14 DAY TRIAL // US retailer Newegg has exposed a highly frustrating pitfall that beneficiaries of AMD's Never Settle product offer could suffer. Advanced Micro Devices might want to check it out.
By now, people should be familiar with the Never Settle program, by means of which buyers of AMD graphics cards get games too.
Depending on what card or how many of them are acquired at a time, one or more games, or game download codes, are bundled with it/them.
In theory, said games are shipped free of charge. In practice, however, things can get a bit complicated.
Retailers aren't actually charging anything extra. That would be too obvious a breach of contract.
What has started to happen is that people don't get full refunds after returning one or more cards because they are defective or fail too quickly after acquisition.
The Newegg.com policy governing returns says that even the free/promotional items in the packages need to be returned.
Game keys that are already redeemed on Steam or Origin can't exactly be returned though.
For some reason or other, this has somehow led to Newegg refunding customers but deducing the amount towards ”promo codes,” even though said promo codes were supposed to cost nothing.
As reported by Overclock.net, customer “SkateZilla” didn't even apply for a refund.
The story goes like this: after he bought a Radeon HD 7900 card for $409 / 311-409 Euro, one that included a Never Settle bundle, the board broke, so he sent it back to get a replacement.
Instead of honoring that request, Newegg initiated a refund for some reason, deducting $169 / 128-169 Euro while it was at it. That left the customer with $240 / 182-240 Euro.
Advanced Micro Devices will have to work with Newegg to make it stop refusing returns and refunding less than it should. On that note, it should probably take measures to prevent other retailers form doing similar things.