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14 minutes ago, Keith W said:

Given the above in the community standards I am very surprised that kinguin has been given industry affiliate status on the forum, surprised also that this thread has not been closed down.

 

The reselling, certainly in the case of Microsoft, of OEM licence codes/volume license codes is not allowed/is illegal

 

Who at LMG gave clearance for this?

 

@LinusTech can you shed any light on this?

 

Kinguin was granted Industry Affiliate status here because that is what they are, for good or bad they are the official representative account of Kinguin. Whether their products are legitimate is not my decision to judge as an administrator of this forum. That is up to the consumer to decide whether or not they wish to do business.

 

I am not a paid employee of Linus Media Group, and thus not privy to,  so cannot speak for any partnership or endorsements provided by @LinusTech or his staff. I can however say with 100% certainty that this Industry Affiliate status is separate of any relationship there.

 

Kinguin requested Industry Affiliate status on the basis of wanting to be able to provide customer service to those members who requested it - this is no different to anything Western Digital, EK, Corsair or any of our other industry affiliate members are here for. All of the Industry Affiliates are bound by a specific set of requirements, outlined in the 2nd half of our Community Standards here.

 

As this thread however has turned into a witch hunt against Kinguin and its business practices, I will lock this.

 

 

Hello,

 

We have noticed that in past there were questions regarding our store on this forum. Thus, we would like to open this thread as a direct contact channel with our representatives. Feel free to message us in case of any issue or question. We will be more than happy to assist you!


We are excited to be here and looking forward to talking with you.


Ewa - Kinguin Customer Service

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  1. Why should we believe your Windows sales are legit for $30 when huge OEMs like Dell pay in the neighborhood of $50 each for Windows licenses on the computers they sell?
  2. If I asked Microsoft would they say your supposed licenses you sell are legit?
  3. Why are you so special that you can profitably sell OEM Windows for $30 yet large retailers such as newegg and amazon charge $90 to $100 for OEM copies? Are they screwing us over?
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5 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Why should we believe your Windows sales are legit for $30 when huge OEMs like Dell pay in the neighborhood of $50 each for Windows licenses on the computers they sell? If I asked Microsoft would they say your supposed licenses you sell are legit? Why are you so special that you can profitably sell OEM Windows for $30 yet large retailers such as newegg and amazon charge $90 to $100 for OEM copies? Are they screwing us over?

umm well they seem to have been legit in the past so yeah I think so.

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4 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Why should we believe your Windows sales are legit for $30 when huge OEMs like Dell pay in the neighborhood of $50 each for Windows licenses on the computers they sell? If I asked Microsoft would they say your copies you sell are legit? Why are you so special that you can profitably sell OEM copies of Windows for $30 yet large retailers such as newegg and amazon charge $90 to $100 for OEM copies?

I was just looking on their website and it says phone activation recommended, which is pretty sketchy as its a different system for checking keys. Paul's Hardware did do a video on the keys and it worked for him (But I did notice a highly liked comment with the keys not working at all). 

Its probably a mixed bag like you get with any cheap key site, but the phone activation would put me off as it has a different blacklist. 

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15 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:
  1. Why should we believe your Windows sales are legit for $30 when huge OEMs like Dell pay in the neighborhood of $50 each for Windows licenses on the computers they sell?
  2. If I asked Microsoft would they say your supposed licenses you sell are legit?
  3. Why are you so special that you can profitably sell OEM Windows for $30 yet large retailers such as newegg and amazon charge $90 to $100 for OEM copies? Are they screwing us over?

Because Microsoft and games developer know that there are some price-sensitive people that wouldn't buy the software or game otherwise. Better to get $30 than $0. The percentage of sales from Kinguin is still smaller than official channels, meaning that non-price-sensitivie customers are still willing to pay full price regardless. That's how I see it at least.

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Are you taking the piss LTT? Not a huge fan of allowing these "INDUSTRY AFFILIATES" who sell sketchy copies of games. 

Oh and this can go fuck itself, it's literally consumer fraud protection. 

 chrome_2018-02-21_01-10-06.png 

 

Question to @Kinguin Official

Why should we trust a company that requests us to buy it's "protection" for keys from it's clients, don't you verify your clients or audit them? Why should the customer take responsibility for any issues? Shouldn't you, as a marketplace actually verify the keys are legitimate? Why don't you protect your clients (us) more for free? All banks provide protection against stuff like this. Answer my questions truthfully is all I request. 

 

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2 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:
  1. Why should we believe your Windows sales are legit for $30 when huge OEMs like Dell pay in the neighborhood of $50 each for Windows licenses on the computers they sell?
  2. If I asked Microsoft would they say your supposed licenses you sell are legit?
  3. Why are you so special that you can profitably sell OEM Windows for $30 yet large retailers such as newegg and amazon charge $90 to $100 for OEM copies? Are they screwing us over?
  1. You shouldn't, because they aren't.
  2. No, they wouldn't.
  3. They aren't OEM keys created for consumer or commercial use.

