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Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted
- jwestbury 3y ago> 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 everything together, but we'd put it all on one tag, at a single price, and also show the total you could get in mail-in rebates from the whole package. Because it was advertised as a package, people assumed it was cheaper, oftentimes.
- bombcar 3y agoWhen 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.
- xav0989 3y agoMcDonald'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.
- thesuitonym 3y agoThe main difference is you were just showing the price and the rebates and letting people assume it was cheaper. Dell was giving a false price for the monitors and actively telling consumers that there was a discount.
- quantified 3y agoGoing out of business! Everything must go! It's not limited in any way for any thing that can be sold.
- JohnFen 3y agoI grew up near a store that had been going out of business for over 20 years.
- JohnFen 3y ago> 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.
- m3kw9 3y agoThe classic mark it up and big discount trick
- EscapeFromNY 3y agoThis is closer to "This monitor is $500, but since you're a good customer and I like you, I'll give it to you for $800"
- superchroma 3y agoDell has always sold expensive goods in my experience. They've never been my first choice when being thrifty.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoThat'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 to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly.
- jonfw 3y agoif you want the free market to work, consumers can’t use price to evaluate quality
- diffeomorphism 3y agoThis is a bit of a chicken and egg problem and too abridged. It is like arguing that for free speech to work everybody has to write newspaper articles or that you personally need to be a programmer for opensource to be useful. These can be different people and for a free market (/free(dom) speech/free(dom) software) to work you need a sufficient number of qualified people. So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this term always sounds like slur to me as compared to customers) for using price as a proxy. You can't expect them to get loaners, purchase testing equipment etc.. That should be tech journalists' job and then consumers can make an educated decision, which in turn ensures that price indeed is a good proxy. Hence, blame the sorry state of tech reviews in the American market. What even are the reasonably good sites still left? I know of wirecutter (mixed), rtings, tftcentral and maybe prad.de. What are consumers supposed to base their evaluations on in your opinion?
- jonfw 3y ago
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoThis is pathetic, but their U/UP line of monitors is really good. In fact I'm using them for the last 10 years or so. Back in the day, Dell was one of very few manufacturers who offered monitors with 16:10 screens, which are are far better at 24" size than 16:9. (The difference is not that noticeable with 27"+ screens and bigger)
- alpaca128 3y ago> In some cases, consumers paid more for the add-on monitor advertised as "discounted" than they would have paid if they had bought it as a stand-alone product That's insane. Reminds me of LTT's secret shopper incident where they rejected Dell's suggested extra warranty package and then Dell included two mutually exclusive warranty packages that you cannot even intentionally select simultaneously on their website.
- donmcronald 3y agoThat scenario is rampant in government. Dell prices SSDs, RAM, etc. insanely high and, after a quick email, you can get a huge “discount” to show your boss. Just ignore the fact that you’re still paying 2-3x market value. Ex: I recently saw it with server RAM. $1700 (CAD) from Dell (via service tag) for something that’s $100 CAD from Crucial, but “discounted” to a few hundred after an email. Or $600 SSDs marked up to $3500. It’s a big scam. Dell also sends “itemized” invoices where every item is listed, but the price is one big total. Descriptions are intentionally, in my opinion, obfuscated to resist price comparing and auditing. We need a massive audit of government spending on tech IMO. Companies like Dell are price gouging.
- jsty 3y ago> after a quick email, you can get a huge “discount” to show your boss. Just ignore the fact that you’re still paying 2-3x market value. This is rampant across a lot of enterprise & mid-large B2B vendors because of purchasing departments getting evaluated on the %discount and not by any measure of value for money / market pricing. If purchasing requires a >20% discount to ok your deal, of course the incentive for the seller is to bump the price accordingly and see it waved through.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMost Dell equipment is marked up far in excess of 200% as they are happy to sell to large customers for 50% of retail pricing.
- leidenfrost 3y agoFor other people in developing countries: Isn't it weird to see news about a massive outrage for practices that in our place are totally common? Where I'm from, this happens all the time. And the law permits them to just change the price at whim. So they can just raise the price of any product and slap a "discount" label on them, even if the new "discounted" price is higher than the previous one.
- willcipriano 3y ago[flagged]
- Filligree 3y agoAs is the outrage and occasional lawsuits. The price of liberty is constant vigilance, but so is the price of a high-trust society. ...even though the whole point of one is that most people don't need it.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago>The price of liberty is constant vigilance Whose liberty, and for whom?
- imiric 3y agoTIL 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.
