Author: steven

Looking Back: Old Multimedia on the Web

If you grew up in the early 90’s and you had a computer chances are that you were connected to the world wide web. The internet was very popular, with services like AOL and EarthLink you’d be signed online and you could explore the web – you were only limited by your modem’s speed (and your phone bill). You had a 56k modem if you were lucky and even then things weren’t too ‘quick’.

Web Multimedia was at it’s infancy and it took ages to download anything worth watching. You would need special plug-ins and codecs and unlike today not everything was usually compatible with each other. Especially having a Mac there were a lot of videos and other items that just wouldn’t work. Growing up in this internet age my parents had a Power Macintosh 7500 desktop. It was pretty quick in my eyes and it was the main computer of the house. I vividly remember logging onto AOL 2.7, going to the Games section and looking for downloads. I’d usually choose the downloads where the download time was less than 1 minute. This would included video game midis, south park audio clips, and other small audio files that managed to be uploaded by other users.

I remember once finding a Star Wars site online and downloading a ton of audio clips from the movies. I was devastated when my Dad needed to delete them to make space on our computer. This was before we had our Zip 100 drive which would let us save up to 100MB on each of our own disks. I remember getting one for my birthday, that must have been the geekiest gift ever!

Videos were a whole other story. I remember putting in one of Apple’s Mac OS 8 install discs (either 8.5 or 8.6), it had a Bare Naked Ladies music video on it and I was amazed how the quality could look so good. I remember knowing little about what a DVD was, but later on I tried to install the DVD Player software on our older Non-DVD equipped Mac. Of course that never worked, and I later found out why.

Online videos were mostly streaming, I remember RealPlayer was unfortunately used a lot. It was always hard to track down the free version of RealPlayer too. Especially the Mac version, they always wanted you to download the Gold version. Since I was young I was afraid of anything I had to pay for, I didn’t know how it worked but I assumed money was taken instantly from my Dad’s wallet via magic. I never understood why everyone liked RealPlayer, I hated it, I could never save a movie, we’d have to be online to see it. I remember whenever something was a QuickTime file I’d try and save it with mixed success. I remember my Dad bringing home QuickTime 4 on a CD, that was cool since it had some live “TV” like stations you could watch. Not a lot of them worked, but when they did you felt like you had your own little TV on your computer. There was a TechTV channel and a Weather channel. They were usually either pre-recorded clips or a few minutes of a show that repeated.

Speaking of your own personal TV our Mac 7500 had AV and S-Video input on the back. We had an old VCR hooked up to the machine so we could watch VHS tapes or even watch basic cable. I remember taking screenshots and small video recordings of The Simpsons. I also remember watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi on our Mac and playing with the figures while doing so. I was fascinated by that, later I would understand how it worked, but back then it was magic.

Today you can download a whole movie or steam a movie from Netflix in a matter of minutes. Video compression is worlds better, and RealPlayer is unheard of. MP3 files have taken over the portable MIDI sound files, and with CD burners built-in to nearly every machine today it’s easy to share multimedia to friends and family. But you can even blast the content over to another machine online, you don’t have to wait to mail a disc to show your relatives who live elsewhere your photos. Just upload them to Flickr to send them an email.

Digital audio and video technology has sure come a long way since I was a kid. And I’m sure glad it has, without their advancements it would be cumbersome and frustrating to share audio and video on the web. Let alone show somebody how to access this file!

Newegg scrambled up my account

First let me say I love NewEgg. I’ve been a happy customer for over 7 years. I’ve ordered anything from cables to a laundry list of parts to built my own computer form them. I’m a tech savvy guy and usually NewEgg has the best selection and prices. So I’m usually very happy to shop with them and I’ve hardly ever had a problem with them before, certainly not a problem that they couldn’t resolve. I’ve recommended countless friends and co-workers to the site. I fix PCs all the time and 9 times out of 10 the parts I order are from Newegg. I’ve even gotten the company I work for to order items from them. So I am a big fan, until now.

But today when I went to take advantage of some of their Black Friday deals I was turned away. They would not let me log in. They suspended my account and even creating a new account with my name didn’t seem to work. Why was I blacklisted? Because they screwed up, and here’s how they did it. (Skip down for a summary if you wish)

On September 12th 2011 I ordered an OCZ brand SSD (solid state hard drive) for my MacBook Pro computer. I was happy to get it when it arrived, but it didn’t work as advertised. It simply id not like the SATA controller in my MacBook. OCZ customer support offered to give me the same size drive, but at a slower speed to resolve this issue. But I paid for the faster model, so I turned them down. I talked to Newegg and explained my situation, unfortunately the return policy for this item was ‘exchange only’ so I would get the same non-working item again and again. Newegg wanted a $15 to 20 restocking fee if I returned the item. So I contacted Chase, my credit card company which I thankfully used when placing the order. They were happy to assist me and credited me $90.94 temporarily until NewEgg paid them back (the amount of my order with shipping & tax). So a day or so goes by and after reading online about other people getting success with Newegg waiving their restocking fee I try the same thing. It works, I get them to refund my item in full and they even gave me a UPS label to mail it back, no restocking fee. So on September 27th I ship the item back to them and cancel my Credit Card dispute because I was satisfied that Newegg would refund me and everything would be fine. It was not.

