Nothing to add except that I’ve also RMA’ed hassle free with newegg.
Sheesh! Sounds like they sell crappy components.
Hard to tell anymore, because computers are so complex that it’s hard to tell what’s going wrong when something goes wrong. The problem is not that anyone has reason to beleive that they do, but that we have no real way to confirm that they don’t, and they certainly have a motive to do so. That alone creates, fair or not, suspicion and frustration. It’s even harder if you buy OEM stuff, because it doesn’t come sealed in a retail box, and for all you know it could be the same card someone RMAed a week ago.
newegg, for what it’s worth, has a fairly darn good reputation. And prices.
I’ve been thinking of buying a new video card from these guys; this is good info.
However, jsgoddess, you might want to look at their record on ResellerRatings.com. They have a near-perfect record, with over 5000 reviews. The reviewers on this site don’t pull many punches if there have been issues - most of the reviews I read for newegg that mentioned RMAs, indicated the process went without many issues.
There seem to be comments from a (very) few dissatisfied customers, but speaking as someone who deals quite a lot with resellers in my job, overall, newegg looks pretty solid. It may be a matter of just asking them to waive the RMA fee, or cover shipping, etc. They may not offer compensation off the blocks, but it may be internal policy to take care of the customer if they explicitly ask - otherwise, they assume the customer is used to such treatment, and if they are willing to pay the RMA fee (however begrudgingly), why not take it?
Nearly every time I’ve bought a computer, I’ve had to RMA something (monitor, case fan, keyboard, CDRW, you name it, I’ve sent it back to various resellers) - and every time, I’ve had to press for better-than-default service. It’s frustrating, but it’s the price you pay when the reseller is operating on razor-thin margins - they’ve got to cover their nut somehow, and quite often, they lose money if they have to do several exchanges - even without a refund - due to the shipping cost, processing, paperwork, etc.
That said, good luck, and let us know how it all winds up!