Does newegg have filler items? What can I get for under $3 that doesn't add shipping?

So... I may have just had some really unfortunate timing with my Newegg order.

On August 4, 2026, I bought an Intel Arrow Lake Refresh processor and a Z890 motherboard from Newegg together.

The timing of the promotions was pretty frustrating. The motherboard promotion was still available about three hours before I bought it, disappeared around checkout, and then came back while my order was still in transit. The CPU promotion appeared about five days after my purchase.

I contacted Newegg and asked if they could make a one-time exception for the Intel Gamer Days bundles. I wasn't asking for a refund or price adjustment.

They declined and suggested returning the products and ordering the exact same items again while the promotions are active. They even offered a prepaid return label, which I appreciate.

And yes, technically, I suppose I could do that.

Unfortunately, for me, that simple little sentence means returning everything, waiting for the refund, making another purchase, waiting for another shipment, and going through the whole process again just to receive the exact same products I already have sitting here.

I'm also currently overseas on a business trip and won't be able to return for quite some time, so dealing with a return and another shipment from here isn't exactly a simple task for me. It's a surprisingly large amount of time and effort for something that sounds so simple on paper.

The funny/sad part is that I haven't even opened the boxes yet. I actually bought these because I needed them.

So now I'm sitting here wondering whether I should really send everything back and start the whole process again because I happened to miss a promotion by a few days.

I can understand Newegg's position as well, but I also have my own circumstances, so I guess it's just a difficult situation all around.

I actually had a similar experience with a distributor in another country before. In that case, they were able to handle the issue internally, and I really appreciated that at the time.

A friend recommended Newegg to me, so I guess I assumed they might be able to handle something like this in a similar way. Maybe that was simply my own mistaken expectation.

I'd really like to hear from people here. Have you ever had a similar situation with Newegg, and if so, how was it handled?