I purchased a Sony DVD burner from Newegg. A year later, I started having problems with it, so I went to the Sony web site to download updated drivers and firmware. Despite searching through a pile of drives, I could not find my model mentioned.
When I contacted Sony customer support, I was told that the drive was an OEM drive, and that Sony would not support the drive. No firmware, no owner's manuals, no drivers and no tech support. They told me that they sold these drives to OEM companies like Dell and IBM who used them in their computers. They told me to contact the OEM for support.
The problem is that Newegg sold the drive, but they provide zero support. No technical people to answer questions. No drivers. No software. No firmware. No manuals or literature. No support whatsoever.
This means that buying OEM products from Newegg means buying something for which no one will take responsibility. I used to think that OEM products were just first quality products that lacked packaging. I always assumed that the manufacturers would provide support for them. I just found out that they don't. These are essentially orphaned products.
Newegg should publicly and prominently post this reality on their web site so that people don't buy things that are essentially AS-IS.
I have to be fair. NewEgg customer support granted me a credit of a bit more than half the price of the original drive, but it seems like a waste to have to throw away a drive just because no one supports the thing. I wouldn't have bought OEM had I known.
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