Thats right, CompUSA.

“But Leroy!”, you say. “CompUSA and their brain dead employees and their pain in the ass rebates closed a long time ago!”
That’s true. But then TigerDirect (who I thought had a pretty good reputation – could be wrong though), thought it would be a good idea to buy whatever was left of CompUSA and take their name.
That was a year ago or more.

So the last time I shopped at the Hoffman Estates TigerDirect / CompUSA, they had a good deal on a 1.5TB hard drive, but I had to mail in a rebate. That’s right – they took CompUSA’s name and said “Hmmm, what was the biggest complaint about CompUSA? Let’s bring that back!” Every damn thing you look at “100 bucks (after mail-in rebate)”. A hassle, but I’m cheap, so I bought it. Kept my receipt, photocopied it and mailed in the photocopy with the rebate.
8-10 weeks later, I get an email saying that the photocopy is not clear enough and they cannot process the rebate. If I want, I can mail in another one and start the 8-10 week process again. I take choice B – count my loss, forget the rebate, and never shop there again.

I would love to see the moolah they make from their bullshit rebate process. The percentage of rebates that are sent in. The percent of rebates that are rejected. The extra money they make in interest by sitting on your rebate for 2+ months.

Why bring this up now? I passed by the store this morning and I see that the CompUSA sign is gone and a TigerDirect banner is back. I’m sure they spent millions on ‘corporate research on brand name recognition’ that led them to believe that CompUSA would be a better name. And any geek on the street could have told them “What – CompUSA? The place with the idioitic employees who know jack shit about their products and tell you that you need their extended warranty in case ‘your printer bursts into flames’ (Yes, a Best Buy employee used that logic on me once.) The place with the pain in the ass rebates on everything? You want to rename your store to that?!?! Are you fucking crazy?”

And now it seems they are going back to TigerDirect. I’m sure they spent millions on that research too. Maybe they are going to change their name to CircuitCity!