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Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

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31–40 of 171 posts

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#31
post #16

I just straight-up ignore "sale" claims now, unless I have personal experience that says this really is a sale. This is mostly limited to groceries where I definitely know that the $4 bag of chips really is on sale at $1.50. Along with all the active deception, I also just count all the times I've gone price shopping for non-trivial things and the prices I see and how festooned with the word "sale" the page is is sim…

Costco is pretty good about their sale prices being lower than most times.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#32
post #24
post #16

I just straight-up ignore "sale" claims now, unless I have personal experience that says this really is a sale. This is mostly limited to groceries where I definitely know that the $4 bag of chips really is on sale at $1.50. Along with all the active deception, I also just count all the times I've gone price shopping for non-trivial things and the prices I see and how festooned with the word "sale" the page is is sim…

Yup. A lot of the consumer protection regulations are being totally ignored with impunity. It’s nice to see one retailer held to account. But I don’t think it foretells a larger trend. These days you need to be very aware of what a fair price is for any given thing and then shop around to find the best deal based on that understanding. Totally ignore %-off, initial prices. Just look for the deal based on what you kno…

Online stores can list the SKU for 50% more than their sales price for 1 day, and delist the product from showing up in searches unless you specifically ask for that SKU. Then subsequent days they being the price down and call it a sale. Totally within the rules.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#34

> It's tempting to jump on sales that are presented as steals. But when it comes to online shopping, you can't trust every sale price (or review, or seller) you see. Surely this isn't limited to online shopping. In the days of yore, when I sold PCs at Circuit City, my store would put together package deals where you bought a PC, monitor, printer, etc. The prices for the package deals were the same as if you bought ev…

Going out of business! Everything must go!

It's not limited in any way for any thing that can be sold.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#35

For other people in developing countries: Isn't it weird to see news about a massive outrage for practices that in our place are totally common? Where I'm from, this happens all the time. And the law permits them to just change the price at whim. So they can just raise the price of any product and slap a "discount" label on them, even if the new "discounted" price is higher than the previous one.

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Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#36
post #8

Dell has always sold expensive goods in my experience. They've never been my first choice when being thrifty.

I disagree. When I was a kid I always bought Dell for my desktop computers because you could get the same specs for $300-$400 less than other providers (HP, Compaq, etc). My Mom would give me a $600 budget and I would do hours of research finding the most power I could get for my money. Dell pretty much always came out on top.

I'm not sure what time period you are referring to. In the UK in the 90s you would call up Dell and talk to them about pricing and specs after seeing an ad like those on https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-dell-computers.

The customer service experience at the time was great compared to what you'd typically deal with in the UK. I was the person buying computers for my parents' business, my parents' friends, and some of my friends, all through my parent's business . The reps were probably a little confused because they had repeat orders from the same "customer", but knew they were also dealing with a teenager that had done their research. This yielded some fun conversations and I always felt that they wanted to be competitive with their pricing.

Unfortunately, this all changed towards the end of the 90s as PC manufacturers cut costs, moved to the web, and outsourced.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#37

If I am buying anything, on sale or otherwise, I do my best to look up historical prices. It's gotten to be a pain in the ass to be a consumer. I feel like we used to have consumer protections, but not any more.

That's why the UE law that requires the shops to display the lowest price over last 30 days is pretty useful

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#38
Dealing with them on an institutional basis is bad too. Use to be I’d email our sales rep with a configuration and request for a quote. Usually a week later they’d come back with a price that would be substantially lower vs the website listed price. Now they have us use the Dell premier site where Dell says that the prices are already discounted and ready to go. For the most part the premiere pricing is the same as the normal website.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#39
post #16

I just straight-up ignore "sale" claims now, unless I have personal experience that says this really is a sale. This is mostly limited to groceries where I definitely know that the $4 bag of chips really is on sale at $1.50. Along with all the active deception, I also just count all the times I've gone price shopping for non-trivial things and the prices I see and how festooned with the word "sale" the page is is sim…

I tend to use CamelCamelCamel to find out if I'm getting an actual deal on something, at least when shopping online.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#40

If I understand the situation and laws correctly, there is the Omnibus Directive here in the EU to prevent cases like this (or at least make less common). > An Omnibus Price is the lowest price that a consumer has been able to buy a specific product for during the past 30 days. As an EU business, it is important to ensure that you display Omnibus Prices on your product pages clearly (...) - https://www.sniffie.io/pri…

I haven’t seen that in practice much, but in time I expect to see it displayed more and more.

Doesn’t mean no one will lie, or find ways around it, especially less scrupulous retailers.

For example by raising the price 31 days out from a sale.

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