In this much-discussed subject, I'm surprised that two huge points never arise:

1. The "if you have nothing to hide..." line is predicated on the viewer having final say about whether something is right/wrong, thus subordinating the subject to the viewer. This is repulsive to the notion of liberty as protected by the American "4th Amendment" right of freedom from governmental inspection without an adjudicated warrant. To wit: it's not that I have something to hide, it's that someone else is going to be obnoxious if they see it.

On a related but semantically distinct note...

2. Those pushing "if you have nothing to hide..." have suspect & ulterior motives. Their existence (income, job, power, prestige) depend on finding something "wrong". They are, by job description, hostile to me. If they derived nothing from inspecting others, they would not care whether anything was hidden or not. Remember: they seek the power to punish, not just what they find wrong, but what they cannot inspect. Your exposure nets you little, but gains them so much they want to reprimand you for any concealment.

We've seen some fairly aggressive voting rings organized by publications with well known names. Only a few are actually banned though. Usually we just take away the voting ring members' ability to vote.

The biggest culprit here, in my view, isn't Apple, PRC, or the patent system.

It's the death of physical media and the rise of the "app store" model.

I have programs for my Apple //e computer that are over 30 years old. Most of the companies that made the software have long since disappeared, and the computer hasn't been supported since the '80s, but I can still use them.

That software is my property. I own it, and I can use it for as long as the disks hold out.

By contrast, the software on my iPad isn't really mine, in any practical sense. I'm licensing it, and it can be taken away, or I can be forced into "updates" that may change it in ways I don't want. Sure, I can avoid updating my apps, keep the iPad offline, and only use apps that run 100% locally, but that's an impractical solution, at best.

Consumers are becoming trained to think of their devices as barely more than hermetically sealed dumb terminals (although they wouldn't use that phrase). The notion of "owning" things by paying for them is fading. "Cloud" apps that are free or subscription-based, music and movies that you stream rather than buy, the books on your Kindle, even the seeds that farmers buy from Monsanto aren't theirs to own and use as they please.

Steven Hawking famously continued using the same 1980s-era speech synthesizer for decades because he felt the voice was part of his identity. The company that made it went out of business, but he didn't lose his voice. He could have gone for constant updates, a new and "better" voice every year, but he chose not to. Because he owned his speech synthesizer, it was his choice to make.

There is a lot of obvious benefit to the app store model, from convenience to cost savings to ease of use. There are also many cases where it's vitally important that people own their software and their data. I don't know if it means we need more options for physical media and manual installs, or legislation protecting people's purchases from unwanted updates and removals, or something else, but I see this as a problem that's not limited to just this one situation.

It's a remarkable (to me) number of comments to the OP saying they're glad Newegg refunded the money and apologized, but they would still never buy from them.

Seems to me like Newegg acted quickly and unambiguously. The flip side of the "punish bad behaviour" coin is "reward correct behaviour". Maybe it was, as many commenters are suggesting, just the public shaming that got Newegg to act, but maybe not... in any event, it's not helpful to provide disincentives for companies to own up to mistakes.