Corsair Accused Of Cancelling $3499 PC Order Only To Relist It For $4299
UPDATE: Corsair has tweeted about this story, with an explanation and a promise to make the customer whole. Check out the company's response below:
This is a perfectly reasonable explanation, as we expected there would be. Corsair isn't some fly-by-night operation, and it did seem absurd on the face of things. Kudos to Corsair for making things right in this situation.
Ironically, many people in the replies are annoyed about a similar situation that happened to multiple users on New Year's Day, where a memory kit that was already out of stock was accidentally listed as available for its old price. Users rushed to buy the mis-posted memory, only to have their orders cancelled by Corsair because of the listing error. Clearly Corsair needs better messaging to customers with canceled orders for why their orders were canceled, but at least it's not simply a case of the company being unbelievably greedy.
ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS: Times are as tough as they've been in recent memory for the DIY PC market. GPU prices are going up, SSD prices are high, memory is outrageous, and even power supplies might be increasing in price. It's never a terrible idea to consider pre-built PCs, but particularly the way things are right now, purchasing a PC from the likes of Maingear, MSI, or Corsair could just be the best buy available. That is, unless the seller cancels your paid order without warning and then relists the same machine for $800 more.
This is a perfectly reasonable explanation, as we expected there would be. Corsair isn't some fly-by-night operation, and it did seem absurd on the face of things. Kudos to Corsair for making things right in this situation.
Ironically, many people in the replies are annoyed about a similar situation that happened to multiple users on New Year's Day, where a memory kit that was already out of stock was accidentally listed as available for its old price. Users rushed to buy the mis-posted memory, only to have their orders cancelled by Corsair because of the listing error. Clearly Corsair needs better messaging to customers with canceled orders for why their orders were canceled, but at least it's not simply a case of the company being unbelievably greedy.
ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS: Times are as tough as they've been in recent memory for the DIY PC market. GPU prices are going up, SSD prices are high, memory is outrageous, and even power supplies might be increasing in price. It's never a terrible idea to consider pre-built PCs, but particularly the way things are right now, purchasing a PC from the likes of Maingear, MSI, or Corsair could just be the best buy available. That is, unless the seller cancels your paid order without warning and then relists the same machine for $800 more.
/u/Senior_Ball_9068's invoice for the powerful gaming PC.
That is purportedly what happened to Redditor /u/Senior_Ball_9068, who appears to be a real user despite the heavily bot-coded username. Posting in /r/Corsair, "Senior Ball" offered up screenshots of his paid invoice showing an amount of $3,499.99 (above), and then the store page (below) where the very same system is currently selling for $4,299.99.
Honestly, that's a little slim as evidence. The Redditor didn't offer up any proof that the order was canceled, for example, and we're missing some other context, like why he doesn't seem to have paid any tax on the machine. Still, Redditors in the comments are furious, and justifiably so assuming the story is true. Canceling a paid order with no warning or justification is dubious to begin with, but the user then heading to the website and finding the system he just ordered now available for a 23% markup is absolutely gobsmacking.
We have some sympathy for Corsair here; as we noted in the intro, many PC parts are going up in price. The $800 price jump on top of what is already a fairly significant markup over the parts price is egregious, though. Moreover, once a customer has paid, that's a contract that companies shouldn't be able to simply welch on. It's really the combination of two crappy behaviors that puts this story beyond the pale.
A Corsair representative posted in the thread and has asked to speak to "Senior Ball" in direct messages; no word yet on whether he's been made whole or what's going on there. Our bet is that Corsair will take care of him, because this looks pretty bad, and honestly any outcome other than giving him the machine he paid for with an apology and maybe even some sort of a freebie is going to be a black mark on the company's reputation.
