O O Ø O O O O
Had
Congratulations, Tigerdirect. You finally got me.
I have to confess. I’m the kind of customer that your company likes to hate. Usually, I do my homework. I wait for a deal—sometimes for months—and, when I’m sure it’s the one I want, I pounce. I used to even batch my orders to get over the “free shipping” amount, but you eventually closed that little loophole.
Most importantly, I also actually fill out all the rebate forms. It’s a clever little scam—make the user fill out 5 separate rebate forms, all insisting on an original invoice and a UPC symbol, within a ridiculously short period of time. Make the directions nice and confusing so as to maximize the likelihood that I’ll do something wrong. Add in a 4-24 month waiting period for the rebate to actually arrive, and you have youself a pretty large deterrent to actually getting the discounted price for an item.
But so far, I’ve come out on top. Until now, that is. Because this time, not only did you manage to pull one over on me, you managed to get me to screw one of my family members in the process.
Nice work.
You see, I went and recommended one of your feature deals one day. In this case, it was a barebones machine: a Mercury 740CFD Barebones system. A machine, incidently, that is surprisingly hard to find a mention of on your web site. You didn’t suddenly feel the urge to stop mentioning this particular machine, did you?
The machine in question was listed as a Mercury Motherboard w/ Duron 2200 Pro. Now, though I am aware that the marketing scheme for AMD chips is not actually related to the clock speed, I was under the distinct impression the numbers gave a ballpark performance indication. As such, I gave the nod to the aforementioned family member to go ahead and grab one. “It’s bound to be near 2GHz performance,” I figured.
That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was assuming such a chip even exists. I know now that AMD doesn’t actually make a Duron 2200 pro. There’s no such chip. It would seem that the actual chip that is soldered (yes, soldered) to this motherboard is a Duron Mobile 850. So not only did I take one on the clock speed, this sucker is a mobile processor—a low-power, low-performance, but oh-so-good on battery life chip intented for installation in a laptop. Of course, the documentation that ships with the system doesn’t mention this fact at all. Neither does the BIOS that ships with this system (It has been carefully modified to say only “2200″). In fact, you need to download a 3rd-party benchmarking tool to find out anything at all about the hardware that is soldered-in to this machine.
In fact, checking around, I now realize that this whole supposed line of “Duron Pro” chips is a fabrication. This exact same processor, for instance, was previously branded as an (equally mythical ) Duron 1500 Pro.
In other words, this thing is a total scam.
Now, I’d love to return the thing, on behalf of the loved one that I inavertently screwed, but here’s the punchline. Because the beast required a total of 5 rebates to bring the price down to the advertised quantity, all the UPC symbols have been cut out of the boxes the system shipped with. A careful check of your returns policy indicates this to be verboten. In fact, your returns policy doesn’t allow machines to be returned at all if rebates are offered. And it’s not like you offer many rebates, or anything.
But that’s okay, since 4 months later, we still haven’t received any of the rebates.
So here’s what I propose we do. Since this machine is clearly an attempt to defraud the customer, (doubly so, if you consider the return policy), how about we make a deal. I won’t open a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, if you agree to take this piece of crap back, and never sell another one to a paying customer without an enormous blinking disclaimer:
Buyer beware: Though advertised as a Duron 2200 pro, there is in fact no such processor. This machine contains a Mobile Duron 850, which has the performance of a 1GHz Pentium III. If you still feel the need to buy this fetid pile of turd, be advised that there are no refunds whatsoever.
You have been warned.
Deal?
Kjell Wooding
February 8, 2005
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March 25th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
10 years ago TD was a respectable company. I didn’t bother to research them for a recent purchase. Wish I had. They failed to ship parts they promised were in stock, I received DOA parts, no response from emails to customer service, 15 plus waits for telephone service, no rebates 4 months later. And to top it, I get weekly spam from them even though I’ve unsubscribed and emailed their webmaster. There is no good reason for anyone to do business with them!