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

arstechnica.com

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

#101

Post by imiric »

willcipriano wrote: post #49
imiric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL Australia is a developing country. This xenophobic mindset is just not true. Similar and worse things happen in "developed" countries all the time as well, except at a different scale and potentially much worse consequences (e.g. 2008). The rule of law doesn't apply equally to everyone, and some people can skirt around it, or be above it.

Australia has fair dealing and rule of law. From a quick Google here is a list of some of the consumer protections afforded by their consumer protection organization: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic... Economies that lack those types of protections haven't developed as quickly or as to the same level of economies that have them. This is true globally and throughout history. What a first w…

Why reach for a book when you can teach me a lesson right here? :)

My point is that these sales tactics happen in any country, regardless if it's developing or not. The difference is in the variety and scale. If businesses aren't allowed by law to do a certain thing in order to increase revenue, they will resort to other scams that the law doesn't explicitly forbid. Or they will lobby to change the laws to whatever suits them best.

The scams in developed countries are much more sophisticated and nefarious, simply because they need to tip toe around the law. In this case Dell messed up by doing this in Australia, but this is surely just the tip of the iceberg of their business practices.

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

#102

Post by SoftTalker »

tfandango wrote: post #68
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…

I have been truck shopping lately which means I'm constantly hounded all day long by every dealership in the 4 state region. Last weekend they ALL had "Memorial Day Sales"! So I asked them all about the sale details... Every single one said if I came in they would try to make a deal with me. That's the same thing as no sale. Actually, it is worse for cars where a sale might entail negotiating against a dealer markup.

They don't want to give you a price remotely because they fear you'll just use that to leverage a better price at another dealer. They think if you come in they'll be able to work their charms on you and get you to buy there.

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

#103

Post by JohnFen »

emdashcomma wrote: post #66
andromeduck wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think Lenovo does the same.

And for some reason some tech journalists don't account for it. "Ah, but this Thinkpad has an MSRP of $4,395, so it's much more expensive than the competition" when approximately nobody would purchase it for that price, and the consistently-on-sale price would be right in line with competitors.

I'm rather glad that journalists don't take that into account. Comparing MSRPs is fair. Perhaps it provides some pressure discouraging companies from engaging in that sort of shenanigans.

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

#104

Post by JohnFen »

jwestbury wrote: post #2

> 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…

> and also show the total you could get in mail-in rebates from the whole package

That's a very sleazy thing that I'm glad I don't see nearly as much anymore. I still avoid shopping at places that I've seen do this in the past.

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

#105

Post by Elfir3 »

netrus wrote: post #63
RulerOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was really frustrating when I had to be price sensitive shopping for paper towels. They'd list price per roll in the corner of the tag, but every package's rolls were significantly different cm^2 quantities.

It's a hard problem. Some stores have half-size paper towels, which I prefer, as paper towels are unnecessary large most of the time. So I want to price-compare based on number of sheets, not cm² ;)

I have the same issue with rice, they always put the price per kg, never per grain..

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

#106

Post by JohnFen »

quantified wrote: post #34
jwestbury wrote: post #2

> 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.

I grew up near a store that had been going out of business for over 20 years.

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

#107

Post by stevesimmons »

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.

I once ate at a restaurant where the dessert card priced two scoops of ice cream at significantly more than twice one scoop.

They weren't impressed when I put in two orders of a single scoop....

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

#108

Post by SoftTalker »

mbajkowski wrote: post #10
Taek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1 on this. For a while Dell had a nice sweet spot. It was cheaper than the aforementioned brands, roughly equal price wise to the likes of Gateway but much more configurable and better customer service, and only a bit more expensive than unknown to me brands back than found in computer shopper. Only way to do better in same budget was to build your own

I recall Dell being early to having a good online store. In fact I think you could only buy Dell computers online at first?

Like any business, success and growth changed their motiviations.

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

#109

Post by JohnFen »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #82

It's strange that "sales" claims are relevant at all. Rationally, you should make your decision based on whether the product is worth the price, not based on what the price is at other times and for other people.

Yep. This is why I ignore sales and other promotional pricing.

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

#110

Post by raketenolli »

bibanez wrote: post #48
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…

I go to a store where they put the price per kilo, even when it is discounted. This way, I only need to compare price per kilo with other products to see if it's worth it!

Which is fine if the prices are given per 1 kg or 100 g. Here in the US they have the prices by the ounce or by the pound, by the gallon, quart, or liquid ounce ... not exactly transparent unless you can >> 4 in your head faster than / 10. I can't.
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