Newegg announces its own Amazon Prime-like subscription service, Newegg Premier

Jos

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Newegg has announced a subscription plan for shoppers offering free three-day shipping, discounted expedited shipping, and free returns with no restocking fees for $49 a year. Dubbed Premier, it’s essentially the retailer’s version of Amazon Prime, except targeted at a geekier audience interested mainly in technology products.

“We always seek ways to improve the customer experience and implementing a benefit program is the latest example of how we’re making it easier and more rewarding to shop at Newegg.com,” Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer at Newegg said in a statement. “Free expedited shipping is in itself a great benefit, but beyond that we’re including many other perks to enhance the shopping experience.”

Aside from the aforementioned shipping benefits, subscribers will also get in advance notifications of upcoming sales and events, exclusive deals, and a dedicated customer service line.

The announcement comes just days after an Amazon executive admitted to be considering a $20 to $40 price hike for Prime, bringing the service’s yearly cost up to $99 or $119.

Of course with Amazon you’ll get access to a much more diverse product catalog and extra perks like Prime Instant Video or free Kindle books, but if you are mostly interested in tech products, Newegg Premier could emerge as a serious competitor. Plus you can always spring for a couple of streaming services separately and still pay less than Amazon Prime at its current price.

Newegg Premier is rolling out as beta and there’s a free 30-day trial if you sign up by February 18.

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If newegg's prices were often better than amazon, I would likely do this. but the fact of the matter is that they aren't. I would love to support newegg more but I havent been given a reason to as of late. I upgraded the video card, the fans, the fan controller, the PSU, the case in my PC and the PSU was the only things cheaper from newegg. And seeing as newegg's primary focus is on computers and components compared to amazon who has, well, everything, newegg should have better prices in those categories....
/rant
 
If newegg's prices were often better than amazon, I would likely do this. but the fact of the matter is that they aren't. I would love to support newegg more but I havent been given a reason to as of late.

I feel the same way somewhat, but also it burns me having to pick between 3-4 online retailers. Usually to find prices on certain hardware, considering my GPU upgrade was about $270 on NewEgg, well over $300 on Amazon and it was about $240 on TigerDirect I went with the cheapest. It was the same card and oddly enough, Canada has been screwed in some pricings.

I've supported NewEgg with a number of purchases, TigerDirect got one purchase from me and recently got a few from Amazon. Usually with Amazon it's where friends have a wishlist of sorts, and I usually end up buying something whenever. Which was mainly the only focus, of Amazon for me until recently. Given my lack of interest in Amazon's extras, and being in Canada the price conversion / vendors are not all the same.

I hope to see the prices on NewEgg hopefully get a good shaking up, as they try rolling this out and possibly bring it to other countries. It took so long getting NewEgg in Canada, and prices have been barely worthwhile. Maybe a few dollars here and there which are, beaten into the ground from Amazon Prime's general benefit.
 
Wait a second... I thought Newegg don't charge restocking fee even if you're not a subscriber. I know because I returned an item couple of months and was not charged for it.
 
They already give free shipping on a lot of items, and it never takes more than 2-3 days. So this seems worthless.
 
"Three Day Shipping", used to be free!. At least what they used to call three day shipping. I used to call it, "UPS ground". When stuff was shipped from their NJ warehouse, to me in Philly, it was, overnight....,guaranteed! (UPS enforces that on their ground service, NYC, North Jersey, to Phila, and beyond (?).

If you'll notice, many businesses are no longer being forthright about who the carrier will be. It's a cute little trick they're using to try and trick you into using a step-up option.

When Amazon is cornered into their, "free shipping", on occasion, they'll simply leave your package in their warehouse, just to yank your chain, and make you think twice about asking for that service again.

So, IMHO, the more Newegg indulges its, "paranoid delusions of Amazon.com-hood", the less inclined I am to do business with them.
 
Wait a second... I thought Newegg don't charge restocking fee even if you're not a subscriber. I know because I returned an item couple of months and was not charged for it.
But now that they have a subscription, they may charge a restocking fee just to promote the subscription.
They already give free shipping on a lot of items, and it never takes more than 2-3 days. So this seems worthless.
Free shipping could change now that they are implementing a subscription. And 2-3 days is not guaranteed without paying extra, 4-7 day shipping is the standard. If you get all your packages within 3 days without paying extra, consider yourself lucky because it wasn't guaranteed. This subscription does guarantee expedited shipping on all merchandise without paying extra. Plus the discounts on 1 and 2 day shipping.

