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...

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.)

What's Tiger Direct?

[captnbmoore]

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

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.

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.

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.