Saga of the Sceptres (NewEgg Return)

So, Monday, June 16, at about 5:30pm, I followed the prescribed procedure for returning defective/damaged LCD panels to NewEgg by completing their customer service form on their website, in which, including the required customer account and merchandise identification, I conveyed the following:

Both monitors received are defective. Need RMA for return replacement.

To which I immediately received an email aknowledgment of receipt.

In the wee hours (just after 2am) on June 17, I received the following reply:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Newegg.

In reviewing your account, we show that the item is non-refundable. However, it is still covered by our 30-day replacement warranty. In order for us to further assist you, please give us a detailed description about the problem of the items. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

If you still need assistance, please feel free to email me directly and I will be happy to assist you.

Thank you,

(representative's name)

At 8:20am (same day) I sent a reply:

One of the LCD panels has a quarter inch long streak of damaged pixels about two inches from the bottom left corner. This is the least defective of the two. The other LCD panel has four distict dead pixels, one red, one blue in the upper left, and one green, one blue in the lower right, but also has two areas where the panel appears to have been crushed, as the pixels are "dimmed" in a half ellipse area in two places, approximately 1 inch wide by 1/2 inch high, one on the top edge and one on the bottom edge.

These LCD panels are for a photo-editing system as a gift for a 40-year member of the Seattle Photographic Society who turns 80 on July 14th, and those defects make the monitors unacceptable for photo-editing.

Please advise as to the next step.

Thank you,

At about 9:30pm, same day, received this reply:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for writing back to us.

According to the description in your email, the items seem to be damaged through shipping. If items are damaged through shipping, we will need to file a claim.

In order for us to further assist you, please check if the packages has been damaged or opened through shipping. If so, please give us a detailed description about the damage to the packages. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

If you still need assistance, please feel free to email me directly and I will be happy to assist you.

Thank you,

(representative's name)

At 9:45pm, same day, I sent the following reply:

I do not see any damage to the shipping containers. I also have no idea how to tell if the packages were opened before I opened them (obviously, I had to open them, of course, in order to be able to tell that they were damaged/defective).

I just need RMA numbers so I can return them, or a refusal so I can lodge a complaint with my credit card company and have the charges reversed.

At 10:40pm, June 17 (same day) I received this reply:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for writing back to us.

We have checked this issue with our related department. We will need you to send a picture of the damaged monitors. The picture should show the problem of the items. We will then be able to decide if we should file a claim or issue an RMA for you.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

If you still need assistance, please feel free to email me directly and I will be
happy to assist you.

Thank you,

(representative's name)

So, this morning, I had to unpack the monitors again, after having carefully repacked them for return, reassemble them, take multiple photographs (25) -- requiring zooming to show individual failed pixels, repack the monitors for return, prepare the photographs (used 14 of the original 25) for upload to an FTP site as the size of the photos and quantity far exceed the bandwidth limitations on my mail server, and upload them (CLICK HERE) -- in all, about two hours out of my day.

This is my latest reply, at ~11:30 am, June 18:

So I have spent about two hours this morning complying with your request for photos. I had already repacked the monitors for shipping, so I had to unpack them and reassemble them before I could photograph the defects/damage.

I have 14 photographs, that many made necessary by the type of defects/damage, which required different lighting and/or background colors in order to photograph them at all. And were I to attempt to send them all by email, it would fail, as it would exceed, by far, the attachment size limitations of my mail server. So, in lieu of that, I have posted the photos on my photogallery.

You can see them in thumnail version here: http://tinyurl.com/5qfr5u

Clicking on any thumbnail will load a page with a 400x300 enlargement of the photo (though this is still a reduction from the original). By clicking on that 400x300 image, a new browser session will launch with the full 3264x2448 image contained therein (from which you can download by right-clicking, should you so desire).

I hope that's sufficient to proceed. You have thanked me for my patience and understanding with each reply, so far, but my patience and understanding is now at its limit. I hope we can proceed with no further delays.

Thank you,

(my sig line)

P.S. This exchange is now being publicly chronicled here: (url to this blog)

So now I am on standby, awaiting another reply.