Buying refurbished electronics can be a money-saving way to get like-new items at a great price. Or it can be a money-losing nightmare of defective products, wrong parts, and missing accessories. Guess which category Ralph’s recent purchase of a tablet from TigerD irect falls under? The fun began when they shipped him a netbook instead of a tablet PC…and couldn’t get anyone to understand the difference.

A netbook, after all, is a light, compact notebook computer. A tablet can be an iPad-like touchscreen device, or a notebook computer with a screen that spins around and works with a touchscreen or stylus. They’re both computers, so that’s one thing they have in common.

I’m fed up with Tiger Direct. Back on 3/14 they ran a deal on a Lenovo Thinkpad x61 tablet. They had two “tablets” advertised, one had a little better specs than the other.

I checked and double checked the ads and ordered the better one. What I recieved was a netbook, not a tablet. I called Tiger about the mix up. It took me a while to get them to see that a tablet has a touch screen or a stylus you can use for input, whether they really recognized that or not they gave me an RMA. The ad was not changed to reflect that the one unit was a netbook, not a tablet. The other unit sold out, so I gave up on it.

Come to this past week and I got an email with a laptop sale from Tiger. They had a new (refurbished) Lenovo tablet with a docking station, so I ordered that unit. Yesterday I got the shipment and opened it up. I got an Lenovo x61 tablet, ok things are looking up, but wait, where is the dock? I call Tiger and inquire to the status of the dock. The customer service rep tells me it is backordered and discontinued?

They were looking for an alternative. I was like why would you send the unit without the dock or telling me before? She said the people that ordered before me got the docks. Really?

She didn’t seem to concerned about satisfying me, I was to pay full price and wait around for them to find me a dock?? My faith in Tiger Direct’s refurbished units is nonexistant. Anyone
else have these issues?

We haven’t heard anything very good or very bad about TigerDirect or any of its subsidiary zombie brands (CompUSA, Circuit City, et al.) At least not lately. If they can’t tell the difference between different kinds of devices and are leaving out accessories in the hope that customers won’t notice, though, that’s some bad news.

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