Newegg sucked me in for the last time.

I am a big "budget games" guy. I rarely buy games at full price, if I can avoid it. I'm usually content to wait on a given game until it's in the bargain bin, with all the DLC included. I figure the game's going to be just as good in six month's time, and with the same money I'd spend today, I can get two or even three for the price. Plus, it gives everything time to settle out - patches, DLC, and reviews give me a clearer view of a game, its bugs, and whether or not it's worth playing.

However, EB generally likes to play things on day 1. His mantra is "BUY, BUY, BUY!" We like to play the same games, so I occasionally break my own rules and preorder a game or get it on day 1. I justify this to myself by saying that we get a lot of mileage out of these online games. In return I occasionally convince him to take advantage of a deal or consider a "back catalog" game that he might not have been willing to play otherwise.

Enter Newegg. This year they ran several preorder promotions where they knocked 20% off the price of the game if you ordered on a particular day, with a particular coupon code, and were subscribed to their mailing list. It's a bunch of hoops to jump through, but I figured it was worth it to get the game when it came out AND save some cash. I picked up Modern Warfare 3 and Saints Row: The Third from them.

Release day rolls around, and everywhere else I've ever preordered, I get my copy on the day it comes out. Not with Newegg. They barely managed to ship my game the same day it was available in stores. I was pretty pissed, but I kept telling myself "20% off, it's worth it!" I jumped through some extra hoops to get into the game a bit earlier, and I figured, I'd learned what to expect and would be ready for the release of Saints Row: The Third. A few days wait, but hey, I've got Modern Warfare 3 for the meantime.

Except that apparently preordering through Newegg apparently did not qualify me for any of the preorder bonuses. I thought this must've been a glitch or something, but contacting Newegg yielded a response along the lines of "Sorry, you got a discount, and you should have known better." So no crazy mobile pedestrian cannon or squid launcher for me.

Fine. Lesson learned, the hard way. I could've gone with Amazon and gotten free release day shipping for slightly less of a discount (I think the delta was $2). That's what I'm going to do in the future - no more preorders from Newegg. Cross those suckers off the list. Unless, of course, I'm preordering something and I don't give a crap about the release date or the preorder bonuses...

I still had a small gift card there from a previous purchase, so I tried using it on a Black Friday deal a few weeks later. It was a midrange camera that was advertised as coming with a memory card and a free camera case. When the box arrived, guess what? The camera case is nowhere near the size of the camera, and Newegg's response is again "Sorry, you got a discount, and you should have known better."

I've learned my lesson: Newegg will go out of its way to get my business, even as far as exploiting my expectations from dealing with other major retailers and selling me something that meets the absolute minimum of their commitments. As far as I'm concerned, they can suck on squid. Or they could, had they actually given me a squid launcher...