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Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#31

Post by doix »

kstrauser wrote: post #16

I won’t buy Dell gear again, at home or at work. I bought my kid a monitor for his gaming PC from Amazon. It was advertised as brand new. Dell shipped it in a brand new, undamaged, unopened box. Its HDMI port failed a couple of months later but with many months of warranty left. Then Dell denied a warranty claim because their inventory system had it listed as having been previously registered to someone else. I tried…

FWIW, it could be an Amazons fault. Someone bought the monitor, used it, decided they didn't want it and returned it. The seller looked at it, decided it looked good enough, and put it back in his inventory at Amazon as new.

You'd have no way of knowing. People used to (maybe still do?) buy expensive graphic cards, take them out and put back a cheap one with a flashed ROM. Then shrink-wrap the box again and return it.

You wouldn't blame the manufacturer in that case. I never buy expensive things from Amazon because you can never trust what you're going to get, especially with inventory comingling.

If you bought directly from the Dell website, I'd share more of your anger. I also dislike Dell in general though, so I wouldn't buy their stuff anyway.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#33

Post by lawn »

doix wrote: post #31
kstrauser wrote: post #16

I won’t buy Dell gear again, at home or at work. I bought my kid a monitor for his gaming PC from Amazon. It was advertised as brand new. Dell shipped it in a brand new, undamaged, unopened box. Its HDMI port failed a couple of months later but with many months of warranty left. Then Dell denied a warranty claim because their inventory system had it listed as having been previously registered to someone else. I tried…

FWIW, it could be an Amazons fault. Someone bought the monitor, used it, decided they didn't want it and returned it. The seller looked at it, decided it looked good enough, and put it back in his inventory at Amazon as new. You'd have no way of knowing. People used to (maybe still do?) buy expensive graphic cards, take them out and put back a cheap one with a flashed ROM. Then shrink-wrap the box again and return it…

Yeah, this is common Amazon behavior.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#34

Post by sowbug »

stemlord wrote: post #4

The amount of research that needs to be done to purchase even the most basic stuff online is beyond paralyzing. I hate shopping irl but I think I hate online shopping even more.

Does anyone remember killerapp.com? It had parametric search for tech products along the dimensions you actually cared about, and then a ranking of sellers by total price, including shipping and any applicable tax. Exactly what you wanted.

Compare today: we have major retailers demanding exclusive SKUs to prevent apples-to-apples comparisons, and it doesn't matter anyway because most people are Amazon Prime members and don't really bother shopping around.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#35

Post by llbeansandrice »

terribleperson wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #16

I won’t buy Dell gear again, at home or at work. I bought my kid a monitor for his gaming PC from Amazon. It was advertised as brand new. Dell shipped it in a brand new, undamaged, unopened box. Its HDMI port failed a couple of months later but with many months of warranty left. Then Dell denied a warranty claim because their inventory system had it listed as having been previously registered to someone else. I tried…

Not to defend Dell, because they don't deserve it and should have stood by their product, but it's possibly true that the monitor was used, and not their fault that it was. 'Sold by Amazon' products are AFAIK commingled with the same product from other sellers that are Fulfilled By Amazon.

Sounds like a great battle for Dell and Amazon to have. It shouldn’t be a burden to consumers regardless of whether Amazon or Dell screwed up.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#36

Post by WalterBright »

S201 wrote: post #25
kstrauser wrote: post #16

I won’t buy Dell gear again, at home or at work. I bought my kid a monitor for his gaming PC from Amazon. It was advertised as brand new. Dell shipped it in a brand new, undamaged, unopened box. Its HDMI port failed a couple of months later but with many months of warranty left. Then Dell denied a warranty claim because their inventory system had it listed as having been previously registered to someone else. I tried…

> In before “how do we believe you?” A company trying to weasel out of its warranty obligations is hardly something I'd cast doubt on anymore (unfortunately).

Nordstrom was famous for refunding the money for things obviously not bought at the store, for example, tires, and clearly worn out shoes. (As told to me by a former sales clerk at Nordies.)

But too many people tried to make a living out of scamming Nordstrom's patient indulgence of this, and they changed their policy.

Warranty fraud is a major problem.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#38

Post by CydeWeys »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #35
terribleperson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend Dell, because they don't deserve it and should have stood by their product, but it's possibly true that the monitor was used, and not their fault that it was. 'Sold by Amazon' products are AFAIK commingled with the same product from other sellers that are Fulfilled By Amazon.

Sounds like a great battle for Dell and Amazon to have. It shouldn’t be a burden to consumers regardless of whether Amazon or Dell screwed up.

If it wasn't purchased from an authorized Dell retailer then Dell really has nothing to do with it. With the way 3rd party Amazon Marketplace sales works, who knows what happened here.

Re: Dell fined $6.5M after admitting it made overpriced monitors look discounted

#39

Post by hhh »

Prickle wrote: post #24

I have a DELL laptop. Probably the worst purchase I made. The one saving grace is that SupportAssist actually works, and does make post-crash/post-windows-death recovery very simple and easy. But that's the thing. I can tell that they put effort into this OS recovery tool, explicitly because this Laptop is a disaster of a product. Temperatures? Burning. Fans? Locked down. Freezing? Constantly. Crashing? Commonly. Blu…

Dell very rarely builds things like this. They just buy them and slap their name on it.
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