Scott B.

I've been on an intermittent boycott of TigerDirect.com since the early 2000s. Here's the thing: Their competitors continually set benchmarks for site functionality, customer service, and proactive order tracking updates. TD has consistently been behind the ball in all respects. Heck, their site still has the "look and feel" of a late 1990s website. Particularly on the back end. Looks aren't that important, but a website that looks dated often tells a story about a backend that's even more dated.

Every time I've ordered from them (and my order history shows 3 orders since 2006) time-to-ship has been slow, and updates of my order (e.g. "order processed", "order shipped", etc) have been slow as well. The site is run like they just don't care. Or they're still in a. Com boom mindset of web and systems design.

What particularly irked me about my last order is this: It was a snowblower. In case you haven't tried to buy one, certain makes and models are universally sold out at this time. Well, except on TigerDirect's website. The item I wanted was listed as "Ships in 1-3 business days". That would indicate to any reasonable person that it's in stock.

What's worse, they occlude the fact that the order is shipped by a third party. NewEgg and Amazon are completely up front with who the real "seller" is, and which entity will ship the order. On TD you have to click the "details" link next to the shipping estimate to find out that it's a third party. Not knowing that, I hadn't clicked on the "details" link.

OK, shipping by a third party is no big deal. What is a big deal is non-existent inventory management integration with suppliers. It's been 12 days since my order would ship in "1-3 business days", and not a peep from TD or the third party warehouse. My order status has been stuck in "To Drop Shipper" for the entire time.

It boggles my mind why TD would want to attach their reputation to the whims of third party shippers. At the very least if they made that distinction obvious during the ordering process it wouldn't damage their brand quite so much.

I'm not officially done with this site. I've given them a chance every few years for nearly 20 years at this point, and though my orders have been intermittent, the company has been consistently lackluster.