Many folks in the computer repair business rely on a quality place to order their computer parts from.  Many on PCMechanic prefer Newegg.com, as do I.  We have grown used to their quality, service, and speed.  Newegg sets the bar very high for other shops to match.

I have made all part orders for customers on Newegg over the last two years, and have never had a single let down.  Every customer I’ve done work for has been very happy as well.  Not only is the service great, but the price is right.

Recently, I had a customer who had a need for parts that we needed to get installed by the weekend.  It was a Wednesday, and the range of parts he needed was fairly diverse: a new motherboard, more RAM, a TV Tuner, a wireless card, a sound card, and a set of surround sound speakers. 

The particular board that I needed had one major design flaw in that its top PCI slot is too close to the PCI Express slot.  When you have a video card in the PCI Express slot, even a small heatsink on the card will come dangerously close an inserted PCI card in the top slot.

If you look at the parts mentioned, there were three things that really needed to occupy a PCI slot, yet, even on the new motherboard, there were only 3 open slots (one of which would be too close for my comfort to the video card).  I did some looking around, and I found that the board I was using supported the Asus Wifi-TV card, a card that integrates a wireless card and TV Tuner on one PCI slot.  This was perfect, except for one problem: Newegg didn’t have it.

Google showed several results from random computer shops, but there was only one who I had ever heard of before: ZipZoomFly.com.  I decided to give the customer a call, explain that I had the motherboard, RAM, sound card, and surround sound on 2-day delivery from Newegg and that it would be in on Friday, and asked permission to order from ZipZoomFly and use overnight shipping to account for any potential credit card processing delays.  He asked what their track record was, and I said I had heard good things about the company from the forums.  He readily approved the purchase, and I set about ordering.

The order process was problem free, and I had a new account set up and an order in processing in probably 5 minutes.  The problem came the next day when I received an email detailing payment problems, and told me to contact them.  They contacted me by phone during school, and left a message for me to call back.  As soon as class was over, I called back and was treated to their own answering machine.  During business hours?  I get an answering machine?  How does this happen?

I left a message for them to call back.  A day later, still no response, so I called again, once in the morning and once in the evening.  All in all, I called 3 times non-business hours, and 2 times during business hours, being forced to leave a message each time.  Never was I called back.

I then decided, since it was an online company, they might respond to e-mail better.  I sent them a wordy email about their phone support, and received a reply not too long after that stating that their verification department had been trying to contact me, and that I was not responding.  I was told to call them back to get service.

This somewhat set me off, as I had tried contacting them 5 times, so I tried yet again, and again, I received the same message.  At this point, I had had enough.  I sent them another wordy email that told them to just cancel the order, and magically, within an hour, I had a response that the order had been canceled.

Does anyone see anything wrong with that?

So, I decided to curb my fears of overheating the video card and go ahead and order two separate cards from Newegg.  I ordered it at 9:27am, it was processed and charged within three minutes, and it was shipped overnight at 5PM.

That’s more like the service I’m accustomed to.  Never again will I venture outside for parts.  If Newegg doesn’t have it, and you can’t order from the manufacturer, I’m not ordering it.