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Seems she was struggling

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Why did you come to this world?

 

Everybody turns to dust.

 

Everybody turns to dust.

 

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6 minutes ago, Mutoh said:

Nice to see this thread went as expected.

Could of been worse (not really) 

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14 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

Are you taking the piss LTT? Not a huge fan of allowing these "INDUSTRY AFFILIATES" who sell sketchy copies of games. 

Oh and this can go fuck itself, it's literally consumer fraud protection. 

 chrome_2018-02-21_01-10-06.png 

 

Question to @Kinguin Official

Why should we trust a company that requests us to buy it's "protection" for keys from it's clients, don't you verify your clients or audit them? Why should the customer take responsibility for any issues? Shouldn't you, as a marketplace actually verify the keys are legitimate? Why don't you protect your clients (us) more for free? All banks provide protection against stuff like this. Answer my questions truthfully is all I request. 

 

Genuinely interested in whether or not they responded to this, and if so, what they had to say. If you don't mind, did they message you about this or did it go unanswered? 

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34 minutes ago, Keevoman said:

Genuinely interested in whether or not they responded to this, and if so, what they had to say. If you don't mind, did they message you about this or did it go unanswered? 

<photo removed> 

i fucking wish, they'll just hide their tails between their legs and not bother to respond, last time I checked LTT required their Affiliates to be open and honest, how the fuck these people got in via this program is beyond belief. It's a sad day. 

 

Edited by SansVarnic
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37 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

<photo removed> 

i fucking wish, they'll just hide their tails between their legs and not bother to respond, last time I checked LTT required their Affiliates to be open and honest, how the fuck these people got in via this program is beyond belief. It's a sad day. 

 

I'm a noob but how is this even allowed? The CS even states discussion on less than legit copies of software isn't allowed,i'm so confused here.

I've never bought anything though them as having to spend more to have purchase protection seems shady enough,Imo.

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9 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I'm a noob but how is this even allowed? The CS even states discussion on less than legit copies of software isn't allowed,i'm so confused here.

Fairly sure it isn't. But hey, since we've got about  6 admins looking at this thread, maybe they can shed some light on the situation. 

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1 minute ago, SC2Mitch said:

Fairly sure it isn't. But hey, since we've got about  6 admins looking at this thread, maybe they can shed some light on the situation. 

This includes Kinguin Official themselves to are seemingly afraid or unable to respond. :P

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Hello,
 

We apologise for not answering in more timely manner. It is one of our biggest priorities to ensure the highest quality of the products being sold on our platform. Thus, each of the merchants selling at our store is being verified. We make sure that all the keys on our site came from legitimate sources.

Please keep in mind that Kinguin isn't a direct dealer of digital keys, but a platform that allows third parties to showcase their offers. No matter what kind of product you seek to purchase, there will always exist a risk of getting a faulty item. We are doing our best to minimize it and will always help in such situation. We would like to also explain that while in some cases phone activation is needed it is a small percentage of overall sold codes in our store.
 

As for the Buyer Protection, it is an additional feature which grants your case with a special higher priority. It also enables more possible solutions such as for example return of the already delivered product.
 

Ewa
 

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4 minutes ago, Kinguin Official said:

Hello,

Hello Ewa, I hope you're having a nice day, I will now take part of my day to discuss some of your points you raised.

6 minutes ago, Kinguin Official said:

Thus, each of the merchants selling at our store is being verified. We make sure that all the keys on our site came from legitimate sources. Please keep in mind that Kinguin isn't a direct dealer of digital keys, but a platform that allows third parties to showcase their offers. No matter what kind of product you seek to purchase, there will always exist a risk of getting a faulty item. We are doing our best to minimize it and will always help in such situation.

So at the start, you say "Each of the merchants selling at our store is being verifiedSo from this I'm gathering some of your merchants aren't verified but are still selling on your site? Doesn't sound so safe and secure to me. At the end of your first point you bring up the fact of a risk, of course there's a risk with such purchases online but that's why pretty much all marketplaces like Ebay for example have Ebay Protection, which is offered for free of charge if your item isn't what it matched the product description. Why not just offer the service for free and become the first actual marketplace to do it? (By that I mean, no priority service, treat your customers the damn same) 

15 minutes ago, Kinguin Official said:

We would like to also explain that while in some cases phone activation is needed it is a small percentage of overall sold codes in our store.

 

In this, you fail to explain WHY such an activation is needed and you don't say what you do with a customer's phone number, is the number destroyed? Stored? Sold off to your merchants? 

