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 sucks

[Hatta]

Tiger direct is awful. Pay just a little bit more at NewEgg and get actual customer service.

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[mc1138]

I didn't even realize people went anywhere but 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:Tiger direct sucks

[popeye44]

Well for me it's simple, I live in California and pay a recycle tax and sales tax on many items. "I was already recycling electronic gear before the TAX" If I can buy somewhere and not pay tax or shipping and skip the recycle fee I will. Places like TigerDirect give me that option.

Note I do not say TD is a good place.. but I only buy new items from them. I still occasionally will buy from Newegg but it's getting rarer and rarer with new sales tax hike. Of course I do remit the owed amounts of sales tax every year. Just like every good tax payer should. Ahem.

Re:Tiger direct sucks

[hairyfeet]

I buy from Tigerdirect all the time and get great deals> The key is to know what you are doing. Newegg I've found is best for individual parts-DVD burners, SATA drives, etc. Where you get good deals at Tigerdirect is the barebone kits. I just built a dual core, 4GB of RAM, 250GB SATA, 20x SATA DVD burner and XP home and the grand total was $350 including shipping. The customer was so happy with their $500 box they had me order another one for their kid.

But I wouldn't buy ANY boxes that are already built there that they list as new, only refurbs. I have heard of too many folks getting "new boxes" that still had somebody else's stuff on it. But if you keep an eye out and know what you are looking for you can get really great deals on refurbs and barebones. I've made enough profit off the last 4 jobs that I'm going back there to build me a new gamer rig. I've not had any trouble with the barebones except for a single damaged case, and they were quick to shoot me an RMA for it. So all and all, if you know what you are doing Tigerdirect is great.

Does anybody here have any experience with AMD/ATI? Do the AMD chips still have the heat death problems like they did with the Athlons? How are the x3s? I'm looking to get a barebone AMD since the price/performance ratio is so good on them and to support competition, but honestly I have not messed with AMD since Barton Athlon so I'm out of the loop. Same as I haven't had any experience with ATI since the Rage Pro and am looking for a good card in the $75-100 range. I don't game hardcore, just Bioshock and FEAR. Any suggestions?

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.

What? Tigerdirect? Unethical?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Impossible! The only way I'll be willing to believe a story concerning TigerDirect and unethical behavior is if it includes interminable rebate-and-switching...

Re:What? Tigerdirect? Unethical?

[wisnoskij]

From what i have seen at their site most of their stuff is improperly advertised. mostly warranties that are not really as long as they say.

Strange contract

[kimvette]

Tiger violated its resale contract they had with them which included false advertising, misleading representation and unfair competition

Dell required Tiger to advertise falsely, mislead customers, and compete unfairly? That's an awful strange contract!

(badly worded summary. Obviously. Tiger sucks. IMHO. Carry on.)

Re:Strange contract

[Kamokazi]

Doesn't sound strange to me...I thought all that was Dell SOP?

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

[Red Flayer]

Do like the first person said, use Newegg, the customer service is 5 star and the prices are not bad either.

I think the bar must be set awfully low for them to be assigned a 5-star rating by so many people.

In my experience, customer service with Newegg has been average, no better.

Fulfillment, on the other hand, has been awful. More than half of the times I've ordered from Newegg (7 orders so far), I've had my order confirmed, my credit card charged, and then a couple days later notified that they were out of stock... at which point my credit card was refunded. Twice I received the notification the day the goods were to be delivered -- I paid for two-day delivery.

That is AWFUL. Note that this has all been for A/V equipment, not for computer equipment.

Just my two cents.

Re:Tiger direct or indirect

[nizo]

Sadly I can't recall if it was Newegg or Mwave that included what looked like a prison shank (boxcutter razor blade taped to a PC empty slot bracket) for FREE in one of my orders! Man was I stoked!

Thankfully I didn't find it the hard way.

Re:Tiger direct or indirect

[jandrese]

Sometimes I wonder who these people are online that always seem to have terrible customer service wherever they go (except for maybe one store that has amazing customer service). I've ordered dozens of items from Tiger Direct, Newegg, and Amazon (among others) over the years and I can count the number of times I've had trouble on one hand. These days I tend to prefer Newegg, but not because I've had particularly bad service from anywhere, just because their website is so well laid out and it's the first place I think of usually.

Often times I'll check pricewatch first, but if the price difference isn't too big I'll go with Newegg instead of whatever Mom & Pop is cheapest anyway.

