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  • Report:  #167802

Complaint Review: OnRebate.com - TigerDirect - Internet

Reported By:
- Toronto, Ontario,
Submitted:
Updated:

OnRebate.com - TigerDirect
USA Nationwide - Ontario, Canada Internet, U.S.A.
Phone:
888-222-9300
Web:
N/A
Categories:
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good? What's this?
Indeed TigerDirect and OnRebate.com has a very close relationship with the intent just to rip-you-off your rebates.

I am a pharmacist and an owner of a pharmacy. I did refer a few of my relatives and close business friends to TigerDirect. After the invention of this OnRebate.com, TigerDirect has lost its integrity as an honest business, to me and my friends.

We came across a FujiPlus 19 LCD Monitor promotion with two separate rebates ($30 and $90). One of my relative with a law firm also decided to get one of this monitor after I sent off for mine.

After received the items we sat down and review the OnRebate requirements to claim rebates. The requirements are plain irritants so that they can void / lose your claim documentation if you did not follow the EXACT manner that they prescribed or if you did not send via certified mail.

They also provided you with a non-functional button that you would not be able to print your Rebate Form that would contain your much needed Tracking Numbers in the Bar Code Format (their process is machine read), a place that you have to sign (they claim that is for illegality reason! That is if you believe it.)

Furthermore, there is a label of their address that you have to cut to paste it to the envelope K as Important: envelopes without a proper label may not be delivered and processed. We had our laughs, and the documents were reviewed by 3 lawyers and we painfully fulfilled the requirements to the teeth.

Knowing the intent of these ridiculous requirements that are demanded for the rebates, and to test our suspicion, we sent off the two claims in one labeled envelope to OnRebate.com via certified mail. We bundled the two sets of documents and identified them separated to avoid OnRebates claim of their mis-handling thinking that was only one claim (for one household).

On our tracking we found that only my documents were recorded as received. On questioning a lady called Martine at their 1-888 numbers, we learned of a new requirement that each household claim has to be in a separate certified post-marked envelope. This absurdity of course she could not find in print, as it serves no practical or legal purposes. She failed to provide a functional explanation to make this invented irritant stands.

On learning our exercise to the claims and the action that we are planning to take, she suddenly found a solution that there is an avenue that we can fax them the support documents if we do keep records. She will accept and re-enter the documents in their records. Naturally, we have records K we painfully document everything from the beginning, notarized and verified each step by a partner of the law firm.

There is also a $90 rebate from the FujiPlus Company; we are still waiting to hear from them. TigerDirect also claims that they will honor the rebates if all else failed. This does not indicate that TigerDirect is free from complicity K in fact the reverse K for obvious reasons in their position.

I suggest that anyone should seek relief would be the small claim courts and also make a filing with the Consumers Protection and Practice Standard.

We must note that a company can set requirements relating to this procedure, BUT:

*The requirements need to be reasonable and functional.

*Unreasonable requirements and irritants to void rebates are all indications of a scam K complicity to fraud. This is the view of the court. The courts view misrepresentation and defrauding the public very serious matters.

Harvey XXX B.Sc.Pharm., R.Ph.

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

Harvey

Toronto, Ontario
Canada

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Tiger Direct

Click here to read The *EDitorial: The Marketing Rebate Rip Off ...Manufactures invent reasons why not to pay the consumer


6 Updates & Rebuttals

Harvey

Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada
Finally received all rebates for all 2 individuals' purchases -- after 7-8 months from initial claims

#2Author of original report

Sat, June 10, 2006

Finally we have received all the rebates May 12, 2006. That was after 7-8 months of effort. The rebates arrived only 5-10 days before motions were to be filed. The claims were successful, only because we prepared for them [in detail]. We were forced to comply to the claim documentation because we were only given the fine prints to the claims after the purchases. At a moment we were thinking of returning the purchases. TigerDirect has lost 7 customers: 3 pharmacies, 2 law firms and 2 retailers. No doubt that none of us will purchase from TigerDirect again. Their email-promotions now go straight to "trash" and those that come in the mail are good for the fireplace. Even for a law firm ... it is not justify for going through all this... think of the hourly rate for professionals. We went throught this only for Principal. Stay away ... it is not worth it to deal with TigerDirect!


Harvey

Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada
Finally received all rebates for all 2 individuals' purchases -- after 7-8 months from initial claims

#3Author of original report

Sat, June 10, 2006

Finally we have received all the rebates May 12, 2006. That was after 7-8 months of effort. The rebates arrived only 5-10 days before motions were to be filed. The claims were successful, only because we prepared for them [in detail]. We were forced to comply to the claim documentation because we were only given the fine prints to the claims after the purchases. At a moment we were thinking of returning the purchases. TigerDirect has lost 7 customers: 3 pharmacies, 2 law firms and 2 retailers. No doubt that none of us will purchase from TigerDirect again. Their email-promotions now go straight to "trash" and those that come in the mail are good for the fireplace. Even for a law firm ... it is not justify for going through all this... think of the hourly rate for professionals. We went throught this only for Principal. Stay away ... it is not worth it to deal with TigerDirect!


