Your experience with Fry's

Fry's sells the same mobos everybody else does, except for brands that are obscure in the US, like Jetway, and quality ranges from Biostar on the low end (was ECS until a Fry's executive comitted $65M of fraud against Fry's) to Gigabyte and Intel on the high end. The main failures with cheaper mobos, regardless of the retailer, are probably from junk capacitors, as documented at

and there's a good chance at least one will fail in 1-2 years, sometimes with no visible warning (no caps bulge on top). But I've had much more trouble installing driver software, thanks to badly written installation programs and poor documentation.

The Fry's in Phoenix has been very good about returns, and I've had to deal with weasel employees only 1-2 times, most recently several months ago, when I received a mobo with factory-damaged header pins that the employee tried to blame on me.

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It is all our responsibility to do thorough inspections of our purchases and hold the vendor to his responsibility so they don't make a habit of screwing customer confidence. If I am prepared to buy, I have no problem with opening a box right on the floor, especially if the description on the box is sketchy or doesn't tell me what I ought to know. If I don't buy it, there is a good reason.

Would you buy a box that someone else has ripped apart? That's why manufacturers put tamper seals (tape) on their boxes. Seriously... If you found something you wanted to buy, ripped apart the packaging in the store, and then replaced it on the shelf, would you expect someone else to buy it? I wouldn't.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

The assumption is that one rips it open at the checkout.

The only way to do it is to grab a sales associate and explain the situation to him (or his manager). I agree it is not a good or proper thing to just open packages on the floor. I also think that any retail store that does not have a display item is bound to get just that: people will open the box!

Oh, and when I got my unit, there were three other choices of products. Both of the other products had open boxes where someone else had done the same thing! (And yes, I did take the box I opened, seemed fair to me.)

Point taken. But, if after you've had a bad experience at Fry's, Newegg's growing customer satisfaction shouldn't be overlooked.

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1PW

and

screwing

box

No, but at least someone else would be able to see what they are getting into like me. And yes I have bought opened box when it is the last one.

Case in point. I was looking for a ceiling fan speed switch at the hardware store. There were 4 different varieties claiming to be what I needed, but no schematic showing the actual form factor. I asked the sales person who barely knew what I was talking about, and didn't even know of a couple others in a different place in the store. So I went out and got my ohmmeter and proceeded to open each one that claimed to be just what I needed and found none of them did. I wound up buying one that had the same chain actuator and disassembling it and reassembling it with the old switch cam.

Now I ask you: How many people actually buy one that is actually correct for the one application? How many are POed and throw it away? How many would make 6 trips to try them all and be POed?