- willcipriano 3y agoAustralia 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-services/consumer-rights-and-guarantees 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 world country is from Wikipedia: > the definition has instead largely shifted to any country with little political risk and a well-functioning democracy, rule of law, capitalist economy, economic stability, and high standard of living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World Perhaps reach for a book instead of pulling out the tired xenophobia canard.
- jerf 3y agoI 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 simply uncorrelated.
- vxNsr 3y agoYup. A lot of the consumer protection regulations are being totally ignored with impunity. It’s nice to see one retailer held to account. But I don’t think it foretells a larger trend. These days you need to be very aware of what a fair price is for any given thing and then shop around to find the best deal based on that understanding. Totally ignore %-off, initial prices. Just look for the deal based on what you know a fair price to be. I think a lot of online stores can get away with this sort of thing because they use “airline” pricing. Everyone sees a different price based on the store’s heuristics, thus there is no “one” price aside from MSRP. and so they can claim a discount off that.
- bushbaba 3y agoOnline stores can list the SKU for 50% more than their sales price for 1 day, and delist the product from showing up in searches unless you specifically ask for that SKU. Then subsequent days they being the price down and call it a sale. Totally within the rules.
- serial_dev 3y agoIf I understand the situation and laws correctly, there is the Omnibus Directive here in the EU to prevent cases like this (or at least make less common). > An Omnibus Price is the lowest price that a consumer has been able to buy a specific product for during the past 30 days. As an EU business, it is important to ensure that you display Omnibus Prices on your product pages clearly (...) - https://www.sniffie.io/pricing-vocabulary/omnibus-price/ https://www.sniffie.io/pricing-vocabulary/omnibus-price/
- rocketbop 3y agoI haven’t seen that in practice much, but in time I expect to see it displayed more and more. Doesn’t mean no one will lie, or find ways around it, especially less scrupulous retailers. For example by raising the price 31 days out from a sale.
- jmyeet 3y agoThis is rampant and goes well beyond Dell. Take the Black Friday "deals", particularly on TVs. Retailers are known to slowly rise prices leading up to Black Friday to be able to advertise a steep "discount" (which honestly isn't that steep). It's honestly exhausting as a consumer dealing with all these tricks.
- pixl97 3y agoThis also coincides with 'SKU explosion'. Back in the day before digital inventory manufactures generally minimized the numbers of SKUs they had because it was a nightmare managing thousands of different products. Circuit City, Best Buy, and whoever else was around at the time would pretty likely have the same TV. But now each one will have a different SKU number even if they are the exact same product so you cannot easily price match. Coming back a few weeks later to the same store and even then products might have new SKUs. It's just hell keeping up with what features do or don't work on these devices when they are constantly in flux.
- gadgetoid 3y agoSecret Lab Chairs still get away with listing totally imaginary “Non-Direct Pricing” despite the ASA saying- and I quote- “we think it likely to have breached the Advertising Codes (“the Codes”) that we administer.” And their 5-year warranty extension obliges you to become part of a social media Astro-turfing program- https://secretlab.co.uk/pages/redeem https://secretlab.co.uk/pages/redeem
- switch007 3y agoMost regulatory bodies in the UK exist to say they exist, as a marketing exercise. Understaffed, underfunded etc Probably the same in many other countries.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoDells online store is a nightmare of dark patterns. Everything on there is 2-3x as expensive as it should be, except it’s always on a huge sale that is changing all the time It’s too much, I can’t shop there
- andromeduck 3y agoThink Lenovo does the same.
- emdashcomma 3y agoAnd 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.
- sowbug 3y agoSeems fair game to use fake MSRPs against them.
- guraf 3y agoNot sure that's on reviewers. Lenovo is using anti consumer tactics to improve sales (the elevated MSRP with a constant "sale"), should they be praised?
- JohnFen 3y agoI'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.
- bunga-bunga 3y agoSounds like hotel bookings. So many “hurry up, 246 people booked this exact room in the past 14 seconds”
- HumblyTossed 3y agoIf I am buying anything, on sale or otherwise, I do my best to look up historical prices. It's gotten to be a pain in the ass to be a consumer. I feel like we used to have consumer protections, but not any more.
- Makhini 3y agoThat's why the UE law that requires the shops to display the lowest price over last 30 days is pretty useful
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoSeems easy to game by just pretending you're selling a different product every time you change the price. I worked at a company that did this with digital goods.
- tpxl 3y agoThat might work with complex electronics, but it sure as shit wont work with most groceries.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoWhy is a carrot grown on May 1 not different from a carrot grown on May 2?
