Dell Sues Tiger Direct For Misleading Customers 214
An anonymous reader writes "Dell is apparently suing popular online retailer Tiger Direct, claiming that Tiger violated the resale contract it had with Dell, which included false advertising, misleading representation and unfair competition. Dell has accused Tiger Direct of selling old and out-dated Dell computers that Tiger Direct purchased from other resellers and then saying they were brand new directly from Dell. They also passed the computers off as still having a full warranty, but the warranties had expired long ago."
Re:What? Tigerdirect? Unethical? (Score:3, Informative)
Tiger direct or indirect (Score:5, Informative)
Do like the first person said, use Newegg, the customer service is 5 star and the prices are not bad either.
p.s I don't work for Newegg - However, I really like the customer reviews for parts I intend to buy.
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's Tiger Direct? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What? Tigerdirect? Unethical? (Score:1, Informative)
I had some cheapo-brand Nvidia card a few years ago that stopped working after about a year. It was well out of the warranty period but I send it back and was given a replacement. The replacement was even a much better card than the original.
I've even ordered something the hour before the rebate sale ended and they honored the rebate with an instant coupon instead of me having to send it in. (I guess the billing is a few hours behind, so I'd have been fucked on the rebate.)
Re:Tiger direct or indirect (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, you're experience is exactly the opposite of mine and everyone I know who has ordered anything from them. Every item I've ordered has arrived earlier than their estimated delivery date, and has always been complete and correct. Of course, this means I don't really know how their customer service is, because I've never had a need to deal with it... they always seem to get everything right the first time (probably 20-30 orders over the last 6 or 8 years).
That said, there are always exceptions...
Re:Something odd here (Score:5, Informative)
Simple. Dell's warranty is fundamentally flawed. IANAL, but even I was able to spot three parts of their warranty that seem to be legally noncompliant in a quick one minute skim. It's pretty sad, really.
Products are warranted based on date of manufacture, not date of customer sale. From their warranty info:
If I read that correctly, then when Dell sold it to the original reseller, the warranty began. I'm not certain, but such a warranty period probably runs afoul of Magnuson-Moss. At least in my mind, that clearly qualifies as a deceptive warranty term---a warranty that appears to provide coverage, but does not actually provide any coverage in some cases. It would be nice for some big company like Dell to get the crap sued out of them to set a precedent against warranty periods that start on the date of manufacture. It would be somewhat ironic if a dirtbag company like TigerDirect ended up being on the right side of such a suit, though. :-)
Dell explicitly doesn't extend product warranties if they repair the machine, but IIRC, California law requires them to extend the warranty for every day the product is out of the customer's hands.
IIRC, California law requires that all new consumer electronics products have a minimum of a 90 day warranty from when the customer receives the product. There are a number of products that would run short by several days, depending on shipping time, and in the case of products sold through a reseller like Tiger Direct, the warranty could actually be zero....
I think it's long past time for consumers to revolt against such abusive warranties. Warranties should, by law, start when the consumer receives the product. Anything else is unethical, and quite probably illegal.
Re:Tiger direct or indirect (Score:5, Informative)
I recently looked through my NewEgg order history with them; all computer parts, orders going back to 2001ish I think (over a couple dozen orders - I used my own account to buy for a small company I use to work for). Never paid for extra shipping, received everything in 3-4 biz days. I even got them to credit me back ten bucks when the part was put on a weekend sale two days later. Everything showed up in good working order, never had them ship something incorrectly.
Moral of the story: YMMV. For myself and countless others I've recommended NewEgg to, they've never failed to deliver.
direct mail tactics (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone remember TD's odd direct mail tactics in the mid 90's. They had a similiar approach to what Columbia House did with music CD's. They sent out mailings that threatened to send you software that you didn't order if you didn't send back the mailer with a certain box checked. That was thier thankyou for ordering out of the catalogue.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:3, Informative)
I stopped dealing with TigerDirect and TigerDirect.ca years ago. I've had bad experiences with them and often the cheap items they carry are exactly that, cheap. Anything worth buying from them I can most likely get at the same price elsewhere.
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Something odd here (Score:3, Informative)
That's exactly what Dell's claiming, and I know this first hand.
The machines are consistently off-lease machines; The (l)users who're buying them think:
* The machine is new
* The machine has a warranty that covers everything including the end of the world
* The machine is the latest hardware on the market
When in reality, the computers are:
* 3-4 years old
* Outside of the official Dell warranty by months at the very least
* Decent, but older hardware compared to the current systems (Latitude D600 compared to Latitude D630 or Latitude E5500)
* Missing operating system media that customers do not want to pay retail for
* Still in the previous company's name, which means the computers weren't bought through Dell Financial Services' Off-Lease division
* Have a warranty through Bankers Warranty Group (as of the last time I actually called the hidden number on TD's site for a customer that I placed on hold, just to see how they handle it) that is very short-term, and often resolves issues by just exchanging the damn computer.
Things that TFA wouldn't tell you, basically. :)
Re:What's Tiger Direct? (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's obviously where you get Apple's Tiger operating system. Or wait, it's Apple who does mail-order for them. It's so confusing! [slashdot.org]
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:5, Informative)
AMD is great, but ATI still can't write drivers. Their hardware might be great, but the world will never know. That said, if you're running Windows the ATI driver usually works. Just, you know, not very well.
Your descriptions of Tiger Direct make me think of Fry's. Heaven for the hardcore, so long as you don't expect too much, and know what you're doing. Way too easy to scam, which means that innocent customers take it in the shorts on a regular basis.
Re:CompUSA and Circuit City purchases make sense n (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tiger direct sucks (Score:2, Informative)
Which day would I not have received it on?
The day the shipping tracking indicates it was supposed to have arrived.