Tiger Direct has announced they will be closing their doors and have sold to a company named PCM
After years of service and supply, Tiger Direct will no longer be Tiger Direct
Email I got from my affiliate program reads as
Farewell and Thank You – TigerDirect US Shutting Down
Dear TruXter budget Tech Review,
Happy New Year! We hope this year is off to a good start for you.
It is difficult to believe it has been over 10 years that TigerDirect has been on the Rakuten Affiliate Network and it is with a heavy heart that we write to you for the final time.
On November 18, 2015, Systemax Inc. and PCM Inc. entered into an agreement for TigerDirect to be acquired by PCM and the acquisition closed on December 1st , 2015. The full details of the announcement are available here:
As of today, January 14th 2016 the TigerDirect program via Rakuten Linkshare will be suspended and no future commissions will be available. We will be ensuring that all commissions earned prior to this announcement are paid via your regular monthly publisher payments.
We advise you our partners to remove all TigerDirect links, as commissions from this moment on cannot be guaranteed and our support staff to field any questions will be winding down over the coming days.
In closing, it has been our pleasure to have you as our partner. While today is certainly not our favorite as it is indeed an end, every end is also a beginning. Through your help, we have created happy customers and produced sales in excess of numbers too large to comprehend over the past decade. We thank you for being a part of this and wish nothing but the best to come!
Best regards,
The TigerDirect Family
I had been an affiliate with Tiger Direct for more than 5 years.
I have been a customer of Tiger Direct for about 10 years.
And now, the online computer parts store will close.
This coming several years after they bought out Compusa and shut their doors.
I do find a PCM website and they sell computer related items, but they do not look large enough to buy out TigerDirect.com. Who knows how that works
At a local electronics store in America. I am sure many have one in mind when I say that. I decided to go to the video card section and check out some of the video cards when a ( I am uncertain if they are sales associates or stocking clerks with a strange desire to sell you something slightly more expensive) walked up to me and offered to help me. I told him I was looking for an Nvidia GTS250 1gb, this card was right behind us about mid back. The guy reached up and grabbed an Nvidia 275 card.$70 difference. He began to suggest I needed a card that was more expensive, before asking me if my computer can even handle it. Like do I have a strong power supply, Do I have pci express? Do I at least have windows xp. So I chuckle and said ” Why you gotta call me out??? I don’t have that much money”. We both chuckled at how I did that. I then broke out with specifics. I told him ” I am looking for a match to my card so I can run SLI” He started to butt in with ” this will run SLI” I laughed and continued with ” I need specs like ‘Shader Clock 1836MHz,Memory Data Rate 2240MHz,GDDR3,RAMDAC 800 total to match exactly what I have” He looked at me with his eyes glossed over and then muttered ” well if you need me my name is” blah blah blah I got glossed eyed. He walked away
While I was walking around in the video cards section, I noticed that one of the video card’s box had the shrink wrap open. The price was kind of ok, and the box was super heavy. This usually means a large card or a really heavy heatsink. I actually had that exact same video card. It was a BFG 250. It broke on me. I was trying to see if it was the same exact model as what mine is Or if it was going to be a low profile with no sli. Mine isn’t completely broke I wanted to see what I could do with mine in SLI. An employee of the store walked over to me an said that I needed to take that video card over to the manager’s station . I told him that I just wanted to confirm that the video card was what I was looking for. He said that he was (I’m paraphrasing) certain that was what i was doing then he assured me that company policy was the way it was. So I waddled up to the counter/command center (lol), and when I get up there I explain what the request was of the employee. By that time I saw all I needed to see. So I asked a question. I said ” I notice there are a whole lot of items on the shelf that had the “returned item” price marked down sticker, Why is that?”. The guy at the stand looked up and had a look in his face that I can’t explain and said “well a lot of people do not know much about what they are buying and what they have. They get home and that parts do not match so they bring it back to us certain that it is broken”. I tried to have no expression as I replied ” Wow that’s a whole lot of people”. I then walked back to the video cards section.
I then walk over to the motherboard section and start looking at the motherboards, I mean since I do have an extra Athlon II processor and brand new, non functioning motherboard.
I noticed it was the same thing going on in the motherboard section as the video card section. Tons of stickers (well not as many but quite a few) of returned items with prices being marked down.
while standing there , my favorite motherboard associate was there telling some story about a video game. So I started to tell my story of how games for windows live some add in code to my GTAIV told me that I installed the game to many times and the whole uproar it caused for a week. The dude looked at me odd and walked away. So I finished my video.
Now my big question is : Why are there so many products on the shelves like that? Is it normal for that many products to be returned? could that many people not know much about what they are buying ? Could it be an occasional bad item gets returned then reshelved, and no one wants to buy the returns, so they build up in time? Is it because they have been burned so many time they just figure it’s easier to let the customers test it, if it comes back they finally send it back to manufacturer? Is it cheaper that way instead of sending a truck back once a month like all other companies do ?
I asked Greg from “Greg’s Snippets” and he had a great answer. He suggested that you have to consider the foul customers and the not very knowledgeable, the random dysfunctional parts, display items and items just like the one I stumbled across that was on the shelf and already open. Each of those items have to weighed in as some factors as to why these products are back on the shelf like that. This is a guy who always sees the deep seedy truth about everything he hears and sees, so him giving that response was a bit out of character. but hey it made sense.
