[ale] Tiger Direct going Rogue?

[Chris Fowler]

Robert Reese~ wrote:
> I have an incidental client that needs memory for an older Dell, and thankfully she's a little more experienced than the average user.  A little, at least enough to add the memory herself.
>
> Instead of contacting Kingston or Crucial directly like I recommended, since her memory is so cheap with them anyway, she chose to call Tiger Direct.  According to her, the sales weasel told her she HAD to purchase Pitstop Optimize 2.0 for $30 otherwise the new memory would wipe out her information!
>
> Anyone else have, or your clients have, any experience such as this?  Obviously most (if not all) of us are not going to have this encounter since it is typically obvious that we are tech professionals and know better.  In fact, it's probably rare that we use the phone; on the other hand if something like this is in an email, that would be particularly interesting.
>   
It is possible.

I do not know how Tiger Direct operates but maybe it operates as a 
"bank".  Like Tech Data.   It is customary for vendors to pay the sales 
floor spiffs on product.  In this case maybe the makers of Pitstop 
Optimize was running a spiff for each copy sold.  The sales rep now has 
the motivation to get that extra cash.  not only do they get comish off 
that, they get a few dollars on the top.

Vendors use distributors to assist in marketing and dealing with the 
financial details of each customer.   It simplifies things.   Tiger 
Direct would make a huge killing off  the many marketing programs that 
the vendors want to use.  Each page in that catalog is paid for by 
someone other than TD.   TD probably even gets a cut of each spiff.

I'm just speculating so I'm not sure if TD operates like that.



-- 

Chris Fowler
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