Depending on how much and how quickly we always order our merchandise, we could get our moneys worth the first month and then save on all the months following. A large IT department would be crazy not to use this to their advantage.
 
Wait a second... I thought Newegg don't charge restocking fee even if you're not a subscriber. I know because I returned an item couple of months and was not charged for it.
As soon as they offer a paid subscription shipping option, what ever was the free shipping, starts to suffer. Be it time, or terms. Newegg's free shipping has been going downhill ever since they cut UPS out of the option.

As far as restocking fees go, Newegg was in the business of suffering fools long enough. It probably became to expensive for them NOT to charge a fee when you send something perfectly good back on a whim, or because you didn't know how to use it.

Read some of their reviewes, and while you're at it, read past the review, and try to get into the head of the imbecile that wrote it. God knows, they are manifold, and they all have, "extremely high technical knowledge".
 
Free shipping could change now that they are implementing a subscription. And 2-3 days is not guaranteed without paying extra, 4-7 day shipping is the standard. If you get all your packages within 3 days without paying extra, consider yourself lucky because it wasn't guaranteed. This subscription does guarantee expedited shipping on all merchandise without paying extra. Plus the discounts on 1 and 2 day shipping
I have no idea what you're terming "expedited shipping". But, be it free shipping or otherwise, Newegg usually gets it out the door the same day you order it. (excluding weekends, of course). So, how much more could they "expedite the shipping" than that?

If I want anything connected to photography, I'll call Adorama in NYC. You can call them up to at least 5:00 PM, and they'll put it out the door the same day. Yes, even with a "free shipping" offer.

Now tell me again why I should buy a camera from Newegg?
 
Waste of money to pay extra to force you to spend more money on items you really didn't need to get any quicker. Amazon sometimes ships you next day for free. I see it happen under non-prime accounts. I've gone back to that way too. They force you to join a subscription base in aims you go for it. Then when you go to order they try to convince you to take the $1 on MP3 and wait 5 days. But yet you spend $80 for 2-day.

Then on some items like the add-on ones you after to spend either $25 or more and you can't get that in 2-days if the item is $5 bucks you must spend almost $30 to get it. The tricks of the trade they put on you. Newegg, had a huge restocking fee. I haven't use them since then. Ordered a defective router couldn't get Newegg to waver the charges then had charged me.

I miss buy.com they have changed hands but all of them are doing some extra fund raising like Amazon is doing to us. I see they waste money now they're trying to stick it to us the buyer. If they raise the fee to $99 to $140 I am sure a lot of you going to drop prime.
 
Newegg has always treated me better then good. I prefer to buy from them but I will go Amazon for a better price. They are in business to make money and expand. I hope this works for them.
 
Newegg has always treated me better then good. I prefer to buy from them but I will go Amazon for a better price. They are in business to make money and expand. I hope this works for them.

Amazon started in a garage selling books. So now it's grown so huge they forget about what selling online is all about. They can cut the price for less and shipping for free. They use to ship next day and 2 day air for free prior to this prime subscription. No matter what they make money. The charge more for the items you see they also get a piece of the action (there cut) on vendor items.

I am not worried about them I want my items here in time. I don't want to pay extra to doing that. I've you seen what they charge to get items even quicker. Everyone charging more even the USPS. So everyone hands are deep in your money.

I want to save but I am not spending more than I have to on shipping. I'll wait it out. Local stores are not carrying items like they use too. To me the best one is Walmart.com they use Fedex drop location, store drop (no never doing that again) or free home delivery using FedEx. Of course returns have to be made back at a local Walmart store. I did that with 40-inch HDTV. What a hassle. Also ordered dishwasher getting to the store and then had to return it because it leak.

Customer service gals said they didn't know Walmart sold dishwasher yep they do! It was dripping water all over the floor there but it couldn't be help! LOL
 
I used to spend several thousand dollars on computer upgrades each year and purchased those upgrades exclusively from Newegg. Sadly, I have not purchased a single item from them in over 2 years and utilize the site ONLY for the reviewers feedback. Amazon has everything cheaper, no restocking fees and with Prime on the East Coast I usually get free 2day shipping in 1day or less. The fact that Newegg ships most of what I need from California is a 3-day deal-breaker for me. Too bad because I would much rather support Newegg than Amazon.
 
