Dear Newegg,

First off, confirmation of an email address by entering it twice is annoying. Disabling paste is doubly so. It angers customers like me who are already so unhappy with their experience that they feel compelled to write about it.

Second, why the 1000-char limit? Must all online communication be wrtn w/out vwls usng txtspch nstd f reg Eng.?

And finally, the incident prompting this feedback in the first place: Newegg is apparently participating in some sort of cross-domain credit card "verification" program (as if that's not already suspicious enough) that demands giving away my social security number, date of birth, and other personal information before being allowed to complete an order. I've seen such verifications before at Newegg and happily ignored them, providing no information.  What's new is that this "verification" can no longer be bypassed.

Allow me to digress a moment to explain the history of this situation. Whatever Newegg did with credit cards before making this verification mandatory was already draconian. Newegg orders invariably consumed several hours of me talking to my bank both before and after the transaction to assure them that I did indeed place the order, that the # or lack thereof in the address field was not evidence of fraud, that the shortening of the street name was a limitation of Newegg's ordering system and not (again) evidence of fraudulent activity, that the phone number was indeed correct, and so on. Prior to this latest insult, I had managed to get to where I usually only needed to call Newegg once or twice to fix up the order before it was accepted. Newegg is the ONLY site I have ever used to have these problems, and I order online from places like Walmart to Dell to Tiger Direct to Barnes and Noble, not to mention normal brick-and-mortar retail establishments. No other establishment requires the non-existent 1-800-* number from the back of my card. No other establishment has problems accepting credit card orders. No other establishment demands that much of my personal information before accepting an order. But for these difficulties, Newegg probably would have received a few thousand more dollars from me in orders.

Returning to the newly-mandatory verification, this latest invasion of privacy is wholly inexcusable and unacceptable. Newegg has no need of this information, as it is obviously not provided for payment by check or money order. The policy treats me like a thief and fraudster because I dared to use a credit card. It says Newegg doesn't care about my privacy, their customer experience, doesn't value my business, and would sooner throw me in jail where they wouldn't have to deal with my orders. It says Newegg has a grossly misguided security vision that by collecting enough information about everybody, they can somehow eliminate all fraud. It says I should take my business elsewhere. A less charitable interpretation might be that Newegg is collecting vast amounts of personal information on its customers in the hopes to someday sell it to the highest bidder. If I try to order something next year, will I be required to provide a finger print? A DNA swab?

PLEASE STOP treating would-be customers like thieves.

As I mentioned above, I have never seen these sorts of measures taken at any other establishment. I have no trouble ordering with my credit card elsewhere. Perhaps Newegg should look at how other sites handle credit card transactions, and how they mitigate fraud without alienating customers and assembling databases of personal details.

Regards,