Egghead

Egghead.com is a retailer of computer products. Onsale.com is a business-to-consumer auction site. Since they merged, one web site serves both purposes and is reachable using either domain name.

Length of Warranty

June 20, 2001. I purchased a refurbished Compaq Presario from Egghead that, according to their product description came with a one year warranty from Compaq. When it arrived however, the Compaq documentation that came with the computer said the warranty was 90 days.

What Credit Card?

I purchased something from Egghead in April 2001 as a returning customer (not an auction). Their checkout process is fairly typical, except for one annoying aspect. After entering your userid and password you get to see the invoice before making a final confirmation of the purchase. The invoice includes tax and shipping charges. However, nowhere in the checkout process does Egghead tell a returning customer what credit card they are going to bill the current purchase to. Only after the customer offers final acceptance of the order, does the web site tell you the type of credit card and the last four digits. I saw no option in the checkout process to inquire about or change the credit card to be used for the purchase.

How much is that item in the window?

I had bought many things from both the Egghead retail side and the Onsale auction side of their web site and was a happy customer. However, in April, 2000 I bought an item at auction that was really being sold by Intellesale.com. All my previous auction purchases from Onsale.com were of items being sold by Onsale. In this case, Egghead/Onsale was acting as a service bureau handling the details of the auction, but the actual item was sent to me by Intellesale. Intellesale also handled the billing and that's my gripe.

Egghead/Onsale said the cost of my winning auction bid was $157 which reflected the cost of the item and shipping.
My credit card, however, was billed $167.60.

The bill arrived about four weeks after the auction ended so I went back to the Egghead web site and pulled up my history. It still said that I would be billed $157, so I called them on the phone. This is when I learned that the billing was done by Intellesale. Egghead disavowed any knowledge of my credit card bill. Speaking of which, the actual charge was not from Intellesale, but from Data Path, which I assume is another name that Intellesale uses.

Intellesale explained on the phone that the difference was due to sales tax. They added 6.7% sales tax because I live in New York. I then called Egghead again and their position was that everything is working as it should be. But their web site is lying to me. It specifically says my credit card will be billed $157 which is not true.

If Egghead is not handling the billing, their web site should not say what the billing amount will be.

In fairness, the fact that Intellesale charges sales tax in New York and New Jersey is disclosed in the Sales Policies section of the web page for an item being auctioned by Intellesale. On the other hand, Egghead knows the state where its registered users live, but does not take this into account.

On May 9, 2000 I complained to Egghead by filling out a web page in the customer service section of their web site. The customer service person that I spoke to on the phone suggested doing this. My gripe got assigned a Request ID for "tracking purposes" and they sent me a form letter via email the same day. But that's all I got.

May 26, 2000

I bought another item at an Egghead auction where Intellesale was the real vendor. When you win an auction, Egghead sends you a congratulatory email message. The message stated the price for the item and shipping and said that amount would be charged to my credit card. Of course, this is not true. That amount plus sales tax will be charged to my credit card.

Fulfillment

The first auction that I won from Intellesale/Egghead shipped out late. I didn't mind and hardly paid any notice because I was not in a rush for it. Eventually I called Intellesale and their customer support said that it should have been mailed out by then and they did not understand why it hadn't been shipped. They offered to expedite it and soon thereafter the item was delivered.

I thought nothing of this until I won another Intellesale/Egghead auction (May 2000). Six days after having won the auction I called Intellesale to see when I might expect delivery. They had no record of the order at all. Their customer service said it would take time to investigate as it had to be deferred to someone who deals with Egghead. I called Egghead/Onsale the same day and they said that everything was fine from their end. They claimed that they transmitted the order to Intellesale the day the auction closed.

The next day I called Intellesale back again and this time there was a record of the order in their system. My credit card had just been charged, at this point a week after the auction closed. They did not know when the item would be shipped.

Page last updated: June 20, 2001