Re:Tiger direct or indirect

[KeithIrwin]

I like TigerDirect, but I only shop with them in-person, not on-line. In person I can see precisely what I'm getting and know that I can return it without much hassle if it has a problem. I wouldn't recommend it for casual computer users, but for people who know what they need, their stores are good places to buy computer components without spending a fortune because they charge the same price in person as they do on-line.

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.

What's Tiger Direct?

[captnbmoore]

Never heard of it. Is it where you can get tigers imported directly form the country of origin?

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:TigerDirect reminds me of AOL

[iYk6]

TigerDirect is nothing like AOL. TigerDirect sells cheap crap with lousy customer service at low prices.

Something odd here

[Bruce Perens]

The computers were still new in the box, from reseller stock, but the warranties were expired?

I don't think there's any question that they were actual Dell equipment. So, why should the warranties have expired?

Re:Something odd here

[greed]

Yeah; I've got a problem with that, too. The warranty had better start when I buy the machine, not when the store buys the machine.

I've never heard of that happening before for new sales.

Unless what Dell is claiming is, these are actually second hand sales, and not new sales.

Still, there's a reason I've got a bunch of these orange egg-shaped microfiber cloths about the place now.

Re:Something odd here

[Bruce Perens]

It's not unusual for a retail store to have a 3-year-old computer. Is there a big warning on the box to the effect of "Warning: Warranties will not be honored if registered after April 2012"?

Re:Something odd here

[Red Flayer]

As soon as the original OEM sold the boxes to a clearinghouse, the warranty was activated. Tiger then buys the computers from the clearinghouse. When the end-customer buys the computer, more than a year has passed since original sale to the clearinghouse.

That's my guess, anyway -- that the transfer of the goods to Tiger was not via the wholesaler.

Dell --> wholesaler --> retailer --> end-customer (warranty activation).

Dell --> wholesaler --> retailer --> clearinghouse (warranty activation) --> Tiger Direct --> End-customer.

Should have been:

Dell --> wholesaler --> retailer -(RTV)-> wholesaler --> Tiger Direct --> end-customer (warranty activation).

Tiger may have bought directly from the retailer, or they may have bought from a clearinghouse; but according to Dell Service, the warranty would have been activated when the retailer sold the boxes.

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.

Re:Something odd here

[Orbijx]

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. :)

Yawn...

[Endo13]

Not surprising at all. They also pass off used, defective items as "refurbished". I imagine they turn them on to make sure they get power and then pack them up for shipping.

NewEgg is a better deal at twice the price. No, I'm not exaggerating.

Low prices and low morals

[Renraku]

Tiger Direct does what it can to reduce its prices.

If this includes not packing their goods for shipping, lying about what you're getting, or rebate and switching, so be it.

Their prices are only about 5% lower than most websites. Its not worth it to get a CPU that was dropped into an antistatic bag and put into a box 10x its size unsecured.

the old saying

[BlackSnake112]

If it sounds to good to be true... it usually is

Holds true with any ad I see from any retailer/e-tailer. Always look (as best you can) at the items before you buy.

Most of tiger's stuff that looks good in the beginning, is either really old, refurbished (but not listed that way in the ad), or when you look at the specs of the item it is misleading. I.e. a new HD 50 inch TV. Check out the TV in question, it is new, it is 50 inches, and it is 720p. Now mind you 720p is good, but on a 50 inch TV I would rather have 0180p not 720p. If it was a 20 inch TV then 720p is fine. So the ad to me was misleading. Full HD == 1080p in my book.

I was temped to get one for their bare bones PCs since the price was really low. Then I looked at what the parts were. The parts could make a decent email, web, doc computer. No light gaming, no DVR system (maybe DVR but it at the min). So I passed. I paid about $80 more then their kit and got a system that I knew would do what I wanted.

How eco-friendly

[spyrochaete]

[blockquote]Dell wants an injunction on Tiger using any of its materials, the destruction of all computers parts and accessories with Dell logos[/blockquote]

What a waste of perfectly good electronics. Surely Dell could have come up with a solution that doesn't contribute to landfills unnecessarily.

Dell Sues "Tiger Direct"

[Anonymous Coward]

You should never sue a tiger direct. Tigers take their legal clawses very seriously. It's much safer to negotiate through an intermediary like a monkey or an elephant.

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