What's your beef with TigerDirect?

[mettleh3d]

Aside from my personal feelings about TigerD, which are:
1. Ridiculous shipping costs. It cannot possibly cost upwards of $10+ to ship a small digital camera.
2. RMAs are hard
3. Webpage layout is ugly.

What are your reasons/concerns? (if any)

 

[canadageek]

i dunno....i shop around on tigerdirect, but i prefer atic.ca....cheaper, and its close to my house

 

[Pixle]

I've never shopped from tiger direct...but I do often see their magazines etc...

I've always wondered what struck such a bad attitude toward tiger direct? What did they do to cause the onset of complaints?

Is their "1" big thing that happened to make everyone wary of them?

 

[stimpy1]

I haven't purchased from Tiger Direct, but I have bought from Zipzoomfly, Monarch, and Newegg. I had no problems with any of them. However, I find Newegg's marketing schemes to be distasteful. Things like jacking up the price on an item to compensate for a 99 cent shipping "deal" get under my skin. And their posts in the Hot Deals section of the forum are a joke. Offer an honest deal, or don't offer one at all. If an item is close in price among all three, I'll buy from Monarch or Zipzoomfly for that reason.

 

[knothead34]

tigerdirect has some issues concerning rebates. as in they are bogus. i know from experience i was going to order my processor from them 100.00 rebate. i go to feel out form the rebate isent for my model processor also they listed the processor as in "in stock" it wasnt. i was buying oem so they told me i had to buy a cpu cooler so i did 19.95 they ship it to me without the processor wtf? i need the processor more then the cooler that i wasnt going to use anyways. thats just one story there are untold others.

 

[mettleh3d]

hahahaha! "wtf? i need the processor more then the cooler that i wasnt going to use anyways."
brilliant

 

[gibhunter]

Buying laptops, LCDs and consumer electronics is fine from them... if you're willling to receive refurbished stuff. I ordered a supposedly new Kodak Easyshare from them only to get a refurb. Buying components for your system is a no-no. I ordered a refurb Asus socket 939 board from them, I got some intel based micro ATX pos in an unmarked box. Two sticks of DDR ram were BOTH dead on arrival. When I tried to get the correct board from them, they sent me another micro ATX intel board which this time wasn't even an Asus board! I've been waiting for the memory now for over a month.

Yep, that's my Tigerdirect experience and it all happened on three separate purchases. I've learned my lesson. If I want a cheap laptop, I'll go there, but for components I'll stay away.

 

[shud]

I find that ZipZoomFly and ChiefValue are frequently lower priced than Newegg, but Newegg has the best selection. Whatever happened to their free Fedex Saver shipping? It's NEVER free anymore, always costs money and sometimes it's something ridiculous like $5 for a processor.

 

[Mrvile]

I've never shopped from TigerDirect but I really don't like them; they sell computer systems that are way overpriced and whatnot. Also since I've heard bad things about them I tend to stay away. Although I've never actually shopped from them...

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: shud
I find that ZipZoomFly and ChiefValue are frequently lower priced than Newegg, but Newegg has the best selection. Whatever happened to their free Fedex Saver shipping? It's NEVER free anymore, always costs money and sometimes it's something ridiculous like $5 for a processor.

In the defense of newegg (defending my competitors, go figure) I understand the shipping fees. I say this for 2 reasons:

1.) On may items, thier prices are very low (far lower than I can even buy them for at wholesale costs) and they are a business. We businesses have to make money somehow. So it's either going to be that newegg charges a bit more for thier shipping, or they raise product prices.

2.) You are correct that it doesn't cost us $5 to ship a processor. What does cost us $5 is the shipping, the boxes, paying our shipping staff, the packaging, the warehouse space, the insurance, the employee benefits...etc etc.

You could definitely make the argument that it's better to charge more on the product to cover those costs, and charge the only enough for shipping to cover just that. However, I can tell you that we markup our shipping costs by a small amount as well. We do this because it is easier from an accounting / ROI standpoint as I know exactly what "upcharges" are paying for what services. My mark-up on products pays my sales staff, web server, leases, etc. My shipping mark-up pays my warehouse and shipping staff, etc. From my mind, customers will still pay $X when they buy a product, wether our markup is purely on the product, or split between product and shipping. As such, I think it's not a big problem.

Do you guys, as customers, disagree with this? I'd be very curious. If the general consenus is that this method is not liked, I would change our system accordingly.

Where I think this becomes a real problem is when companies advertise a processor (or whatever) for a rock bottom price, to lure you in. Then they charge a ridiculous amount for shipping, upwards of $14, to make back thier money. That, to me, is where it starts to be a little deceptive.

Back on topic though, I have actually never had much problem with Tiger Direct. Though, in fairness, I haven't bought from them in years for obvious reasons.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I think most consumers are aware of the fact that all businesses have overhead and are trying to make a profit. However, most of us assume the price on an item already reflects the overhead and the attempt to make a profit, and we know a business is already most likely recouping all of their losses and making a profit on the price of each item. Bogus shipping & handling charges piss us off because we assume you're making profit on the price, and then making more profit on the shipping.

