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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

#141

Post by Dylan16807 »

jonfw wrote: post #7
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the free market to work, consumers can’t use price to evaluate quality

Everyone can't do it all the time.

Ideally it's like stock pricing where some people put in their knowledge and other people can get a reasonably accurate price most of the time.

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

#142

Post by rprospero »

JohnFen wrote: post #106
quantified wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was that "Value City Furniture's Third Annual Going Out of Business Sale"? I remember those from my childhood, though I understand that one of those finally stuck.

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

#143

Post by xav0989 »

bombcar wrote: post #15
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…

When the bacon cheeseburger is on sale, it can be cheaper to buy it and ask them to hold the bacon than to just buy the cheeseburger.

McDonald's was notorious for that. The Cheeseburger/Double Cheeseburger was often cheaper or included in deals&promos, while the Hamburger/Double Hamburger wasn't.

I was challenged once as to "why don't you just buy the hamburger if you want to hold the cheese", I asked them to ring it with the hamburger and it came to a higher total, so I asked to ring it as I originally asked instead.

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

#144

Post by sumthinprofound »

RulerOf wrote: post #55
bibanez wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

All of my grocery shopping is done on my supermarkets website and sorting by unit price brings up the price per pound or ounce or whatever that products unit of measure is. For paper towels it returns $ per square foot, so even if the product size is different the price per unit of measure stays the same and makes it easier to comparison shop.

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

#145

Post by dylan604 »

ketralnis wrote: post #135
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…

I'm always baffled by this argument. So because two people do a bad thing neither can be held accountable because each can just point at the other and dylan604 will say one is being singled out?

Or, you know, you could take the question in the spirit it was asked. Because dylan604 knows there are other offenders, and I'm not even in the business of policing these issues. So, it's only logical to extrapolate that out to expect that those actually responsible for policing these issues would know about them as well. So why not bring up charges on all of them? Is it honestly because the team involved is so small and they have no multitasking abilities so they can only work on one case at a time? Is it because of all of the people they've approached, they've all made amends and changed their ways so that they are only charging those that held out?

There are many ways "why just one" type of questions can be answered, and the "because 2" responses are tired.

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

#147

Post by JohnFen »

rprospero wrote: post #142
JohnFen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was that "Value City Furniture's Third Annual Going Out of Business Sale"? I remember those from my childhood, though I understand that one of those finally stuck.

I'm not familiar with that. No, this was a mom & pop furniture store.

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

#148

Post by mgkimsal »

JohnFen wrote: post #100
mgkimsal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

was part of a company that was putting out mass market tv/radio ads. i was in a group that got some previews and we were asked for feedback. "Save up to 30%" and "save up to 40%" were phrases thrown around. I mentioned that our average customer was actually saving closer to 50% (often more), and asked why we didn't just say that. Head of marketing guy said those numbers were generally not believed by most viewers. I was only there a few months at that time - they'd been running variations for years, and had some numbers to back that up (website clicks, call volume, etc). We could have said "up to 45% or more!" which... is technically 'true', but confusing and awkward to anyone who parses the whole thing. And "save up to 53%!" just didn't come across as believable, even when we had the data to show it.

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

#149

Post by willcipriano »

practice9 wrote: post #133
willcipriano wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> consumer protections afforded by their consumer protection organization That is actually true of many so called "developing" countries too. The consumer protection organizations will accept your request and "investigate". The result of their investigation can amount to doing nothing (canned response) or recommending you go to court. You can win in the court, eventually. Spending time & money on what should be an au…

Here is the property rights index: https://www.internationalpropertyrightsindex.org/

Scroll to the list, sort by highest score. Why are all the first world nations at the top?

Here is the corruption perceptions index (pdf): https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/Report_CPI2022_Eng...

Why are the most corrupt nations considered third world?

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

#150

Post by FireBeyond »

walthamstow wrote: post #79
tfandango wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure that is illegal in the UK. If a business is advertising a sale, they have to follow certain regulations, which include actually having discounts against a previous price which was in place for a period of time. It's not without perverse effects though. Often you see price increases in October/November so that a discount can be advertised in December, but it's just the same as or barely-discounted from the…

In Washington state there's an administrative code that says retail stores are only allowed to have a 'closing down'/'going out of business' sale "once per calendar year".
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