Harvey

Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada
Finally received all rebates for all 2 individuals' purchases -- after 7-8 months from initial claims

#4Author of original report

Sat, June 10, 2006

Finally we have received all the rebates May 12, 2006. That was after 7-8 months of effort. The rebates arrived only 5-10 days before motions were to be filed. The claims were successful, only because we prepared for them [in detail]. We were forced to comply to the claim documentation because we were only given the fine prints to the claims after the purchases. At a moment we were thinking of returning the purchases. TigerDirect has lost 7 customers: 3 pharmacies, 2 law firms and 2 retailers. No doubt that none of us will purchase from TigerDirect again. Their email-promotions now go straight to "trash" and those that come in the mail are good for the fireplace. Even for a law firm ... it is not justify for going through all this... think of the hourly rate for professionals. We went throught this only for Principal. Stay away ... it is not worth it to deal with TigerDirect!


Harvey

Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada
Finally received all rebates for all 2 individuals' purchases -- after 7-8 months from initial claims

#5Author of original report

Sat, June 10, 2006

Finally we have received all the rebates May 12, 2006. That was after 7-8 months of effort. The rebates arrived only 5-10 days before motions were to be filed. The claims were successful, only because we prepared for them [in detail]. We were forced to comply to the claim documentation because we were only given the fine prints to the claims after the purchases. At a moment we were thinking of returning the purchases. TigerDirect has lost 7 customers: 3 pharmacies, 2 law firms and 2 retailers. No doubt that none of us will purchase from TigerDirect again. Their email-promotions now go straight to "trash" and those that come in the mail are good for the fireplace. Even for a law firm ... it is not justify for going through all this... think of the hourly rate for professionals. We went throught this only for Principal. Stay away ... it is not worth it to deal with TigerDirect!


Harvey

Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada
A reason that insults one's intelligence!!!

#6Author of original report

Sat, December 17, 2005

What a load of BS! What manufacturer requirements? Manufacturers set a submission period for a claim only to ease them in scheduling their other promotions; they always have long grace periods. Their interest is in marketing (sales), not scamming the customers. OnRebate.com and TigerDirect are synonymous. If there is so much issue gluing two parties together, they are for sure married. Google has almost hyphenated these two(2) names. Right hand puts demands on the left hand. Just drill on stupidity and you will not produce a viable answer or excuse to that matter. I will listen for a little while and document this progress very carefully. This might not be the end yet for a company that operates on irritants. I have never encountered staff that is so rude. Even if they promised you that they will update records within 24 hours after they received the fax, they would just delay the task just to irritate you; hoping that you might just give up and they would not have to pay. You faxed the documents to a staff's attention and this staff would be conveniently off following that so that the records were not updated. When she is working then she could not locate the documents you faxed for her attention. Finally, she had the fax placed in front of her and she would tell you that she was too busy to update at that moment as too many calls are coming in for her. This was what happened to me. I have no doubt that they are busy, and all the calls are irritating ones too. This is the creation and design of their own. Finally, it was agreed that the records will be updated at the end of the day, so that she could hang up her phone. Two days went by; the records were still not updated. I begin to understand that the office of OnRebate.com must be a mess. Whether that is deliberately or by design, they will lose your documents. This is the reason that they demand your rebate has to be send certified, other than placing a cost on you [so that you find it less appealing to claim], and they could lose your documents if arrived not certified. They should even have problems when documents pass from one staff to another as there is no certification, I bet. I found a way to make sure that they would receive the requested 10-page documents and at the end of the day the documents would not be accidentally fallen in to the waste basket that left no trace for the following day, I began to fax the document set to them daily. If I check the computer and the records were still not updated. I could safely assume that that the documents have gone astray. I would fax one set to the management and one set to the staff who supposed to attend to my issue, stating that at time of the fax it was still pending updates. This will ensure that less likely that OnRebate.com can claim that the fax machine is not working or the documents have gone astray. They should have a double reminder, daily, to address their inventiveness. It was a pain to get documents updated as received by them today. However, there is still no guarantee that one will receive the rebate; their exercise is to create as much excuses that you eventually will not receive it. One of the rebates was listed as: Apply for rebate: Oct 1, 2005 Rebate was accepted: Nov 2, 2005 Payment Processed: Dec 7, 2005 Judging on the pattern, it is likely that there was no check issued yet, and it might not be sent out till January 2006. Since the rebate checks are not sent out certified, it is very likely to get lost, based on the confidence level of OnRebate.com with respect to the postal system and that of their own operation, I should begin to check my mail box for the rebate from Dec 23, 2005 on. I should also begin to send them the daily reminders again! Just in case. After I have received all my rebates, I will return again with a new update. Maybe I will suggest how to deal with such setup from another angle. It is pitiful for the staff, the ones that get up in the morning heading off, and daily, to deal with irritated customers that are deliberately created by the company. It is sad to make a living in this manner. I would be on antidepressants and anxiolytics at no time for a life like that!


Nadina

Hialeah,
Florida,
U.S.A.
Rebate Terms

#7REBUTTAL Owner of company

Fri, December 16, 2005

Dear Harvey- We are just a rebate company that processes rebates for manufacturers. The reason we ask in the Terms to send the rebates in separate envelopes is because each rebate is filed separately by manufacturer and we need to attach all proper documents to each rebate (including the envelope). The purpose of all the envelopes is to show the date the rebate gets postmarked and if we do not prove to the vendors that your rebates were postmarked within the 30 days, we do not get paid for processing the rebate. if you send more than one rebate within one envelope then only 1 rebate will show the postmark date, since we separate the rebates by vendors then only one rebate can get accepted. It is important that you always read the Terms and Conditions and follow them through for this are the rules set by manufacturers and they are there for a reason.

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