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I sympathise, and I appreciate someone raising awareness of the situation. Perhaps the negative attention will prompt Dell to review this policy. That said, is

I sympathise, and I appreciate someone raising awareness of the situation. Perhaps the negative attention will prompt Dell to review this policy. That said, is it really normal to expect to be able to return a non-faulty product once it's shipped, or unreasonable of Dell to refuse such returns if they don't want to sell on that basis? In my country (the UK) there are consumer protection laws that include various rights to return goods purchased remotely for a short period even if they aren't defective. In principle, these are supposed to allow for not being able to inspect the actual product the way you could in person if you bought from a store. However, for better or worse, business customers do not enjoy the same legal protections as private individuals, and a lot of potentially one-sided terms that would be unlikely to stand up in a B2C context because of statutory protections seem to be routine in B2B sales.

X-Istence 10y ago
I think it's normal to ship back a non-faulty product that I realised was the wrong one... I've done it with expensive routers/switches from Cisco and SFP+'s from various vendors. Never had any issues either. Cisco even cross-shipped the gear we wanted. Although I think corporate account vs one-offs make the difference here ;-)
dkx 10y ago
Usually the same product is more expensive when buying as a consumer, presumably because of the extra protections they get.
hackuser 10y ago
> is it really normal to expect to be able to return a non-faulty product once it's shipped, or unreasonable of Dell to refuse such returns It's normal for people to make mistakes, including people who are Dell customers. Good, normal businesses accommodate their customers, try to help them succeed and build good relationships, and don't treat them like suckers, potential criminals or bad schoolchildren when something goes wrong. They don't cite terms, they find solutions. But for a business customer, there is an easy solution to this problem: Find a vendor who does want your business. Be glad it happened with a $500 order and not something more expensive; it's a cheap lesson and the sooner it happened the better. My guess is that Dell will lose more when the customer leaves and tells their friends (ignoring the HN post) than they would over one return. But that's their problem, not yours.
nmstoker 10y ago
Well said! Clearly there are cultural differences in expectations here. I respect the way it works in the US, but i personally like the UK approach explained eloquently above, as I get just enough protection and no more. Avoiding being (indirectly) exposed to the other customers' fickle ordering with scant attention seems a good thing to me (not that I'm implying this occurred in this case, I see this was a genuine mistake). I'm sure some will say that a big company can swallow the costs, but clearly that money has to come from somewhere and it's from prices higher than they would otherwise be, passed on to everyone.

X-Istence 10y ago

I think it's normal to ship back a non-faulty product that I realised was the wrong one... I've done it with expensive routers/switches from Cisco and SFP+'s from various vendors. Never had any issues either. Cisco even cross-shipped the gear we wanted. Although I think corporate account vs one-offs make the difference here ;-)

dkx 10y ago

Usually the same product is more expensive when buying as a consumer, presumably because of the extra protections they get.

hackuser 10y ago

> is it really normal to expect to be able to return a non-faulty product once it's shipped, or unreasonable of Dell to refuse such returns It's normal for people to make mistakes, including people who are Dell customers. Good, normal businesses accommodate their customers, try to help them succeed and build good relationships, and don't treat them like suckers, potential criminals or bad schoolchildren when something goes wrong. They don't cite terms, they find solutions. But for a business customer, there is an easy solution to this problem: Find a vendor who does want your business. Be glad it happened with a $500 order and not something more expensive; it's a cheap lesson and the sooner it happened the better. My guess is that Dell will lose more when the customer leaves and tells their friends (ignoring the HN post) than they would over one return. But that's their problem, not yours.

nmstoker 10y ago

Well said! Clearly there are cultural differences in expectations here. I respect the way it works in the US, but i personally like the UK approach explained eloquently above, as I get just enough protection and no more. Avoiding being (indirectly) exposed to the other customers' fickle ordering with scant attention seems a good thing to me (not that I'm implying this occurred in this case, I see this was a genuine mistake). I'm sure some will say that a big company can swallow the costs, but clearly that money has to come from somewhere and it's from prices higher than they would otherwise be, passed on to everyone.