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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."
Tiger direct is awful. Pay just a little bit more at NewEgg and get actual customer service.
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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...
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.)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Never heard of it. Is it where you can get tigers imported directly form the country of origin?
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
TigerDirect is nothing like AOL. TigerDirect sells cheap crap with lousy customer service at low prices.
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.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
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.
[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.
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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