Unreceived order's refund RMA requests repeatedly canceled by Newegg with zero explanation - Scam that needs Chargeback?

UPDATE: Newegg got in touch with me and got me a refund immediately. It seems their internal systems fell through and might have given the 3rd party seller too much power in the RMA process. I gave some feedback through an extended direct phone call conversation on how they should improve their tech stack for RMAs and how 3rd party sellers should work on their marketplace to benefit customers in a more streamlined way so that a situation like this cannot happen again. Personally I will probably never buy from a 3rd party seller on Newegg again and am still tentative about using Newegg in the future but at least a direct communication and resolution was involved after several weeks of poor service attempts.

I apologize for the long post but it's a deep dive explanation of everything as to why I even chose Newegg for this purchase and every step of the process that has spiraled into the scam situation that it boils down to.

This isn't as big of a purchase as others have had to deal with by any means, but I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I'm supposed to do outside of doing a chargeback given Newegg repeatedly is failing to do anything about it while silently canceling the RMA that even their own customer service created FOR me.

Before Christmas I happened upon a specific game controller model I've been trying to find for years at a reasonable price (aka not $250 like had been on other 3rd party markets) as the model isn't made anymore and it's an excellent controller by 8bitdo, the original SF30 Pro controller with the duplicated Super Famicom design that they don't make anymore due to getting in the crosshairs of Nintendo.

Last year I actually built a new computer off parts from Newegg and, aside from the RAM that never arrived (which thankfully got a refund with no fuss) my purchase went well. As someone who had purchased from Newegg since I was a teenager almost 20 years ago it's been strange seeing them devolve into this unfortunate mess in recent years and an empty shell of what they used to be as a company.

Nonetheless, I got excited over finally finding the sought after controller for a not-insane cost and jumped at it once I saw it and made sure the listing was correct and not part of some group option of different models that are actually different than the first default image in the item listing - aliexpress is REALLY bad about this, by the way.

So I ordered on the 19th, and it was due to come either just before Christmas or the following days after. It was a gift to myself and not for someone else, so I wasn't concerned about the shipping time. I hadn't bought much from their 3rd party 'market' before but figured I'd have to give it a shot and see how it went.

That was clearly a mistake as I am to find out over the following weeks.

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I kept tabs on the shipping status for the Fedex tracking number, checking every couple days just to see, and it quickly leaned toward an expected arrival of the 26th. Cool!

On the 26th, the day after Christmas, I got an email notifying me that my controller had been delivered. As usual for any order, I went outside to grab it, and.. not find a package. Okay, maybe it's in the mailbox! No, nothing. Not even mail.

I figure, maybe it's one of the situations where the carrier marks it as delivered pre-emptively by accident, so I wait a day. Still no package, barely any mail. I had decided on the evening of the 26th that I should at least start a communication with the 3rd party seller through Newegg's seller communication feature since it might take a bit to get a response, and open an inquiry about the package not being received and could update the chat if it shows up.

I've lived here for 5 years and not a single package I've ordered from any company, any shipping carrier, nor any country source (from multiple continents, mind you!) has ever failed to deliver without the carrier having a tracking update about it being lost like the RAM in last year's order.

But here's the weird part: inbetween Fedex being incompetent at actually being able to display info about a tracking number because the query almost always fails due to some error, the one or two times I managed to get it to pull up the tracking number listed on my Newegg order said there were 2 shipments with the same tracking number. What?

The next day, on the 27th, I get a response from the seller telling me they filed a claim and that it usually takes 4-5 business days to get updates. That sounds pretty normal to me, and with no concern for surprise if it took longer given Christmas was literally days before so RMA/Refund/etc noise is higher volume than usual. I thank them for looking into it and go about the rest of my evening.

Well, surprise? 12 hours later the next day in the morning of the 28th I get a new message from the seller telling me to quote check shipment details of the replacement endquote from a URL that they tried to include in the message, but it appeared that Newegg had auto-filtered out external URLs in the messaging system, so it was a bunch of garbage characters after **URL is Removed***

I responded to that message stating that there was not a working URL and that I wasn't sure what I was looking at. An hour later they messaged again, effectively the same message. I then responded telling them what I was seeing and copy/pasted the message.

Nearly 24 hours pass into the 29th, and they send a new message, asking if I could see their new URL - same thing, it was filtered by Newegg, but ending in ?trackingReference=***** where ***** is a different tracking number than what was on my Newegg order for Fedex. It's also a tracking number format I've never seen before. So I once again copy/paste the message as I see it back to them.

A few hours later they respond by including a screenshot attachment of this new tracking number showing that it shipped on the 22nd and delivered on the 23rd.

What?

At this point I'm frustrated and respond by asking them what happened because I didn't receive any order, as well as asking why it's a different shipment that had somehow time-traveled in the past before what Newegg knew for my order.

A day passes, and the last message they ever send to me on the 30th is stating that because they see it as being delivered that they will not issue a replacement or a refund. No messages of mine were responded to thereafter.

On the 29th, before that final message, I had figured the seller is conning me when they gave me a different shipping date and different tracking number and immediately decided to put in an RMA request for missing order to Newegg directly to start the investigation as to what is going on.

7 days pass. At this point it is January 5th, and I get an update about my RMA:

Return Number canceled per your request

What the actual fuck did I just read. The only details listed are the RMA number, the order number, and 'customer details' which are just a copy/paste of the text from original RMA request made a week prior. No explanation, and I certainly did not ask to cancel it.

At this point I want an immediate answer for what is happening on both situations now, and decide to contact a live rep from customer service so that I have a documented copy of the conversation and interaction in case I need to file it with evidence for a chargeback, because clearly this situation went from bad to worse.

While they were nice enough, they also displayed a level of incompetence in the matter that I got quite frustrated with in the conversation.

Thanks for your time. Per checking, I show the original fedex shipment is not delivered, so the seller has send a replacement with **********. It shows delivered on 12/23. Have you received it

Clearly this customer service agent wasn't paying attention to the order or the timing or what I even said in response to this shipment to the seller when looking over the messages. Even this Newegg customer rep somehow thought it made sense that the seller could send a replacement into the past 3 days before the original shipment was supposed to be delivered. I feel like I'm going insane at this point.

I ended up very, very clearly stating the error of her interpretation and she seemed to understand now what was going on, and apologized. Then she said

Let me file a guarantee claim on your behalf in this case

That sounds promising - finally something being done about it and someone from Newegg recognizing my issue. She offered the option of replacement or refund. I asked for a refund because I genuinely don't think a replacement is going to happen for this rare item. She filed a new RMA request and the chat came to a close from there, and I thanked her for taking action.

It is now the 11th, and a get a new message about the RMA the Newegg agent filed for me.

Return Number canceled per your request

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I swear to god I've never been so frustrated and pissed off at any company for so many layers of incompetence while doing nothing about my situation. It's unbelievable. I'm tempted to actually talk to a live agent on the phone and record all conversations I have in the process because I feel I'm going to need to document as much of this as possible. I made the purchase through Paypal which I don't know if they will actually handle a chargeback as a bank or credit card company would. I've never even had to do a chargeback of any kind in my life before because no company has been this genuinely disconnected from a bad situation gone worse.

This really makes me feel like I'm going insane.

TL;DR: Ordered rare game controller from 3rd party seller, seller scammed me and didn't deliver anything, lied about shipment, refused refund, and RMA requests to Newegg even through a customer rep are being silently canceled by someone at Newegg with no explanation of any kind. This is my documented explanation of the situation.