Okay, this is the second time something like this has happened, and it’s not funny anymore.

The first time it went like this:  I bought a half-gigabyte of Rosewill brand RAM on Newegg.com.  It came in a reasonable amount of time, but when I installed it into my iMac, it caused problems.  I returned it, and Newegg sent me another stick (of the same kind, of course) that works just fine.  Naturally, I had to pay the shipping charges to send the RAM back (as well as the conventional shipping charge to order it in the first place, usually not very much), which cost me a lot more than shipping here cost, and almost as much as the RAM itself.  Okay, isolated incident, right?

Well yeah, meaning this next issue is just another in a (hopefully recessed) string of bad luck.  I finally decided that my iMac’s 80 GB of disk space was not enough, so after reading up I decided to buy a 250 GB Hitachi drive.  I searched around before choosing PC Parts Unlimited.  I ordered the drive, and it arrived a few days before the piece of hardware I needed to transfer my data, a USB2-to-SATA adapter from TMG Computers.  (The manual for said adapter, by the way, is completely written in Engrish… but that’s for another entry.) Once the adapter arrived, I hooked everything up and — nothing.  The drive sat there and stared at me, making a buzzing-beeping noise.  It didn’t mount, it didn’t spin up, it didn’t even register in Disk Utility:  it was dead on arrival.  Time to return.

This morning I took the drive to the UPS store to send it back to Ohio.  The price for packaging, shipping and making a photocopy of my invoice came out to $27.  Now that might not seem like a lot, but the drive only cost $89 in the first place, including $6 S/H.  So on the one hand, I was basically getting ripped off on shipping, and on another hand I was getting ripped off because I had to ship the drive back out of my own pocket.  See, if this had not been the correct drive I had meant to order, or if it had the wrong interface, or if anything like that, it would not have been a major problem.  But since this was the drive I wanted, and it simply didn’t work, I’m rather peeved at having to pay for shipping it back (even though the invoice says I am responsible for as much).  It is my belief that the burden of returning the drive should be on the company who sold it, because it is their responsibility to ship a working product, and they should treat their customers with some respect by honoring that.

In any case, I sent them an email explaining my opinion about the situation, and I am awaiting their reply.  Their reception will determine whether they have kept or lost my business.

[UPDATE] Here is the text of the email I sent them:

Hello,

I recently purchased a 250 GB hard drive from you (sales order 16XXX).  When I tried to use it, the drive did not work (RMA 121XXX), so this morning I had it packaged up to be shipped back to you to be exchanged.  It cost me $27.32 to have the drive packaged and shipped.  Despite the clause about return shipping charges, I want this amount refunded to me, by you, because you sent me a product that did not work.  If I am going to send you money, I expect you to send me a product that functions correctly, which did not happen (and yes, I am aware that these things happen… but you should consider treating your customers with a little courtesy).

If you agree to this, I will strongly consider your store for my future purchasing needs.  If you do not, you will have lost my business.  It is simply unbelievable that I should have to pay almost 5 times the original shipping cost to return an item that didn’t work.

I can provide a copy of the shipping receipt if needed.

- Joseph Bermann

And their reply:

Dear Joseph, your offer is not acceptable. We charge you $6.00 for shipping and reimburse you $6.00 for shipping back. Plus we didn’t ship you a bad hard drive, this hard drive had past our quality test. It is possible that it became bad but is not the fact yet until we test here. In many cases hard drives are getting damaged by a hit shock during shipment or during installation, it is not necessarily our fault.

Anybody know a way I can avoid egregious shipping charges on faulty computer merchandise?