Dell Sues Tiger Direct For Misleading Customers

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."

Comments

Tiger direct or indirect

[arizwebfoot]

I used Tiger in the early part of the decade and ended up spending so much time on the phone or on emails fixing my orders with them that I have never gone back. I tried eight orders, all eight were so screwed up that I never went back.

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 or indirect

[aztektum]

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.

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[mc1138]

I didn't even realize people went anywhere but newegg...

Re:What's Tiger Direct?

[afidel]

They were once one of the biggest direct mail PC sellers. They had multi-page ads in Computer Shopper and PC Magazine. They later started having their own monthly mini-catalogs. Today they just seem like a joke compared to Newegg.

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[JCSoRocks]

Seriously! I gave up shopping anywhere other than newegg when I moved to a small town. I'll wander around an electronics store for fun if I go to the city but I buy everything from newegg now. The few times I've compared prices on big ticket items newegg has always been cheaper anyway.

Re:Something odd here

[dgatwood]

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.

1. Products are warranted based on date of manufacture, not date of customer sale. From their warranty info:

   The warranty period for a Product is a specified, fixed period commencing on the original date of shipment from Dell to the Purchaser of the Product.

   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. :-)

2. 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.

3. 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.

Our company buys a ton of stuff from Tiger

[zerofoo]

I work for a school, and we use their B2B site quite a bit. We buy tons of printers, hard drives, monitors, TVs, VCR/DVD players, open license software...etc. from them.

Yes, they are cheap, yes they sell refurbed and B-stock stuff - but it is all clearly labeled. Devoting 5 minutes to reading a product description for a large purchase isn't asking too much.

As far as their customer service goes, we have a dedicated sales rep, so I can't comment on personal purchases, but we've been very happy with our rep. Out of 100 or so orders, we've had maybe two screw-ups. Our rep promptly fixed the problem in both cases.

So, here's one happy customer....whatever that's worth.

-ted

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[drinkypoo]

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.