4 ms·

Dell has always sold expensive goods in my experience. They've never been my first choice when being thrifty.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
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 to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly.
- jonfw 3y ago
  if you want the free market to work, consumers can’t use price to evaluate quality
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    This 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
      Price is even more easily gamed than reviews, i don’t care how bad reviews get, pricing will always be a terrible signal
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this term always sounds like slur to me as compared to customers) Agree. I try to avoid using the term "consumer" except maybe when it's talking about actually consuming things (such as food and drink).
  - yifanl 3y ago
    We have price as a proxy precisely because consumers can't accurately evaluate the quality of all goods, especially in an age where spectacle marketing dominates.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    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.
- usefulcanoll 3y ago
  I may be naive, but I've only used the _current_ price of something to evaluate whether I'd be willing to pay this right now, disregarding any previous or future pricing. This way it hasn't mattered whether a sofa was claimed to be "worth" $500 or $5k and I can justify it in the future to myself that I deemed something worth what was asked at the time
  - Filligree 3y ago
    There are genuine differences between high-end and mid-range products, which are never fully covered by technical specs. If you're lucky, you can watch three or four youtube videos and get a general impression; but you can't do that for every product, so you need to make a shortlist first. Pricing is a useful signal for that. Then there are mid-range products sold at a high price, of course, but you almost never see high-end products sold at mid-range prices.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > Pricing is a useful signal for that. I disagree. Pricing is a very poor signal for that, depending on the sort of good. Pricing tells you what the target demographic of the store is. It doesn't reliably tell you much about quality. > but you almost never see high-end products sold at mid-range prices. I guess that depends on what you mean by "high end", but in my experience, there isn't usually a great deal of difference in quality between high priced and mid priced goods. The large and consistent difference between the two is in presentation and aesthetic design. If those are important to you, fair enough. But I don't consider either of those to be quality issues.
- technothrasher 3y ago
  > If you want free market to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly. But as we've seen, in a free market this deceit is rewarded, not punished. And if you try to intervene with government punishment, then it's not a free market. In other words, a truly "free market" doesn't work (in the sense that you meant when you said "work").
Taek 3y ago
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.
- mbajkowski 3y ago
  +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
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    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.
- zerkten 3y ago
  I'm not sure what time period you are referring to. In the UK in the 90s you would call up Dell and talk to them about pricing and specs after seeing an ad like those on https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-dell-computers https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-dell-computers. The customer service experience at the time was great compared to what you'd typically deal with in the UK. I was the person buying computers for my parents' business, my parents' friends, and some of my friends, all through my parent's business . The reps were probably a little confused because they had repeat orders from the same "customer", but knew they were also dealing with a teenager that had done their research. This yielded some fun conversations and I always felt that they wanted to be competitive with their pricing. Unfortunately, this all changed towards the end of the 90s as PC manufacturers cut costs, moved to the web, and outsourced.
  - 3y ago

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 to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly.

jonfw 3y ago
if you want the free market to work, consumers can’t use price to evaluate quality
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  This 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
    Price is even more easily gamed than reviews, i don’t care how bad reviews get, pricing will always be a terrible signal
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this term always sounds like slur to me as compared to customers) Agree. I try to avoid using the term "consumer" except maybe when it's talking about actually consuming things (such as food and drink).
- yifanl 3y ago
  We have price as a proxy precisely because consumers can't accurately evaluate the quality of all goods, especially in an age where spectacle marketing dominates.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  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.
usefulcanoll 3y ago
I may be naive, but I've only used the _current_ price of something to evaluate whether I'd be willing to pay this right now, disregarding any previous or future pricing. This way it hasn't mattered whether a sofa was claimed to be "worth" $500 or $5k and I can justify it in the future to myself that I deemed something worth what was asked at the time
- Filligree 3y ago
  There are genuine differences between high-end and mid-range products, which are never fully covered by technical specs. If you're lucky, you can watch three or four youtube videos and get a general impression; but you can't do that for every product, so you need to make a shortlist first. Pricing is a useful signal for that. Then there are mid-range products sold at a high price, of course, but you almost never see high-end products sold at mid-range prices.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Pricing is a useful signal for that. I disagree. Pricing is a very poor signal for that, depending on the sort of good. Pricing tells you what the target demographic of the store is. It doesn't reliably tell you much about quality. > but you almost never see high-end products sold at mid-range prices. I guess that depends on what you mean by "high end", but in my experience, there isn't usually a great deal of difference in quality between high priced and mid priced goods. The large and consistent difference between the two is in presentation and aesthetic design. If those are important to you, fair enough. But I don't consider either of those to be quality issues.
technothrasher 3y ago
> If you want free market to work, then deceit needs to be punished really harshly. But as we've seen, in a free market this deceit is rewarded, not punished. And if you try to intervene with government punishment, then it's not a free market. In other words, a truly "free market" doesn't work (in the sense that you meant when you said "work").

Taek 3y ago

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.

mbajkowski 3y ago
+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
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  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.
zerkten 3y ago
I'm not sure what time period you are referring to. In the UK in the 90s you would call up Dell and talk to them about pricing and specs after seeing an ad like those on https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-dell-computers https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-dell-computers. The customer service experience at the time was great compared to what you'd typically deal with in the UK. I was the person buying computers for my parents' business, my parents' friends, and some of my friends, all through my parent's business . The reps were probably a little confused because they had repeat orders from the same "customer", but knew they were also dealing with a teenager that had done their research. This yielded some fun conversations and I always felt that they wanted to be competitive with their pricing. Unfortunately, this all changed towards the end of the 90s as PC manufacturers cut costs, moved to the web, and outsourced.
- 3y ago