- tpxl 3y agoEu directive 2019/2161, which regulates this, was supposed to be in effect since 28.5.2022, but I see nothing on local retailers webpages, nor in physical stores ):
- bondant 3y agoIt seems that in France around 96% of the advertised price do not comply with this directive. We need more fines. https://www.nextinpact.com/lebrief/71805/ufc-que-choisir-porte-plainte-contre-amazon-cdiscount-e-leclerc-rue-commerce https://www.nextinpact.com/lebrief/71805/ufc-que-choisir-por...
- vondur 3y agoDealing with them on an institutional basis is bad too. Use to be I’d email our sales rep with a configuration and request for a quote. Usually a week later they’d come back with a price that would be substantially lower vs the website listed price. Now they have us use the Dell premier site where Dell says that the prices are already discounted and ready to go. For the most part the premiere pricing is the same as the normal website.
- briandear 3y agoIs it me, or does it seem like oriental rug shops are constantly having “going out of business sales?”
- dokem 3y agoWe were going out of business, but the sale was so successful we're doing ok now!
- technothrasher 3y agoThey also have the most ridiculous markups I've ever seen. We went rug shopping and my wife found a rug she liked. Price tag? $35,000! The salesman "liked us so much" he was willing to drop it to $10,000. I asked him a question he had to go look up, and when he did I snapped a picture of the label, before telling him we had to think about it overnight. Found the exact same rug online for $500 delivered, and that is what now sits in our living room.
- pcurve 3y agoI've been shopping Dell.com for 23 years. They've been doing fake discount for 23 years. Price delta isn't as big as it used to be, but they make it hard to do comparison shopping even within their own site. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/sr/desktops/xps-desktops https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/sr/desktop...
- rjh29 3y agoFuck Lenovo too. Overcharging for their laptops then putting them on a huge sale multiple times a month.
- tiberious726 3y agoMake an account on their pro site --- still nonsense, but the prices stay much more consistent
- leetrout 3y agoLenovo has entered the chat. This is everything in the Lenovo online store. I signed up for a business account and called a rep on the phone and got a quote for a single machine and the rep gave me a discount of 15% and then when I went on the website the exact same machine was 35% off (and is perpetually on sale for that discounted amount).
- autoexec 3y agoThis is the least of Lenovo's issues. They're fine with shipping computers that have malware and backdoors, sometimes in exchange for money. I don't know how much more clearly they can communicate to people that they shouldn't be trusted.
- dylan604 3y agoIsn'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 stores like JC Penny, Sears, Macy's, etc do the same thing where every week there are "sales". They all play on the psychology of the word "sale".
- eterm 3y agoNo, this isn't standard operationg procedure in countries with laws against this very thing, such as Australia, which the article is about.
- bluGill 3y agoAll the brick and mortar stores you name don't play it quite like that (anymore). If there is a sale it was available for a higher price before, and probably will be for a higher price again. Of course stuff at the "regular price" is always in the back and nobody tries to sell it to you - there is almost the same thing up front with the big sale signs over it that the staff is trying to sell. If you really want the staff will be happy to ring up the regular priced goods for you, but there is no incentive for them to do so: the regular price exists only so they can lower the prices for the sale and not run afoul of the laws that require a sale price to be cheaper.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Why is Dell being singled out? Why not? Someone is going to be singled out. You can't really go after everyone simultaneously. This reminds me of a story I heard of a guy who was speeding, but going the same speed as everyone else. He got stopped and as the cop was writing the ticket, he said "why are you singling me out, when everyone else was speeding too?" The cop said "I can't stop everyone. You just drew the short straw this time."
- ketralnis 3y agoI'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?
- amadeuspagel 3y agoIt'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.
- JohnFen 3y agoYep. This is why I ignore sales and other promotional pricing.
- npteljes 3y agoYou're right, and the obvious conclusion is that people are not rational. Next, then, it's strange that many others expect this from them. It's denying an integral part of human experience. I do get what you mean though. People need to look after themselves, because when they are not caring about something, others do, and many make their living out of this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoI think everyone in the USA knows that retailers will add stick a new label for $100 over the original $50 label, and then announce "50% off sale!" with impunity. I've literally peeled off the $100 sticker to find the $50 sticker underneath. In the UK and other places, this is illegal.
- whoopdedo 3y agoThis is frequently a way to soften the impact of inflation. The trick I've been watching my grocery store use the last two years is a product will get a "clearance" tag on it with the price marked down 20 to 30 cents. They let the current stock sell out (or simply not restock the shelf) so it sits empty for a week. Then the same item reappears marked up 50 cents from the previous regular price. Occasionally there'll be different packaging so it appears more like a "new" product. But a few times I was able to compare the old with the new and it's always been the exact same thing.
- sowbug 3y agoRelated: "we're experiencing longer than normal hold times" on phone calls with businesses. They say that so often that hmmmm, I wonder whether hold times are normally longer than normal.