16 minutes ago, Kinguin Official said:

As for the Buyer Protection, it is an additional feature which grants your case with a special higher priority. It also enables more possible solutions such as for example return of the already delivered product.

Ah yes, the icing on the metaphorical cake. This is fraud protection isn't it? This reminds me a while ago when TotalBiscuit had his drama with G2A (Another marketplace which I'll link a video of at the end) You say at the first statement you're "verifying" your merchants, so how do you know where the keys came from, do you bother to ask your merchants such questions? For all we know they came from massive amounts of credit card fraud, it's just not disclosed where they came from. Why should users have to pay to get extra protections like money back guarantee for keys they already own? Customer service in the UK is great, especially for bigger corporations like banks, they offer you a instant customer service, no highway paywall bullshit, honest answers from honest customer service agents. 

chrome_2018-02-21_16-45-59.png

What does "fakes, cheats and trolls" even mean? I'm going with trolls as in people who troll to sell game keys? Like what is that? BE MORE CLEAR

chrome_2018-02-21_16-48-05.png

When I try and hover over the buyer protection, 100% verified sellers? So customers need to gamble if they don't buy via protection and get potentially fucked sideways by a unverified seller? 

 

This is very accurate for this thread. 

 

That's it from me, I'm done.

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8 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Both are grey markets where unauthorized sellers sell you crap.  A grey market is a legal market where unauthroized sellers sell things.  Buying used is not an authorized market aka not intended by the maker.  Ebay doesn't remove most reported counterfeit items nor does amazon.  I know because I and others report counterfeit GPUs, anime box sets, and more on both of those platforms.  Do they get taken down?  Nope! 

Totally. You can still buy "GTX 1080s" on Ebay that are quite obviously fake considering none of them have VGA ports and none of them have ever costed 100 bucks.  

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1 hour ago, Kinguin Official said:

As for the Buyer Protection, it is an additional feature which grants your case with a special higher priority. It also enables more possible solutions such as for example return of the already delivered product.
 

See, this is the part I really have a problem with. In the United States, we have laws banning deceptive practices. No matter what you do from here, you've just painted Buyer Protection as completely deceptive, and that exact feature is why I stopped using Kinguin. Your answer here is why I am, frankly, pissed as all hell and not going back.

 

Based upon your site, Buyer Protection is the only way to get a new key if the key you purchase does not work because of a "licensing issue". In that case, you have to show written proof from Microsoft that your key does not work for that reason. That's problem one for me. I purchased a key off of Kinguin that flat out did not work. I spent half a damn hour on the phone with a Microsoft support agent and was told point blank that the reason the key wasn't working is that it was either already in use or counterfeit. They flat refused to send me an email, so when I went back to Kinguin, the answer was that they would gladly resell it for me minus commission and the cost of buyer protection (which is, apparently, not refundable even if you do get bufu'd by a seller), but could not offer a refund because I refused to provide proof or use the key.

 

Bull. F*cking. Sh*t.

 

So if you're keeping track at home, adding Buyer Protection not only raises Kinguin's price to over 200% of what you'd pay an equally shady seller on a competitor or eBay, but it's worthless to boot.

 

Now here's where the deceptive part comes in. According to your own reply, @Kinguin Official, Buyer Protection allows for a full return. To that, I say bullsh*t, from experience. It also "grants your case a special higher priority."

 

Wait, what the actual big floppy donkey d*ck? You mean that you guys would have told me to f*ck off every bit as effectively as you did after I paid $4-ish worth of extortion for "Buyer Protection" that doesn't really protect me, it just would have taken you longer to get to that point? So really, anyone who picks up Buyer Protection from you is just giving you money for the privilege of being told to go f*ck themselves faster than the schleps who chose not to go that route?

 

If that's not deceptive advertising, I don't know what is. You guys are a pathetic joke. eBay doesn't hide behind "we're just a marketplace". They yank money back from sellers who do shady sh*t and/or front the refund themselves. You guys don't vet your sellers, you don't hold them to any accountability standards that I can discern based upon the sellers who push bad keys still being there, and you yourselves knowingly resell bad Windows keys on behalf of those who have been scammed.

 

@Kinguin Official, I would love to see your response to that. Based upon your own replies and the way you handle Buyer Protection, you knowingly resell bad Windows keys on behalf of buyers who've been scammed, and you keep their Buyer Protection money and the fees from resale, knowing that whoever buys that key will also pay for Buyer Protection because you straight up lie about how it works. Of course you don't vet your sellers, because you don't care. If you did, you wouldn't double-dip on Buyer Protection money by reselling keys that you know, you know are fraudulent.

 

I'm waiting. I think we're all waiting. You just dug your own grave, lied down in it and thought no one would notice and drop a casket on you. Congratulations on outing yourselves as the shadiest bunch of con men since CS:GO Lotto.

