Dell sues Tiger for reselling old boxes as new Dell is suing a former licensed US reseller, TigerDirect.com, claiming "repeated and blatant violations" of its resale contract, including trademark infringement, misleading representation, unfair competition, and false advertising. In an April 17 lawsuit filed by Dell in New York district court, Tiger is accused of - among …
"The complaint claims Dell's attempts to contact Tiger with its grievances were partially or completely ignored."
Just like TigerDirect handles its normal customers! Nice to see that Michael Dell gets the same treatment as John Q. Public.
Personally, I wouldn't buy kit from TigerDirect if it were the last retailer on the planet.
I've bought from Tiger for years; never a problem, very fast shipping. They sell lots of older stuff as well as tons of new product. Warranty service good, catalog printed on nice shiny paper, what's the beef?
Had far more trouble with others like buy.com, but Tiger remains my first stop for online pc components, though of late their prices are often matched or beaten elsewhere.
Dell are the company that charged me considerably extra to deliver a UK, EEC purchased computer to Spain, also EEC. They then refused to call me on a guarantee matter (presumably from India) because I was not still in the UK!
No more Dell's for me, direct or from the scrap heap.
Really- who is surprised about either Tigerdirect, or Dell? You get precisely what you pay for. Dell are the Ryanair of the computer industry- Tigerdirect, well less said the better. When it works- great- you got yourself a deal- when it doesn't- my god, its torture trying to get satisfaction.........
Its simply not worth comparing the upfront price with the overall cost of ownership- and by god, will it cost you in the long run.
The custom made OEM parts (especially power supplies) in Dell PCs, drive me batty- don't even get me started on the cut down BIOSes and the general crap components. Whacking in a really good processor is a false economy- if you don't back it up with good memory, the best chipset going, and a decent graphics card.
You get what you pay for- if you're only looking at the headline price- there is always going to be a sting in the tail.......
you can get great deals from tiger. I outfitted a whole network with 8 refurbed thinkcentres at less than 150 us$ each. I bought 2 more just for spares, this was almost 2 years ago and so far the spares are still boxed.
Now if you don't know enough you can get cheated into buying a pentium D (3.73GHz! fast!) and cry rivers when you finally realize what a piece of crap you got.
I'm happy to see that TigerDirect is getting punched in the face over this.
As a support agent, I hated having to tell these customers, "I'm sorry, but the system does not have a Dell warranty. These systems are covered by a third party warranty. The problem you are having is..." followed by telling them just what's going on, the right number to call, what the computer's real age is, etc.
These people are usually alarmed to be told the truth about what they bought from TigerErect (how else do you think they bugger these people, eh?), get mad at *us*, and we have to calm them down, explain how TigerDirect gets their machines in a nutshell so they might understand that it's not us just pouring machines over there so we can have an excuse to bugger people, but it's a relatively legit after-market thing that happens.
The funny of this is, they get free lifetime phone support (if they can verify ownership via the Dell system -- worst case scenario, they can do an ownership transfer if they still have internet access), but no parts, so we end up doing the tech work anyway due to policy for us on the Lats and Optis that get resold like this.
I'm on my third Dell in ten years, and they've been fine with me. The two laptops I've had I've thrashed to fuck - on the last one I managed to run... Websphere App Server, Websphere Portal, DB2, Domino, Notes, Firefox, Acrobat reader, Powerpoint, all at the same time, with nary a murmur. Not blindingly fast, and only for demo purposes, I'll grant you, but that's not bad in 512 MB. yes, I use VMware for stuff like that now, but it's still a hit.
The hardware's never crapped out on me, in fact, I've had far better luck installing server class software on my old Inspiron and this Latitude running XP than I ever had on machines running W2K3 (including one whose PSU blew up right next to my knee).
So I really don't get the people who slag off Dell all the time, because it simply does not come close to my experience.
Dell may well have some decent grounds here, but if TigerDirect were still selling older but unused computers, they remain "brand new", even if not up-to-the-minute spec. And the simple answer on price matching is "we don't sell that spec any more - if you want that price/spec, go buy it from them". Where's the problem here? Also, the bastardised Dell logo also has a different D (look at the curve) and the L's are different too. So that's rubbish too.
In my mind, this looks like Dell trying to prop-up profits using their lawyers, the sign of a company in real trouble as they can't make money any other way. If they were in such trouble though, that'd be awesome.
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