Complaint Review: Tiger Direct.com OnRebate.com

On July 9 of this year I purchased a Hanns-G 19" LCD display from their web site. The fact that it was factory recertified was obscured until I was at the checkout page. Well, no matter, I though to myself. With the $50 rebate I'm going to get, the price will be fair enough.

To make a long story short, their rebate processing service, OnRebate.com, seems to go out of their way to deny your rebate. They did not e-mail me to advise me of my rebate status. Just by chance I went to their site to check the status and found it had been denied.

After numerous attempts to get through to OnRebate's customer service department, I was finally advised that I had omitted a serial number barcode from my original submission and followed the steps given me to re-submit my application.

Again, no notification of rebate status. I went to the OnRebate site to check the status and saw this time that as of 8/15/2006, my rebate was "accepted" (whatever that means). After duly waiting the required 8 to 10 weeks I began checking the site daily. The rebate status has never shown that my payment is pending. It's now nearly December. Well past the 10 week maximum I was to allow. I have a feeling I'll never see this money.

I used to subscribe to Tiger Direct's mailing list and after all of this, I decided to un-subscribe. When you do, they send you a web-based survey to complete asking why you decided to un-subscribe. One of the options you can select as a reason for un-subscribing is "I'm having difficulty redeeming rebates. However, the html for never actually submits. If you're un-subscribing and are responding to the survey, watch the status bar of your browser. You'll see it process for a bit and the it will read "Stopped" - the data never actually goes anywhere.

Warren
Charleston, South Carolina
U.S.A.