Just about a month ago (12/27 -- this being 1/22) I placed an order with TigerDirect for a part that a client urgently needed. Their laptop system board had failed and they needed an external enclosure for the laptop hard drive so that they could retrieve business documents and data.
I placed the order immediately with TigerDirect. It was Friday afternoon so I ordered it with 2-day delivery. The part arrived on time, as usual with TigerDirect, but for the first time ever, it didn’t function.
Let me say now, before going forward, that I regularly shop at TigerDirect. In it’s various names, I've shopped with TigerDirect for many, many years. I've always been pleased with their broad selection, competitive prices and speedy order turnaround. And, until this order, I’ve never had a single item that needed to be returned, for any reason.
New parts do fail sometimes; so there’s no way that this failure is TigerDirect’s fault. It’s just one bit of bad luck in years of success in shopping with them.
Now I have to return the item and try to get a replacement for my client. This is where the surprising bad news begins.
I shop online all the time, so I’m no stranger to return policies and/or procedures for online vendors. Heaven knows that looking at return policies is crucial on eBay – to get some sense of who it is, or what it is, that you’re dealing with. A nasty return policy is a Big Red Flag. I’ve never read through the policies at TigerDirect though. At least not beyond the blurbs in their ads and item listings. Who reads those things really?
So I check the shipping documents for return procedure and am sort of surprised by what I find there. I don’t expect them to pay for the return shipping but I do, at least, expect them to show some helpful and expeditious understanding of the situation. None. Just the opposite.
I thought that it must be and old and incorrect document on the shipping papers, so I checked online. No luck; the online version is just as unpleasant.
In a nutshell; the TigerDirect attitude toward returns for faulty items is, first that you, the customer, are probably either incorrect about it not working or you, the customer, are a probably a thief and/or a scam artist trying to pull something over on righteous TigerDirect.com.
Instead of commiseration and cooperation from the vendor, you get threats, in writing, telling you that your item will be checked by them to see if it works before it is accepted back. And if, as they expect – as you are told many times – they determine that it really does work when they test it then (a) you are going to be charged a restocking fee and (b) you will not be credited nor will the item be replaced and (c) the item will not be returned to you.
Yeow! Are the police going to come to my house too?
There is not one whit of helpfulness or speediness or understanding in the TigerDirect return policy nor in their return procedure.
Today; just short of 4 weeks after I placed the urgent order, I received a notice through Google’s “Google Checkout” payment system (not even from TigerDirect itself) that Tiger was refunding the cash. No notice of why, no option to replace the needed part, no expression of understanding that it was urgent by, say, either doing this in one week instead of four or by offering to credit a portion of the wasted 2-day shipping fee.
(The needed part, of course, was replaced by driving to Staples – which I probably should have done in the first place.)
This is not nice, TigerDirect. It is unpleasant, unhelpful, unkind and disrespectful. It’s also discouraging. It discourages me from the blind faith shopping I used to do with you.
I have read Tiger’s policy now and, let me say, if I saw this sort of threatening, demeaning attitude toward customers on an item at eBay then there’s no way I would shop from that item's vendor.
Happily; I've only needed to return one thing in all these years shopping at Tiger, so, at least until I run into the "policy" again I'll probably continue to shop there. If Amazon matched Tiger's prices, I'd be gone before my next order.
PS: I just got a notice from TigerDirect about the "credit".
Later in the day, after I’d finished writing the above, TigerDirect have managed to make their awful treatment of customers even worse than it seemed before.
The earlier notice that I received was from "Google Checkout" and it told me that “TigerDirect.com has issued a refund for USDx.xx to [my credit] card account.” They noted that “the refund may not appear in your credit card account for several days.”
Later in the day I received notice from TigerDirect that I should “be advised” that the “merchandise authorized for return … has been received and will be credited to your account. Allow 7 - 10 business days to view the credit on your account.”
So while Google Checkout is going to return my cash (at least) ASAP, it appears that, if Google wasn’t involved that TigerDirect would totally hang on to my money for two MORE business weeks and then would only issue me a credit to use at TigerDirect.
Smart of them, as that is just about the only way to get me to come back now. Thank goodness that Google Checkout was there to run interference. (You’ve just made a customer for life, Google Checkout)
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