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
I think most consumers are aware of the fact that all businesses have overhead and are trying to make a profit. However, most of us assume the price on an item already reflects the overhead and the attempt to make a profit, and we know a business is already most likely recouping all of their losses and making a profit on the price of each item. Bogus shipping & handling charges piss us off because we assume you're making profit on the price, and then making more profit on the shipping.

That makes sense. That does happen a lot too. Especially when you look at some of the price comparison sites that don't include shipping; there you have business that have ultra-low product prices and very, very high shipping. In any case, it's never a good plan to confuse/deceive customers like that!

 

[shud]

Well, TankGuys, Newegg isn't the worst. I'm just wondering why two of their competitors (ZipZoomFly, who while Googlegear was probably the #2 hardware site) still offer free shipping and similarly priced items while Newegg has decided to lower the face value price of their stuff but charges more for shipping.

Just recently I ordered some 80mm fans from SVC.com and was charged $8 for shipping! Don't advertise $.99 fans if you're just going to make it back on shipping. I'd rather know up front.

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: shud
Well, TankGuys, Newegg isn't the worst. I'm just wondering why two of their competitors (ZipZoomFly, who while Googlegear was probably the #2 hardware site) still offer free shipping and similarly priced items while Newegg has decided to lower the face value price of their stuff but charges more for shipping.

Just recently I ordered some 80mm fans from SVC.com and was charged $8 for shipping! Don't advertise $.99 fans if you're just going to make it back on shipping. I'd rather know up front.

$8 shipping on $0.99 fans is pretty funny. It could partly be the way the site works. For example, ours calculates shipping charges based on product weight, distance, and method (with a minimum assigned by the carriers). So I can't actually assign idividual shipping charges for each item (we're changing that soon though), so something like that could conceivably happen on our site, if we had anything that cheap. It would look pretty bad though!

I think newegg is changing things because they are the dominant force now. Shoot, just look around these forums, and 90% of the time when people talk about a product, they always provide a link back to newegg. When you're the #1 company in town, you can get away with things like that I would imagine.

I think this is sort of why Tiger Direct gets away with some "bad" practices. Thier bread and butter is corporate/small business/educational buyers. So they do just fine without having to pander much to the average consumer.

 

[Tarrant64]

I bought a replacement cover for one of my cases, and they shipped me a red cover instead of a black one. Sent it back and got a grey on instead of a black one. If I recall I don't think I've been back to even their website since.

 

[shud]

Could be. Also, Newegg's site design is top notch. I like the pull down menus when I'm looking for video cards...x800xl, 256mb, etc.

 

[Biggerhammer]

TigerDirect sold me crap, and when I called for an RMA I could never reach a human, just a voicemail box that I'm fairly confident never got checked. Never again.

Newegg, when I had a fan go bad on my MB, sent me a premium cooler free of charge so that I wouldn't have to ship back in the board to get the fan replaced (northbridge cooler). That's the way it should be. Guess who I surf to when I want more components.

 

[bluemax]

TigerDirect = Mail-in Rebate Central (which you will likely never receive.)

The day NewEgg comes to Canada, I'll be a very happy man!

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: canadageek
i dunno....i shop around on tigerdirect, but i prefer atic.ca....cheaper, and its close to my house

last I tried to buy from them, I was unable to
I don't remmeber why, either... oh well, good prices though!!

 

[Zepper]

Besides what was mentioned above, I don't like TD because of stuff like the Ultra products. First, its flagship product, the Ultra X-Connect, is overpriced crap (titled "crap that glows" by a review site). Second, since Ultra is a division of TD - why not name the stuff TD Ultra? Why, to hide the connection of course (as TD has had a bad rep for a long time) and to shield the TD name from any (likely) negative feedback when the stuff proves to be crap.
. TD seems to do that quite often - find some unique piece of junk they can get an exclusive on and charge a huge markup. And that stuff almost invariably turns out to be crap. I hadn't heard they were trying to pass off refurbs/returns as new - but I wouldn't put it past them.

.bh.

And, for those that apparently don't know, Chief Value and Newegg is the same company.bh.

 

[TankGuys]

Selling refurbished items as new is definitely shady.

I have also run into a lot of the "unknown" retailers who sell grey market (items typically made for export) as being brand new US products. You think you're getting a great deal and awesome price, until you get your digital camera and the instructions are all in Malaysian.

Experiences like this always make me remember that old addage, "If it looks too good to be true, it probobly is..."

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: TankGuys
Selling refurbished items as new is definitely shady.

I have also run into a lot of the "unknown" retailers who sell grey market (items typically made for export) as being brand new US products. You think you're getting a great deal and awesome price, until you get your digital camera and the instructions are all in Malaysian.

Experiences like this always make me remember that old addage, "If it looks too good to be true, it probobly is..."

Who uses the manual?

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: shud

Who uses the manual?

Grandma

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: TankGuys

Originally posted by: shud

Who uses the manual?

Grandma

My one grandma is 90 years old and isn't even aware that computers have been invented. She still uses an abacus.