TigerDirect.Ca Refunds

Today's email:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your email.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Keep in mind that if a customer will purchase something from TigerDirect.Ca, Customs Brokerage Fees is always FREE. (customer don't need to pay for this because TigerDirect is the one who pays for the customers)
If the UPS guys requires a customer to pay the brokerage fees, please let them know that TigerDirect is responsible for this and call us at 1-800-800-8300.

Kindly email us the receipt of customs brokerage fees that you paid (COD) and we will be processing a refund back to your account.


Thank you for visiting our website. We appreciate your business. If you have further inquiries and reply to this email, please make sure to include your entire message, so we can address it appropriately.

Sincerely,
Roy
TigerDirect.ca Web Response

I've PDF'd the COD invoice and sent that off, let's see what happens. I suspect what will happen is that I'll end up with a TigerDirect.ca credit.

TigerDirect.Ca Responds

(Previously.)

Boilerplate time:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your email.

You can always check for shipping charges for the product when you are on the check out portion of the process, you can put in you zip code on the field and it will provide you with details regarding the charges that might be applicable for the order.



Thank you for visiting our website. We appreciate your business. If you have further inquiries and reply to this email, please make sure to include your entire message, so we can address it appropriately.

Sincerely,
Dennis
TigerDirect.ca Web Response

Of course, I can't let this go.

Thank you for your reply.

However, I have reviewed the check out process, and I still cannot see where I was warned about the possibility of additional shipping charges or fees.

This PDF is the order confirmation screen: http://wiki.xdroop.com/dropbox/TigerDirect-1.pdf

There is an interesting phrase here towards the bottom of the screen:

All prices in Canadian dollars. No additional duties or fees.

(see http://wiki.xdroop.com/gallery2/d/3355-1/101229163732001.jpg)



This PDF is the order confirmation screen immediately before credit card information is entered:

[link removed because it does have some privacy stuff of mine here]

Again, the same phrase is present. I see two shipping options itemized here, both UPS variants. But there is no warning about the possibility of additional fees of any kind, and the bold text above would strongly lead one to believe that further fees are not in any way likely.

If you could clear up this confusion of mine, I would appreciate it.

Let me be clear here:

I do not want to reverse this transaction.

I don't even care if I get a refund on the UPS brokerage fees.

All I want is the assurance that the next time I choose TigerDirect.ca, if I am entering into a transaction where additional fees may apply, I get clearly warned about them.

Thank you again for your attention to this matter.

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Tiger Canada wrote:

I'm pretty pissed about this.

TigerDirect.Ca shipping problem

So what happened:

I got a new laptop for work. For whatever reason, PCMCIA/CardBus adapters are no longer in vogue, so my CardBus ethernet card is no good anymore.

To provide a little context here: when I need to do some diagnostics with networks, sniffing or whatever, I like to do it from a VM. I also like to do it from an interface that my base OS doesn't use. That way I can remain connected to the working part of the network, hopefully, so I can use the internet to help me figure out what is going on. Therefore I need a third (after the built-in RJ45 and wireless) interface for the VMs.

So OK, I do my research and discover that I do have a ExpressCard slot on the new computer. And I'll admit it took me a half hour to figure out how to get it open. And after a bit of research I find a card at TigerDirect.ca which fits my needs.

So on 20 December 2010, I order it.

On 29 December it arrives, along with a UPS delivery dude who wants 40% of the card's value in COD charges for customs brokerage fees.

And I go, WTF? I ordered from a .ca company, why is it coming from a US address? But I pay the man because I want the card.

And I do see that it was shipped from someplace in Naperville Illinois.

Anyways, this is the email I sent to the Tiger Direct feedback email, the same day:

Greetings

With regards to the above order, it apparently shipped from a US location and the UPS agent required COD for customs brokerage services.

My expectation, in dealing with a .ca website, that the product would have been shipped from Canada. It was for this reason I selected tigerdirect to perform this transaction.

