Complaint Review: Tiger Direct; Aka Tigerdirect.com

I purchased a 19 inch LCD monitor with speakers online from tigerdirect.com. According to the information provided by their website, it came with a $50 rebate. When the monitor arrived, I followed the rebate instructions which said to remove the bar code from the box and send it to Rebate Processing Center, Post Office Box 100517 - QAB, White Bear Lake, MN 55110-0517.

On 4/20/2007 I received a post card from the Rebate Processing Center which stated that "Your claim is invalid" because "We received an invalid UPC bar code from the product packaging."

Fortunately, I had made a copy of the barcode for my records and attatched it to my User's Manual for future reference. It contains the bar code, the model number (C199DPB), and the serial number (650HE1CY06134). What more could they want?

On 4/25/2007, I telephoned the rebate center, (866) 871-3617 and talked to Lisa Hart. She told me that she would check into it and call me back within 5 days, but I never heard from her again.

On 4/12/2007, I talked to Mary. She acknowledged that I had purchased the monitor but said that she couldn't issue me the rebate. I asked to talk to her supervisor. The supervisor, Tracy, kept giving me the same line: Yes, I had sent them the bar code that was on the box, but there was a discrepancy in the number and therefore they didn't have to pay the rebate. I told her that I had submitted the required information in good faith and that they had an obligation to pay me the $50 rebate without further delay. When Tracy said she wasn't authorized to do that, I asked her to give me someone who did have the authority to issue a rebate.

The next day, 4/13/2007, I got a call from Jennifer. She repeated what the others had said. By this time I had had enough of tigerdirect.com's rebate runaround and asked to speak to the company's president, Carl Fiorentino. She refused to let me speak with him, but said I could write him a letter (for all the good that would do).

Tiger Direct is one of the biggest online retailers in the United States. Ever wonder how they got that way? If you go to their website, you will see that they promote their products with big rebates which makes their prices seem cheaper than those of their competitors. But the catch is that after they get the full price from the customer, their rebate center does everything humanly possible to keep from paying the rebate.

Go to Google.com and type in "Tiger Direct rebate complaint" and Google will give you page after page of complaints. What are the odds of that many people being wrong? Isn't it obvious that the rebates are a deliberate scam designed to bilk consumers?

Fred
Riverside, California
U.S.A.