Newegg’s Original Prices

A long, long time ago, circa 2001, e-commerce was struggling, as the origin story behind the name of online electronics retailer Newegg goes:

Traditionally, the egg is a symbol of birth and unlimited potential. The founders selected “Newegg” as the company name to signify new hope for e-commerce during a period when e-commerce businesses were struggling to survive.

Now, e-commerce is thriving (Chart!). Today, if anything, it’s consumers who are struggling — struggling, that is, to figure out when an original price is legit and not just something the seller made up to create the illusion of a sale.

Which brings us back to Newegg.

A TINA.org reader said she had no reason to question the substantial discount on a Sades gaming headset for sale on the site. She and her husband, who was building her a gaming PC, had been using Newegg for “many, many years,” without encountering any issues. It was also Black Friday.

“It being Black Friday and us never having doubt in this company, I immediately went and ordered it cause I didn’t want it to be sold out,” she told TINA.org.

It wasn’t until she discovered the same gaming headset (albeit in a different color) on the manufacturer’s site that suspicion crept in. There, she said, Sades listed an original price of around $30 for the headset — nearly $100 less than the original price of $119.99 that had been crossed out on newegg.com. Further online research confirmed that the actual original price was somewhere between $25 and $35, she said.

“I’m expecting a headset with the quality of one that costs $120 and with my experience that never comes from a cheap one,” the reader said, adding that she would later learn, from online reviews for the headset, of a scratchiness associated with high-pitched sounds. “With a $120 headset, that would not happen.”

Newegg, the self-proclaimed “leading tech-focused e-retailer in North America,” did not respond to a media inquiry from TINA.org.

While the reader did not identify the Sades gaming headset she purchased, we found one with a comparable advertised savings ($32.99 marked down from $112.99) on newegg.com.

We also found a very similar-looking headset on Amazon, but with an original price of $26.89. We asked point-blank: Is this not the same Sades gaming headset? Check back for updates.

This is not our first time writing about Newegg. We previously reported on the company’s price match guarantee.

For more of our coverage on so-called original prices, click here.