While I am happy with the device, had the possibility of further shipping fees (which approach 40% of the post-tax value of the transaction), it would have changed the value proposition of the transaction.

Can you show me where in the order process I would have been instructed to consider the possibility of additional costs due to shipping from the US?

Thank you for any insight you may be able to offer.

(Tiger Direct people playing along at home can see order D0894185.)

In fact, shortly after sending this, I ran through the order process again, and find this buried in the fine print:



Their two shipping options available to me were "UPS WorldShip CA" for $7, and "UPS WorldShip Express" for $22.

I consider this borderline dishonest, even if they could argue they are not responsible for charges incurred by the shipping company. At this point I would not order from them again.

I'll update if/when I get a response.

Review: Tron Legacy (IMAX-3D)

I saw this movie in IMAX-3D. I have only seen a handful of movies in 3D, including Avatar, and remain convinced that 3D is a gimmick. A neat gimmick, to be sure, but just a gimmick.

My hope was that I could just watch the movie and let it flow over me, without me thinking about it. I didn't want to think about story, effects, characters, none of that. I'd been waiting for this for over a year.

On first viewing, overall my verdict is approval. This movie is true to the spirit of the original Tron. There were only a couple of effects which I found jarring, and only one or two plot points that made me go "wait, what?"

I read a review which said, in part:

Successful or not, Tron was pushing the envelope, trying for something new, Tron: Legacy is paralysed by its reverence for the old.

And in a way this is true. Tron: Legacy is very much caught up by the weight of the original, and the time that has passed since the original. I don't think this is a bad thing. Those of us who love the original don't want a radical reboot of the universe; we want an updated Tron universe, but a continuation of the story and characters.
There is a lot of love for the history we grew up with here. Right from Sam's opening sequence, where he makes a well-worn observation regarding a building's fixture, we are given the signal that the creators of Legacy also remember and love the original. Flynn's office contains an old Sun i386 workstation, a beast that was old when I started with Sun equipment more than 15 years ago, but it captured the feel of the computing environment from the time. We are offered occasional updated recognizers, and a brief glimpse of the grid tanks that hark back to the original, and the MCP's carrier is present in an updated form. Jenn noted nods to both Wang and Cray.

Tron: Legacy continues the nifty sleight-of-hand that the original perpetrated. Tron was actually about Kevin Flynn, with the title character as a side kick. Similarly, Legacy is actually about Sam Flynn, and the returning character Tron is barely mentioned, even though he is present in more ways that are immediately obvious.

Legacy is also another movie about fathers and sons, a topic which rings with me a bit more now.

The jarring effect I mentioned above? When Sam returns to his garage/apartment, the garage door is obviously a CGI and the movement is just… wrong. Simple stuff, especially with the effects-heavy sequences later in the movie. But that one was the one which made me notice it.

Plot-wise, there are a few quibbles. There was one character who was so over-the-top that he was almost not over-the-top enough. There was one point where Kevin Flynn makes a completely unexpected change of mind in how he wants to carry on his quest that didn't fit. There was one point where a character tells us Gemm. My name is Gemm. and I thought well of course it is, honey.

Jenn thought the movie could have used more explanation of the plot points as things went on; I thought that the script contained enough explanation of both the back-plot from the original movie as well as providing the needed context for the more immediate action.

But these are but minor details. All that aside, I think this is a worthy successor. It is one of the few movies I've seen in the last few years that I want to see again in the theater (although probably just 2D this time, thank you). I bought the soundtrack by Daft Punk, and look forward to seeing the movie in my DVD collection.

End of line.

Attention Span

Commentary on the attention span of today's Internet:

Exhibit A, a 45-minute video showing high-speed photography of various aspects of a Shuttle launch.

Exhibit B, a 3-minute video showing a Lego Antikythera Mechanism implementation.

Exhibit A has less than 10,000 views.

Exhibit B? More than 430,000 views.