Bad egg? Don’t look now, but Newegg has been on the receiving end of a grilling in recent days, with reports that the online retailer sold pirated Windows 10 OEM keys.
At least two of them.
The company has promised to send out physical replacements for those who have bought the license keys to the operating system that will not active — but not after a substantial amount of disquiet across the Internet.
Primarily on Reddit.
To be honest, the company has faced something like this before over the years, for example in places like Anandtech and even the Microsoft Community. But so strong was the backlash this time that Newegg was forced to respond.
Basically, the first thread that actually received 17,500 upvotes and has been made sticky, alleges that two Windows 10 Home OEM keys bought from Newegg failed to activate. And these keys were sold by Newegg, not a third-party seller, in case there was doubt.
When Microsoft was contacted, a representative from the Windows maker revealed that both keys had been pirated and were not genuine.
Fiddlesticks!
A Newegg media representative then follow up, stating that the company will mail a physical replacement of Windows 10 Home or Pro versions to those who have had issues.
And recognizing that this is a problem, the company is also supposedly setting up a separate inbox to deal with such issues.
Interestingly, buyers on Newegg are not alone here. People have also had bad experiences with OEM keys that were sold by Amazon Digital Services, which begs the question what can be done to reliably counter issues like these.
Microsoft does have counterfeit software reporting page for those who have inadvertently purchased pirated software here, but this is a serious concern in the day of online shopping and digital licenses.