On October 4th 2011 at 1:53 PM I receive an email that my RMA return was successfully delivered to the RMA warehouse. Then at 2:08 PM on the same day I get an email saying they verified the contents of the package and that a refund will be processed to my account, it should take 3-5 business days. At this point I expect everything to work out. I pay my credit card off each month, but I didn’t notice the $90.94 being credited. I thought maybe it would take a while, so it sat in the back of my mind until November 22nd (Yesterday).

I try to login to Newegg.com and I get a message saying my account is suspended. It says to call Newegg or use the LiveChat web feature. So I chat with the persona online, they say they do not know why the account is suspended. They pause to try and find out. They say they can not figure it out and pass it to the dispute department. They say I’ll have an answer within 24 hours. So I reluctantly accept this feeling that this person can’t help.

But then I have an idea, I create a NewEgg account with another email address and use the same card. Since NewEgg can’t tell me why my account is suspended I figure it could have been hijacked or as simple as trying to log in with an incorrect password one too many times. So I make a new account, use my same Chase credit card and try to buy the same items. Things look like they went through, but they didn’t I get an order cancelation message a few minutes later saying ‘VOID’ and that’s all. I call up NewEgg again, and they again tell me they don’t know what the issue is, but they’ll look into it. I tell them to note the two email addresses / accounts that I used, they say they will. So at 4:36 I get an email from Amy from NewEgg.

Dear Steven,

Upon further evaluation of your account, we have been informed by our verification department; that we are unable to service your account at this time. Additional information has been requested for further review. It appears there is a record of a pending charge back on your account. Please note in order to reinstate your account the charge back would need to be reversed, or if you have already done so please forward me documentation of the sucessful reversal for you.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

So it appears that NewEgg thinks that I tried to start a charge back to get money back. Which is true, they owe me $90.94. So I call up NewEgg once more. They tell me to call up my credit card company. I call Chase and another Amy answers my call and happily assists me. She sees that I started a dispute and then canceled it, but that NewEgg never sent any money back to me. So I explain to her that I have an RMA email with a number stating that they received the item I sent back and that I will get money in 3-4 days. Obviously this never happened. So Amy re-opened the dispute with NewEgg and said they have 60 days to respond.

Not wanting to wait 60 days to figure out what the issue is (or attempt to order something from NewEgg again) I call up NewEgg for call number four. A lady answers the phone and I explain my long, long situation about what is happening. She looks into her records and sees that NewEgg thinks I owe them money! So I ask to speak to a manager and tell her I know it’s not her fault, she thanks me and passes me to Dan. Dan reads my notes and again tells me that NewEgg thinks that I have the OCZ SSD item and $90.94. So we finally got to the problem. NewEgg thinks I have their money and their product!

So I tell Dan this is not true. He may have thought I was making it up, but I give him an RMA number and this stopped him in his tracks. He looks up the RMA and sees the product was indeed received in the warehouse at 9:23 AM on October 4th 2011. He still says they tried to pay me my $90.94 back to my Credit Card and it was successful. I ask him for a transaction ID or something so I can tell this to my Credit Card company. But he fails to find one, he says he’ll forward this to the finance department to take a look. He says they’ll get it this evening and that the earliest I’ll hear something back or be able to use my account again is Friday. I explain to him how frustrated I am, I was planning on buying numerous gifts and items, potentially spending upwards of $500 on NewEgg.com and taking advantage of their Black Friday deals. He says he can’t begin to imagine how frustrating it is, but says that he can’t do anything and that the finance department must unblock my account. He confirms that I can’t use my name, address or credit card on Newegg. I can’t create a new account, I can’t use my Debit Card. Nothing! So until they decide to unblock my account I can’t give them money. I can’t take advantage of their sales, and I can’t get anything ordered ahead of time for the holidays. I didn’t do anything. NewEgg screwed up, and because of this I am the one who is missing out. If it wasn’t for some NewEgg.com specific sales & rebates that aren’t available elsewhere I’d go to Amazon or Frys.com, but for now I’m stuck.

I’m not going to give up, I’m going to keep giving them calls until something happens. Because I am not happy and this is 100% unacceptable and ridiculous. I’ve never had so much trouble trying to give a company money. I know I shouldn’t be doing that after all this, but all I want is to purchase items and get some holiday shopping done ahead of time.

SUMMARY: NewEgg screwed up with my return. They thought I had the returned item and they already refunded me my money. Neither is true, they have the returned item and never refunded me my money. So now my account is on hold, I can’t buy anything or even log into my account to look at my invoices (thankfully I save all my emails). The earliest my account can be unblocked is Friday. So I will miss out on any sales and promotions that I wanted to take advantage of. Basically I want to give them money and I can’t due to their mistake.

One Last Thing…

I still can’t believe this is true, that he’s really gone.  Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, has passed away at the young age of 56. Every photo I see… its really tough, I can’t believe we’ll never see this amazing man again. What a great guy, I didn’t think this would effect me as much as it is. But it is. I can’t begin to imagine what his friends, family and co-workers are feeling now.

I’m imagining all of us who are a bit of a geek are all feeling a bit blue now. Even if you for some reason dislike the company, their products or Steve himself, you have a lot to thank him and admire him for. The fonts on our computers, the touch-screen on your phone, the graphical user interface we use today, saving Pixar and helping to create some of their great films. We have a lot because of Steve, whether you realize it or not.

May you forever rest in peace Steve, you put a dent in the universe we will never, ever forget. 

Thank you Steve.
-Steve