympathize with you. Expecting you to keep all your boxes for years would clearly be ridiculous.

But for a DoA unit? You couldn't keep the box for a few hours or days? Seriously?

Picture this: You bought 10 of something, all identical items (minus some sn on the box). You throw away the packaging material for 8 or 9 of the 10 items (remember, it's all identical). You then have a device DOA/fail that isnt the EXACT packaging you saved. What difference would it make to newegg take the item out of the box and scan the barcode inside? A little customer service goes a long way.

I kept one box and the styrofoam in case I had to return a unit.

I remember Sun once sold mini box versions of their workstations (rather than the original pizza box) - their claim was that at the square footage cost of a Wall St trading floor the machines would pay for themselves in 'n' years.

Then there was a note on the pallet sized box that the machine + 19"CRT came in - saying that you had to keep it for warranty returns!

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