KINGSQUEAK.ORG & KC2RGW.COM

In my previous summary, your hero left off by filing a written dispute of the ludicrous claim settlement offered by Allstate. In a nutshell, they didn’t pay for anything at all of significance with regard to the damage inflicted by hurricane Irene.

Well the game is still going here. What they do is continually rotate your claim dispute among agents, who in turn claim to have called the customer, send you a letter saying “we have tried to reach you but you never answer and will cancel your claim” over and over again.

In fact I have called each of them at least three times, leaving detailed voicemail each and every time and I have not spoken to an employee of Allstate since the claims adjuster was on my property in front of me.

This is a carefully orchestrated fraud here. There is simply no way this is accidental. Every one of the myriad of phone numbers they have to reach me have voice mail and call history logging on the accounts. I mean they have just plain *never* even called, not even once.

All I can tell any of you reading this is to be sure you dump Allstate before you learn your lesson too. My roof (the one they claimed was undamaged) continues to pour in water even in the lightest rain causing sheet rock to fall in through the ceiling. My out of pocket expenses were almost $9k for the repairs to heating equipment and they never came forward to do any mold abatement work either so the long term effects of all of this are still to be determined.

I was offered a few hundred dollars for paint and sheet rock repairs without any remedy for the actual fix for the problems.

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So in my ongoing saga dealing with an incompatible Biostar A770E3 mainboard and AMD socket AM3 CPU bundle that TigerDirect sold me; it now appears that TigerDirect simply has no technical staff that really understand their product lines.

So after posting rants here and on Twitter, TigerDirect actually responded and escalated my issue.  The problem is, even in their best intentions, they still do not understand the issue at hand.

The short form is

The Biostar A770E3 claims socket AM3 support, and the bundle shipped with a Phenom II X6 1100T.

The motherboard ships with a BIOS too old to recognize the AM3 Phenom, so it needs a BIOS update.

However, in order to even do the BIOS update, Biostar requires booting on an old Sempron/socket AM2 CPU.  It’s right there in their own manual.  There is no other way to do the update.  So if the customer doesn’t have an AM2 CPU kicking around, they cannot make this work.  I know, it’s crazy.

So trying to get TigerDirect to understand this has been impossible.

The latest contact from them suggested they will happily trade my AM3 for an AM2 so my motherboard will work properly.  I mean really…the _entire_point_ of this new system is the CPU it all revolves around.

TigerDirect, do you really have nobody left on staff that understands your products at a technical level?

This has been going on for days now, plenty of time to have escalated this to at least *someone* who might understand.  I spoon fed the suggestion of how to escalate this on my very first phone call.  I specifically recommended they escalate this to an actual product specialist; not so much for my own benefit, but so that they wouldn’t continue to misrepresent this product combination to future buyers.  Still not getting it though.  Sadly, this is what I suspected.

So it seems that TigerDirect are trying their best to resolve my issue, heh, but ‘best’ is certainly a relative term in this context.

I should have my new Gigabyte mainboard from Newegg tomorrow, so as this simmers down, I’m just learning from my mistake and learn from it I shall.

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Tiger Direct and Biostar have colluded to sell a defective product bundle designed to force a customer into hidden added hardware costs in order to effect the basic function of the bundle as sold.

The issue is the Biostar mainboard model A770E3.  Both Biostar and TigerDirect are advertising this mainboard as being compatible with the AMD AM3 series processors.  In my case specifically, TigerDirect was selling a pre-configured bundle with the Biostar A770E3 mainboard and an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T processor.  The bundle of course implies to the consumer there will be full compatiblity.

Upon building my system I discovered the BIOS revision that Biostar is shipping for this specific combo is too old to recognize the AMD chipset.  This is not very uncommon and the fix is very simple; flash update the BIOS.

Here is where their duplicity kicks in with their advertising.  In order to flash update the BIOS on the Biostar A770E3 they require that you already own an AMD AM2 series CPU in order to boot the mainboard far enough to flash update the BIOS.  It is not otherwise possible to to the BIOS update and with the AM3, the system will not recognize the CPU enough to boot at all.

This was disclosed neither by TigerDirect nor by Biostar.  The consumer will only realize this issue when it is too late.  When the consumer reaches page 6 in the mainboard manual, there is a small print note explaining the pre-requisite to own an AM2 socket CPU in order to do basic BIOS updates.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if TigerDirect or Biostar would actually send the purchaser an AM2 with the product or disclose that it will require purchasing two CPUs to function.   However TigerDirect takes absolutely no responsibility for this deception.  They expect the consumer to either return everything they have built (which would cost easily $60+ in shipping) or to buy a new AMD AM2 CPU simply so they can do the required BIOS update to use the CPU they have already purchased.

This is direct fraud.  Biostar and TigerDirect know full well a consumer will be left in a lurch and have no choice but to have to pay for a CPU that they won’t even use.

It makes me wonder if AMD is maybe working a  deal with TigerDirect or Biostar to get rid of old stocks of AM2 processors.

So buyer beware, don’t buy the Biostar mainboard A770E3 from TigerDirect or any other vendor and beware the ‘bundles’ that TigerDirect are fraudulently misrepresenting as compatible;  shipping this motherboard with the current AM3 Phenom processors.

I have certainly learned my lesson not to do further business with TigerDirect or with Biostar.  I’ve always used Newegg and other vendors and never purchased a Biostar product until this unfortunate incident.  This has been a shameful level of deception on behalf of both TigerDirect and Biostar.

*** Update on the status of this running comedy

TigerDirect approached me via Twitter to send them my order # and contact information, so I did, including my phone number to make it easier to reach me.

They ignored my email and my contact info and as of yet have still not contacted me with any suggested resolution to the issue.

Their inquiry was March 7th, which is when I sent my email.  As of 5pm on the 8th, still not a peep from them.

***Udate  at 5pm on the 8th after another twitter posting I got a reply saying my issue was being handled, but it is still in pending status.

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