I used to spend several thousand dollars on computer upgrades each year and purchased those upgrades exclusively from Newegg. Sadly, I have not purchased a single item from them in over 2 years and utilize the site ONLY for the reviewers feedback. Amazon has everything cheaper, no restocking fees and with Prime on the East Coast I usually get free 2day shipping in 1day or less. The fact that Newegg ships most of what I need from California is a 3-day deal-breaker for me. Too bad because I would much rather support Newegg than Amazon.

No you wouldn't. You're funny
 
Newegg had some odd deals got 1 day shipping or next day air. Even though the item never said it was going to flown from CA to New England. Like I said Amazon was charging me $40 to ship 3 lbs of grain goods. Where the same vendor on their site was only $13 to ship it. So who would you use? Vendor yep! USP to me he did. Bypass Amazon.
 
Most have already covered it - Newegg isn't cheaper than Amazon. I rarely buy from Newegg. Also, if Newegg has it cheaper I wait an hour and refresh Amazon. By then their crawlers have found it and price-matched. Also, I have InvisibleHand for Chrome, so if Newegg does happen to have a cheaper price than Amazon it will notify me.
 
Mfw everyone complaining about prices.

I just ordered a 32 inch TV from newegg yesterday, cheaper than Amazon. And surprisingly, I picked the free shipping option, and my package is out for delivery today.

Shipping times are not always an exact art.
 
I think the expedited shipping that Newegg is talking about is that when you check out, you can check a box that says something like "for an extra $2.99, we will expedite your order." For me, it was long ago, years in fact, established that checking that box was simply giving Newegg an extra $2.99 for the privileged of filling your order - in other words, it got anyone who checked the box absolutely nothing, yet Newegg gets an extra $2.99 for doing absolutely nothing.

I buy very little on a yearly basis from Newegg, so for me, paying for their "Premier" service is not worth it. Heck, there are no videos that you can stream, and I see it as a cheap imitation of Amazon's service.

"Three Day Shipping", used to be free!. At least what they used to call three day shipping. I used to call it, "UPS ground". When stuff was shipped from their NJ warehouse, to me in Philly, it was, overnight....,guaranteed! (UPS enforces that on their ground service, NYC, North Jersey, to Phila, and beyond (?).

If you'll notice, many businesses are no longer being forthright about who the carrier will be. It's a cute little trick they're using to try and trick you into using a step-up option.

When Amazon is cornered into their, "free shipping", on occasion, they'll simply leave your package in their warehouse, just to yank your chain, and make you think twice about asking for that service again.

So, IMHO, the more Newegg indulges its, "paranoid delusions of Amazon.com-hood", the less inclined I am to do business with them.
+1

What their "Premier" service means to me is that it is highly likely that Newegg is not doing as well as they would like to be doing, and that Newegg is likely "blaming" the competition, I.e., Amazon, for the problems they have.

My take is that if Newegg revised its policies and did not charge a restocking fee, then they would do better. There are so many items on the Newegg site that have a special return policy. For instance, CPUs / APUs can only be exchanged, not refunded, and for other items, you cannot return them, rather, Newegg's policy states what amounts to "if you have a problem with it, deal with the Manufacturer."

Policies like these make me very reluctant to deal with Newegg because in the past, even if items were truly defective, a restocking fee was charged. As I see it, Newegg is simply telling their customers that they, the customers, that is, are always in the wrong. Personally, I hate returning stuff, and I rarely do unless there is a problem with it, but Newegg's policies are a slap in the face to customers who always try to do the right thing. I do, from time to time, order from Newegg, but each time I do, I pray that there are no problems with the order because of their "it's the customer's problem / fault" return policies.

Perhaps the one thing that Amazon does correctly, IMHO, is not to nickle and dime their customers when returning a product unlike Newegg where you can almost count on being nickled and dimed if you have to return something even when it is defective. Because of this, I am more likely to choose Amazon these days, and an old standby of mine that also has a "No Questions Asked" return policy, Buy.com, before I'll choose Newegg.

As I see it, though, Newegg has no clue about this. They are willing to dump all over their customers and then they wonder why they are losing customers to the competition, and instead of finding ways to be more customer friendly, they are now implementing the Amazon gimmick. It seems to me that every place you look these days, retailers are trying to get their customers on the subscription model. For me, that simply will not happen with Newegg.
 
