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

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[mc1138]

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

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.