Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 171 posts

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

#91

Post by hattmall »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #61
Miserlou57 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d also recommend JungleDealsBlog

Slickdeals.net also good. Owned, iirc, by some bank though. Comments seem genuine and let you know if it’s a real deal or shill post.

I use Slickdeals all the time. It's pretty great, but has had a lot more advertising both blatant and stealth in recent years. Still good site though, I'd also like to know any more deals sites though.

And I also wonder how is there not a legitimate coupons site? Or is there? Even slickdeals now the coupon codes section is trach similar to retailmenot and the multitude of other crappy coupon spam sites.

Slickdeals used to be a good source for legit coupon codes and sometimes they are still on there but you have to dig in the forums the actual "coupons" section of the site is spam.

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

#92

Post by technothrasher »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #6
superchroma wrote: post #4

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

That's a different issue. If we assume honest dealing, when you see a $1000 display going for $500, you would think you get a high-end product at a mid-range price. You may then inquire why it's on sale - is it used, is it older generation, does the shop need shelf space? Who knows. What should not be happening is that a product that has never sold for $1000 is presented as being worth $1000. If you want free market…

> If you want free market to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly.

But as we've seen, in a free market this deceit is rewarded, not punished. And if you try to intervene with government punishment, then it's not a free market. In other words, a truly "free market" doesn't work (in the sense that you meant when you said "work").

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

#93

Post by _ea1k »

onlypositive wrote: post #30
jerf wrote: 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…

Wait til this guy learns about free shipping.

I kind of hate free shipping, tbh. It heavily favors sellers with massive distribution systems.

Without it, a nearby distributor might look like a more compelling option than the giant monolithic (and near monopolistic) online retailer.

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

#94

Post by hattmall »

Miserlou57 wrote: post #47
Pxtl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’d also recommend JungleDealsBlog

On a slightly more than cursory inspection. That site sucks.

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

#95

Post by Semaphor »

jerf wrote: 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…

Sale prices in EU now require (kinda, there are either exceptions, or many non compliant sites and stores) to show some comparison price.

Here is a page from Amazon explaining it: https://www.amazon.com.be/-/en/gp/help/customer/display.html...

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

#96

Post by eterm »

dylan604 wrote: post #74

Isn't this standard operating procedure for anything retail? Why is Dell being singled out? Amazon is notorious about this. Look at the prices before one of their "events" on items, and then when the "event" starts you'll see that the price is the same only they list a higher price as the original and show the normal price as the sales price. So there's no difference in price before/after the event. Brick and mortar…

No, this isn't standard operationg procedure in countries with laws against this very thing, such as Australia, which the article is about.

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

#97

Post by wing-_-nuts »

dfxm12 wrote: post #75
stronglikedan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, they don't do this. I'm a very regular person, in that I buy the same things for long stretches until I get tired of them, so I know what the long term prices of things are. I always stock up on bogos at Publix, since they have always been true bogos. I've never seen them inflate the price just to bogo it. In fact, I don't recall Publix ever playing price shenanigans. They are one of the most honest…

Maybe OP means Publix doubles the price compared to another grocery store, not to the price they were selling it for last week. I don't live near a Publix, but of the chains near me, one seems to always have BOGO sales, but the prices are more or less twice as much as similar products at other stores.

Yeah, an item that would simply be sold for 2.50 at Walmart is stickered at 5 and bogod at 2.50. I think this is why so many stores avoid selling the same exact brands, so price comparison isn't possible

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

#98

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #41
jerf wrote: 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…

Also just because something is in a larger size, it doesn’t always make the prices better. Once I was at Fred Meyer and the 1 pound bags of lentils were $1.50 but the two pound bags were $4.00. They were charging more for larger handling units.

Yeah, this is a trick that retailers have been playing for a long time. Same with buying from those bulk bins. Much of the time, the bulk bin goods are the same price as the packaged versions. Sometimes, they're more expensive. Numerous times, I've seen store employees filling the bins by opening retail packages and emptying them in.

You can trust nothing in grocery stores.

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

#99

Post by technothrasher »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #88
technothrasher wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my wife worked for Dell, she got a 17% employee discount on all Dell branded products on their website. But it was 17% off list price, not current "sale" price. So using your employee discount often would cause you pay more for the product than if you didn't use it.

This has been my experience with nearly every "discount" program. You always pay more because it's anchored to some other price.

My son's 10% employee discount at Target seems to work as you'd expect, as it stacks with any other discounts and sales on an item, including the 5% loyalty card discount they offer. The only real limitations are on certain heavily in demand items, and there's a per item limit so you cannot run a discount Target eBay store.

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

#100

Post by JohnFen »

mgkimsal wrote: post #42
jerf wrote: 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…

My favorite tactic is "50% off!" with an asterisk next to it, but no corresponding footnoted asterisk explaining the asterisk itself.

Another favorite of mine is "up to X% off". Of course, "up to" includes "0%".

Even funnier is "save up to X% or more!" as if "up to" doesn't mean "no more than".

Post reply on HN