This is separate from my present annoyance with newegg. But because of the newegg problem, I got to thinking, "What other vendors are better about customer service?" I don't have a good answer, but I have an anecdote that's worth repeating.
About 2-3-ish years ago, I ordered a dozen macbook pros from PC Connection. They came in, I started applying the standard image to them, everything was going fine, until the second day. Due to space constraint, I moved them all from the workbench where I was originally working, to continue working at my desk. All of a sudden, none of the laptops worked. They would power on, flash the apple logo, start clicking the hard drive apparently booting the OS, and just at the moment when you expect the login prompt to appear, they would suddenly power off. I checked the batteries, cleared the PRAM, eliminated any possibility of faulty building power or power supplies by repeating the same behavior on systems that were unplugged overnight and not connected to power at my desk... As part of standard operating procedure, of course, we record all the serial numbers. And based on similarity, we have to conclude, at least 8 of these are sequential, so they really are from the same manufacturing batch. I tried booting from the OSX installation DVD... Still the same problem. I figured, I've completely eliminated the possibility of faulty software by booting from the OSX installation DVD. This is solidly and conclusively identified as a hardware problem. I searched around online, found nothing. I called apple support, and concluded that I could have them all serviced under apple care, but since there was a whole *batch* of systems with the same problem, they wanted to trace back and find the cause of the problem instead. So we got apple support involved with PC Connection support. I called the other IT guys in my office over, and we all worked on it together. If for no other reason, a sanity check and competent witness, I'm not doing something stupid. We all reached the same conclusion. This makes no sense, it simply *must* be a bad batch of laptops from apple. Or random lightning strike in the middle of the night last night, or something. So we'll return them to PC Connection, and they will work with apple. Meanwhile, PC Connection will ship us a new batch. We can use the packing materials from the new batch to return the faulty batch. New systems arrived, had no problem. Faulty systems received by PC Connection also had no problem. None of us knew what the heck happened. A month later, we ordered some more macbook pros, and were surprised to find two of the serial numbers already in our system. They re-sold the laptops to us that we had RMA'd. I wanted to be furious, but they were not exhibiting any problems. So I couldn't be too upset. I talked it all over with our sales rep, who was deeply embarassed, and apologized deeply, and we all agreed, we would just use them for now, and if there was even the slightest sign of a problem, we would exercise extreme prejudice in dealing with it. ... But that day never came. They continued to be fine indefinitely. Several months later, I had a stack of mac & windows laptops that needed various forms of repair or reconditioning. So I was working on them at a workbench. And I experienced the problem again. But this time, the problem happened on a serial number that was NOT previously experienced on. Something clicked. Because I had a stack of windows & mac laptops mixed together. Because I had merely repositioned laptops on the workbench. I figured out the cause of the problem. In the new model of macbook pro (new at the time) they had a magnetic strip in the lid, and a magnetic sensor in the base to detect when the lid is closed. This differs from the physical switches used in previous models, and in the windows laptops. So if you close one macbook, and you set another on top of it, the one on top will sense the magnetic strip of the OTHER laptop. And power off (go to sleep.) The problem with each laptop was caused by proximity with ANOTHER laptop.
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