Three-days?! LOL, standard shipping is quicker than that. This is no benefit to me. New Egg almost ALWAYS ships same-day (even with free shipping) and 90% of my orders comes from the Memphis warehouse, which takes just 1-2 days to get to me in North Alabama. It's usually some random cable when something comes from the California warehouse.
 
The old days was like this you send in your money in if they had the item in stock then they could ship it out the same day. Today Amazon Prime you paying extra to Amazon like your paying a fee to get them stand-up when Joe places an order.

Everyone awakens from their card games and starts running around looking for the items Joe requested in his order. Amazon locates the items and send the items to processing then to shipping then selects who's cheaper to ship this item. USPS, Laser (Amazon Owns), UPS and FedEx. Sometimes Joe might get lucky and have his entire order shipped the next day at no extra cost.

But Joe could save on Prime yearly cost and got Super Saver Free Shipping and might get his items shipped out the same day and also get it the next day too. Or he might be selected to use FedEx Smartpost system via USPS. This one can take extra days to get to Joe.

Gentlemen it's a racket either way you look at this. Amazon waste money on the flying robot to get you packages. They should take that money and give it to the customers who have spend over $1,000 in 6 months. Give them 1 day shipping for free at no charge.
 
captaincranky said:
Newegg's free shipping has been going downhill ever since they cut UPS out of the option.

Any idea on why they ditched UPS?
 
captaincranky said:
Newegg's free shipping has been going downhill ever since they cut UPS out of the option.

Any idea on why they ditched UPS?
Newegg has not ditched UPS. I was going to return something two days ago. Their return process allows people to print a UPS label at a supposedly lower price than the competition because Newegg does a lot of business with UPS - this is according to the blurb in the return process. Note that I was expected to pay the return shipping charges. I ended up not returning the item since I was able to get the product working to my satisfaction.

In the past, I have gone through this process, and I found that FedEx was actually cheaper than UPS to return something. This makes me wonder whether returning items to Newegg with a supposed Newegg discount if you ship by UPS is another Newegg gimmick.

I am not saying Amazon is the greatest thing since sliced bread as each time I log on, there are a bunch of suggested items for me based on my buying history - all of which I would never buy, but Amazon does pay return shipping on defective items.
 
Any idea on why they ditched UPS?
This is just a guess, but UPS drivers make a lot of money, so their price likely has gone up since the last contract negotiations..! or (?).

In any event, in my area, they've gone to an owner / operator gypsy sort of carrier, "Lasership". I can't really say anything bad about them, and every package they've been given of mine, has been delivered the same day. So, pretty much delivered the next day after ordering.

However, I'm at the end of their driver's route, and get the packages around 5;00 PM. UPS is here, normally by noon! Which ties up a whole lot less of the day,

UPS has been losing other accounts as well, some to Fedex, and some to Lasership. I'll reiterate and guess price is a factor.

As I said earlier, Amazon sometimes get a bug up its corporate a**, when you opt for free shipping. They'll let a package sit in the warehouse for a few days.

I actually mostly used to buy CDs from the Amazon Marketplace, and never Amazon itself. (They're most often cheaper). However, Amazon upped the shipping price tack on, to $3.99 from $2.99.... EACH, no matter how many are in the order! Now it's better to wait til you have $35.00 to spend, and buy them from Amazon.

A lot of shipping time and temperament, rests with the driver on "XX" route, and the service being used.

Fedex home is absolute garbage, yet Fedex standard is exemplary.

Then too, I'm quite fortunate in my location, the NYC, North Jersey, Eastern PA, Philadelphia shipping corridor is muy rapido. (And I can't stress enough, this is why, "your results may vary)!

In fact, Fedex ground is guaranteed overnight, (!), from damned near Albany NY...!!


When Newegg (free) ships to me, (in Philly), from Kentucky or California, I wait a few days. Not so from North Jersey. In fact, I think Newegg transports their packages for my area, to the Lasership distribution warehouse in Bristol, PA.

And the end of the day, this may be, "much ado about nothing", as Amazon Prime, and extended warranties, are mostly just a rip off, to part the fool and his money.

You know the success has gone to the Amazon CEO's head, or there's been a huge influx of cocaine to the boardroom, when he starts yakking out his a**, about having flying drones deliver your packages. Like anybody in their right mind would pay for that. <(IMHO)
 
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