There has been a lot of attention recently about Newegg's return policy, or lack there of, as they now have been caught red handed trying to exploit one of the most influential YouTube channels for PC hardware information: Gamers Nexus. This is the quote from the video above about Newegg's actions:
Newegg claimed that the pins on our motherboard were bent (even though we never even opened it), then when we called them out, they claimed there was "thermal paste" on the socket. They fought tooth and nail to deny our $500 refund, apparently making up new stories at every corner. Newegg might try this on all motherboards, but has special leeway to do it on open box products. Don't buy them. We will be avoiding Newegg as much as we can for all future motherboard purchases (and purchases in general). It's unacceptable that everything was magically refunded and sent back and resolved after we tweeted publicly, yet we got no support when acting as a normal customer.
There are many other videos Gamer's Nexus shot as a follow up to this situation, which we will summarize here, but feel free to head over to their channel and watch for yourself.
After a number of complaints in the past about the preceding behavior by Newegg towards their customers, they finally tried to rip off the wrong people. When GN posted this video asking for comments from users who this had happened to, they were so flooded by responses they had to open a separate email account just to deal with the influx of traffic. They took it so seriously they booked plane tickets to Newegg's HQ to confront them in person.
When Newegg got wind of this, they reversed their return policy as GN was in the air, and by the time they landed, Newegg changed the policy to an "anything that needs to be returned we will accept, no questions asked." Our guess is they smelled the class-action suit being drafted by numerous opportunistic attorneys since GN did all the work for them already.
Despite that change, Newegg continues to allow third-part sales on their site, and from our personal experience, this is a detriment to the end user. As such, we commit to buying parts first and foremost from Microcenter, and if necessary, Amazon. Only in the event a part is not available from the previously mentioned two sources will we resort to purchasing from Newegg.