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17 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

Are you taking the piss LTT? Not a huge fan of allowing these "INDUSTRY AFFILIATES" who sell sketchy copies of games. 

Oh and this can go fuck itself, it's literally consumer fraud protection. 

 chrome_2018-02-21_01-10-06.png 

 

Question to @Kinguin Official

Why should we trust a company that requests us to buy it's "protection" for keys from it's clients, don't you verify your clients or audit them? Why should the customer take responsibility for any issues? Shouldn't you, as a marketplace actually verify the keys are legitimate? Why don't you protect your clients (us) more for free? All banks provide protection against stuff like this. Answer my questions truthfully is all I request. 

 

I've honestly never bought that and always got a refund for keys that never work

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<removed>

 

All you buggers bitching and moaning about some price protection plan, if you dont like it dont buy from them but dont rip them a new asshole because you dont like their practices. I have purchased many things from Kinguin and never had an issue. Do you think sellers are 100% verified on EBAY, AMAZON and any other hosting site? give your fucking head a shake.

 

As for the windows keys. I can 100% guarantee the sellers on there are doing the SAME thing as the sellers on EBAY and that is re-selling OEM keys off defunct PC's which IS NOT ILLEGAL. I have purchased windows keys on Kinguin, Ebay and paid a range of $4 to $20 for windows 10 home/pro without issues, I have purchased games. No one says you cannot go down to a store that sells games, buy a game, and re-sell that game to someone else. As for the price of them, you have no clue what the original purchasers originally bought them for or all the sales/deals that are on, hell they could be used game stores like EB games pushing product for all you know which we all KNOW offer piss all for used game trade-ins.

 

Yeah the protection plan is shady and shitty, but there are companies doing much worse things than that. 

 

I just dont see why everyone has the flame gun pointed on full, like c'mon people get a grip

Edited by SansVarnic
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On 2/21/2018 at 12:24 PM, valdyrgramr said:

Kinguin doesn't sell anything past the protection, which I agree is shady.  The ones selling you the OS key is a 3rd party.  I'd suggest using Paypal over their own protection as at least you're getting your money back without having to buy back your funds.

No, you missed the part about how it works. They put the key back up for resale. They do not refund you until after another buyer purchases it, and they take Buyer Protection (and who knows what else) back out of that. They do not refund your money, period, because their standard for doing so is something that they know the vast majority of buyers won't be able to get their hands on.

 

They are either willfully ignorant or straight up scamming in hopes that the next buyer doesn't complain. And even if they do, they don't refund Buyer Protection, so every time that bad key gets kicked on down the line, it's pure profit for them.

 

Shit, they've even incentivized themselves to rip you and me off. If a third party on eBay repeatedly scams buyers, they get banned and money is yanked from their PayPal as fast as it goes in (assuming it hasn't all been moved out already). On Kinguin? Nope, we'll just ask the seller if the key is legit, and because the seller says yes and the buyer doesn't have a letter from Microsoft saying nope, they happily just kick that can on down the line, keep your money, and look forward to getting that Buyer Protection from the next sap.

 

On 2/21/2018 at 12:30 PM, FlatBrokeRacing said:

I just dont see why everyone has the flame gun pointed on full, like c'mon people get a grip

When I buy a bad key on eBay, eBay has my back and will refund me in full.

 

See the difference?

Aerocool DS are the best fans you've never tried.

 

Hypnotoad's RAM is dying, his motherboard is acting like the 6-year-old AsRock it is, a couple of SATA ports have just stopped working, but the RGB remains. The RGB always remains. Hypnotoad lives. All glory to the Hypnotoad.

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Just now, FlatBrokeRacing said:

Holy fucking hell there are alot of but hurt people on here.

 

lol

 

1 minute ago, FlatBrokeRacing said:

All you buggers bitching and moaning about some price protection plan, if you dont like it dont buy from them but dont rip them a new asshole because you dont like their practices. I have purchased many things from Kinguin and never had an issue. Do you think sellers are 100% verified on EBAY, AMAZON and any other hosting site? give your fucking head a shake.

 

God fucking forbid people to post criticism on a company for their shitty business practices as for giving my head a fucking shake, thanks for that. Yes Amazon have done background checks, because they're the biggest eCommerce company on the planet, Get your head out of the sand and search for once. 

 

2 minutes ago, FlatBrokeRacing said:

Yeah the protection plan is shady and shitty, but there are companies doing much worse things than that. 

 

Feel free to say which companies and why they're doing much worse than that. 

 

3 minutes ago, FlatBrokeRacing said:

I just dont see why everyone has the flame gun pointed on full, like c'mon people get a grip

Get a grip on what? You're acting like people aren't given the right to express their opinions on a company. 

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