Newegg.com tries to make me use the telephone, fails

Went to Newegg.com on Saturday and ordered my dad a gift certificate for his birthday. He didn’t get it all weekend. Then, this morning, I received this:

Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com.

We’re doing everything we can to make sure your online purchase is secure.

Our order verification procedures occasionally require us to contact a customer at his/her billing phone number before releasing an order. This procedure protects our customers, Newegg, and identity theft victims from debit or credit card fraud. Unfortunately, you were unavailable when we attempted to contact you at your billing phone number: 256-xxx-xxxx.

Please contact us from your billing phone number: 256-xxx-xxxx as soon as possible so that we may confirm your order and release it for shipping. You may call us at 1-800-390-1119, Monday through Saturday 9:00AM – 5:00PM PT.

Please note that the shipment will be delayed unless we receive a prompt response for this order. Your order will be automatically cancelled if verification is not completed within five (5) business days of the original order date.

We greatly apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Now understand I’ve done business with Newegg.com several times before. Furthermore, when I received this, Newegg.com already had the charge pending on my credit card. I replied:

Folks, I will not be required to place a voice call to you in order for you to send my father’s gift certificate to him. I will not do it today or ever.

I do not like the telephone. I particularly do not like being required to use it from my home during hours when I am not normally there.

I see the pending charge on my American Express card, so I know you’re not having a problem with payment. Please send the gift certificate immediately or cancel the order.

Less than an hour later, they replied:

Thank you for contacting Newegg.

I do apologize for the inconvenience. For your protection as a customer of Newegg, our verification department is requiring additional information in which they may need to contact you at the billing phone number provided in your order. Please call customer service between 9:00am to 4:00pm PST Monday through Saturday from your billing telephone number and the verification team will call you back within 2 hours to verify your order.

To which I responded:

As I said, I refuse to use the telephone to complete this transaction. Please cancel the order immediately.

Their reply:

I’d be happy to assist you. Per your request, I have just cancelled this order in our system. You will receive a confirmation email in 10 minutes.

So after they rode their mindless procedure all the way into the ocean, I called them out on Twitter. Then I heard from their Twitter account:

We’re sorry to hear this. We’d like to look into this further for you. Can you email us at wecare.twitter@newegg.com?

To which I replied:

I will forward you the CS correspondence. I don’t like the telephone, and an online merchant compelling its use loses me.

I forwarded the chain of correspondence. Then I received:

Thank you for contacting Newegg.

I apologize for inconvenience. Unfortunately, we could not open attachment. Can you please kindly resend attachment to me at (redacted)@newegg.com?

To which I replied:

The correspondence trail is below. I believe it is between you and I.

Got it? The Twitter person referred me back to the very same guy I’ve been going back and forth with all day long, who then apparently failed to realize that. No further correspondence as of right now.

Online merchants, I don’t want to talk to you on the telephone. Absent a very good reason, I won’t. I’ll just go somewhere else.

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10 thoughts on “Newegg.com tries to make me use the telephone, fails”

  1. Dear Valued Customer,

    We are very sorry to hear about the difficulty you experienced with our order verification process. Please know that it certainly was not our intention for you to be inconvenienced or dissatisfied with our services in any way. This process is in place to protect you and all Newegg’s customers.

    We certainly understand your frustration with this situation. Moreover, your feedback is very important to us; we will forward your feedback to our management team.

    Please don’t hesitate to email us to wecare@newegg.com if there is anything we can assist you with. We will be happy to help.

    For reference, here’s some related information: http://bit.ly/1popHcE.

    Thank you,
    Newegg Support

    Reply
    • Y’all have told me repeatedly what a phone confirmation is. I understand.

      I also understand that I am an established customer using established contact information, and that you were able to hold funds on my credit card sufficient to complete the transaction.

      That’s all you need. There was nothing to confirm. There was nothing to protect you or me from.

      I’m not going to use the telephone to do business with Newegg.com. If you continue to require me to, then we’ll part ways. It’s exactly that simple.

      Reply
    • Nobody thinks. Don’t have to for 90% of the transactions, so why bother?

      No one has looked at this and said hey, he has a point.

      And there is very little chance anyone ever will.

      Reply
  2. Way to go Bo. We needn’t be sheeple to mindless “policy.”

    I too hate the phone and Newegg really expects us to hang out for two hours waiting for a call? No thank you.

    Reply
  3. Bo, I imagine there’s a policy of anything over $X and they need the confirmation. You have an order going to a place other than your billing address, which is another trigger for confirmation. This is all to prevent credit card fraud, which is rampant these days. I’d rather them double check than to find out I was charged $1000 for a gift to a Nigerian prince.

    Reply
    • I understand fraud is a big problem. While I am somewhat sympathetic on the delivery to a different (email) address, it remains that I am an established customer with established identity information, and that Newegg.com’s hold of $100 on my credit card raised no question with the issuer.

      I do exactly this with Amazon.com all the time and never have a problem.

      Back before pay-at-the-pump was ubiquitous, I wouldn’t use a gas station that made me prepay, because I didn’t want the hassle of two trips inside. I understood merchants were concerned about drive-offs, but there were plenty of places I never had a problem with pumping, then paying. I had ample alternatives to prepaying, so I availed myself of them.

      As with that, so with this. If a day comes that I can’t get this done any other way than using a telephone line at a time that I am nearly always 15 miles away from it, then I suppose I’ll submit and jump through the hoop.

      Until then? I’ll do it with someone besides Newegg.com.

      Reply
  4. I’m late to the conversation, but good for you on your stance.

    I’d like to share a big peeve of mine: asking for a social security number outside of taxes and credit. And what I mean by that is the requested use of it in medical, dental, and etc. I never give it out, because if they want an identifier, it’s called my insurance and group id.

    Reply
  5. Way too late response, but I hate this policy too and I’m not going to buy from sellers with such policy as well. Amazon doesn’t have any retarded verification system and I had zero problems buying from them. I’m buying online all the time and I had zero fraud cases. Be mindful and no one will ever use your card to pay their bills. Sellers should not implement such retarded anti-fraud systems only to protect irresponsible and plainly dumb people from their own stupidity. In the end Newegg’s phone requirement policy was keeping me from buying from them for years now.

    Reply

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