Frys "Components Quality Assurance Program" half-trained monkey #115076 - DIAF plz K?

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Rant from the other side of the aisle for a change... AKA one of THEM is hiding behind a bench!

Circa 2am this morning - massive home office rework is in progress. I've shuffled parts and am at the step to assemble one of the boxes. I've got the board, 91% alcohol, Arctic Silver and a new E5300 proc on the table, ready to go. I open the box, pull out the bits, and prepare to assemble. Then I look at the chip - there's crud on the edges of the heat spreader. Odd, thinks I. Intel chips are practically clean-room clean when they're new. Curious, I look at the included heatsink. Crud on the edges too, and no thermal pad. Uuuuhhhh Oooohhhh....

Then I look at the box a little closer. What I first thought was an inventory control or order management sticker now takes on a new meaning. "Components Quality Assurance Program." It's not part of a stock management system. It's an indicator this is a pre-used and "tested" part.

Now, I've been shopping in both local Frys for a while. I've seen their Open Box price adjustment stickers. This isn't one of them, and I'm getting more and more pissed that they've sold me a used chip that is guaranteed to fail, but gave it to me and charged me as if it was an unmolested virgin. I could have gone ahead, cleaned the parts up, and used them with the thermal compound I have on hand, and I thought of doing just that. Then I thought to my self... Half Trained Monkey #115076 is either dumb enough to not know or apathetic enough to not care that the strips of thermal compound on Intel heatsinks are both single use only and required for the chip to run at an acceptably  low temperature. By extension, this means that this person might not know (or care) enough to use the heatsink when "testing" the chip. Screw this. It only takes a few seconds to damage a chip, and I'm not going to complete a build with a possibly half-burnt chip.

Now I've gotta drag my 13mpg ass on the 30 min each way trip to Frys - AGAIN - just because HTM #115076 has a job they're not qualified for!

... soon to be x-posted to my LJ

Comments

[jecook]

More likely it's a returned part that they plugged in on the bench, and passed a POST or quick diagnostic test.

I get a stick of kingston like that- the package was opened, and sure enough, it failed a MEMtest run about a third of the way in with errors all over the board.

[jecook]

er, got.

And this is why I don't drive over to fry's anymore for stuff- I'll pay the extra and shipping and get it from newegg or some other online vendor if possible.

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I know people who swear up and down about Fry's and they have some good stuff. But I don't buy computer components there. If I need a processor, ram or motherboard, I order them online like jecook mentioned. I'd rather have a new part than a convenient part.

[kageneko.livejournal.com]

I can go one better. On my way back from my honeymoon, my husband and I decided to stop at Fry's and buy me a new 19" CRT monitor. I picked out a gorgeous Viewsonic Professional Series - saw it many places and they had it cheaper. So we take it home the hour and a half or so (that's assuming there's no traffic - the closest Fry's was in Palo Alto and I'm way up north in Marin). Get it home - fucker doesn't work. It's all different streaks of color. I call Viewsonic and they say, "Nope, it's dead." I start to box the damned thing up to take back - on the BOTTOM OF THE DAMNED BOX was the label for it to be RMAed because it was faulty. On the bottom. Where no one will see it since it's marked "This End Up" and they apparently had put it in the wrong place in the back.

Fuckers gave me a giant heavy-ass CRT monitor that was supposed to be returned. I had to lug it all the way back down there and swap it out. Once I did that? It worked well for 5 years before I gave it away on Freecycle, but I was so so pissed.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

"Components Quality Assurance Program"?

Don't you mean their "Components Refurbished Assurance Program" or C.R.A.P. for short?

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

On the good side, I did get a virgin e5400 in return today. :-)

[jamoche]

My first Frys experience was with a Powerbook 100. It didn't come with a floppy drive; you had to either get an external one or a cable - almost but not quite the same as the external HD cable - that let another Mac see it as an external drive. I have another Mac; I need the cable.

So I go to Frys, tell them what I want (I know! But I'd been in Silicon Valley only a few months, and nobody had warned me!), buy the cable, go home, plug everything in - and screw up my system, because I had a HD cable, not a pretend-to-be-a-HD cable.

I take it back, along with the Powerbook. I tell them the cable they told me to use was wrong, and now the system needs to be reinstalled. I realize something is very very wrong when the Frys tech is standing there with a Powerbook in one hand, a system install floppy in the other, turning the powerbook all different ways trying to find a slot in which to put the floppy.

Ended up taking it back where I bought it, where they were quite happy to plug in a floppy drive and install my system for me.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

Eh, same ordeal in a way.

I went to a store and 2 guys came in at the same time looking for a half-size psu for their old p3 HP computers. They were shelved right behind them, but the associates made no effort in locating them, telling them to order it via HP for $90.

I ended up helping the customers and even installing the psu for one guy. The customer never thanked me, just spit out some bible bullshit at me to which i told him to go fuck himself with.

Even worse, the associates threw their "name" on the psus to claim commishion, which i took off in anger since they didnt help.

Fuck that store.

[azleaneo.livejournal.com]

Every time I've built a computer with components from Fry's, I've had to take something back. Until recently.

Now I test parts there. They have a little back room for testing, by the return area. I've asked them before if I can test a monitor before I leave because I don't want to drive back because of a dead pixel or something. So now I haul my desktop to Fry's with me so I can test the part out before I drive home with it.

Also, I live in San Diego now, and Frys is just 10 minutes away. I used to live in Long Beach, and both Frys near me were 15-20 min traffic on good days, 1hr traffic on bad days. I wish I would have thought about testing things out there before I'd have to spend all day driving just to put together a new box.

[jesus1310.livejournal.com]

There's a reason Fry's has a shrink wrap machine. About 50% of the parts I've gotten there were re-shrinkwrapped returned parts, and about half of those had errors or were otherwise defective.
These days, I just use them for things that aren't critical, are much cheaper than elsewhere, and have a good manufacturer warranty, like my last video card ($100 cheaper than everywhere else, lifetime warranty through the manufacturer).