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Same Part, Same Supplier, Different Prices
linuxwrangler writes "Infoworld's "Notes From The Field column this week includes a comment from a reader who found that Dell listed several different prices for the same part. Intrigued, I grabbed the first part number I found (a 512MB memory module #A0193405) and found that the list price is $289.99 which the price offered to "large businesses". Meanwhile, the GSA/DOD contract price is $266.21 while "home users" find the list-price discounted to $275.49 and "small businesses" fare even better with a $246.49 price. InfoWorld contacted Dell who responded, "Each segment sets its own pricing, and consumers are free to pick the one that's cheapest." Buyer beware."
Different pricing strategy is not wrong, but allowing anyone to buy from any section is not so smart. And I can't believe they are actually expecting customers to help themselves, instead of building a site that is smart enough to provide useful information.
I wonder why isn't Dell doing something to control the purchase upon "Add To Cart"? Something like:
"This item is only available to our spend-like-no-tomorrow customers, please enter SLNT code now to add to cart, or select an alternative item from the following..."
Maybe it's a miscommunication between marketing and IT department?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Sufferin sakataush!!! (sp?)
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
That's just hilarious. I can't say I'm surprised... I've never liked Dell. They have a lot of shady practices, and it doesn't seem like they're convinced with offering the best value on hardware. Their support plans might be nice (and I'd assume that's why lots of schools/gov'ts use Dell), but that's not what I need. Heh.. dell...
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
This is nothing. Dell always has sold to the business market for more.
I found this out years ago when I had to upgrade 300+ computers. I went on to their site, found the best price for the most power, and then called up for the best bulk price
The system I picked was the Dimension, with the latest tech. But the salesman wanted me to buy the 'business optimized' OptiPlex. I pointed out that each unit was MUCH more expensive for the same power, he tried to sell me that new technology was not good for business - I should use 'proven' hardware (i.e. 1 year old chips at top prices).
I told him no thanks, please give me a price on 300+ Dimensions as I specified them.
He did give me a price, but when I went to my boss to get the check, I found out that the salesguy called him and told him to but the OptiPlex! Then my PHB believed the vendor, and I eventually got fired cuz I would not support them. (The drivers for the network card would not support the latest Windows)
Something to think about.
It's called Channel Marketing/Pricing and it's been around for years.
If it takes me an hour of research to save $10 I have lost much more than I've gained.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Or, you could just do the smart thing and buy your upgrades from a small, local computer shop (or PriceWatch) instead of Dell.
Of course they market the same part with different prices. IT folks can gladly use 512 MB, while home users might be hesitant. That's one of the reasons, when I bought my 20" LCD from Dell, that I ordered as a "Small Business" customer instead of a "Home" user. In total, I saved about 25%, or $250 at the time.
Any of the deal sites know this very well. The Dell site has you pick your "store" on the very front page. Depending on which store you pick, there's different pricing, different costs for shipping, sometimes even different tax rates. They've had this system in place for years.
Welcome to 3 years ago.
Maybe internal competition will drive down their own prices.
Other than the different managers setting the prices for their groups, does Dell use an automated pricing system that sets the final price based on past sales of an item at a given price and a customer group's willingness to pay a certain price? I'm sure they spend a lot of money researching the price points that result in maximum profits for a given customer and I wouldn't be suprised if their website set an "optimally profitable" price point based on the latest market data.
--
Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS
Wired article as proof
Though not exactly the same, I ran across a very similar situation when shopping for memory cards for my camera.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
This is nothing new. (just to note we are discussing off the shelf price, not haggled prices through sales people) Dell (and other companies) always offer different prices to different organizations. There is the gov't groups, non-profits, small business, large business, consumer, students, etc...
The company I work for buys all dell hardware (servers, desktops, laptops, monitors) - so we get a slight automatic discount on stuff (not that much really, techbargains can usually offer a better price).
Sometimes, not always, being the big corporation won't get you the best off-the-shelf price. Also, many of times times (as it should be) companies have to input their EIN number to get the price (and usually tax discount)...students need to provide proof of their student status... same for other organizations.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"How tiny pieces of paper can save YOU big money!"
.. not even from Dell. In fact, you don't even have to be that large, but if you are committing to buy a reasonable amount of kit, you can get discounts of 15% or more.
;)
See, that is why you actually need all these weird people in companies that don't program: Purchasing Managers do have a purpose
no taxation without representation!
I am wondering if it is like the extended warranty model the computer companies are using. You buy the consumer version of a computer, and you get 90 days or a year, small businesses maybe two years and large corporations a full three years. Parts bought through the corporate division might have a cross-ship arrangtement, but the consumer division might have a delay, where they wait to see the defective part before sending a replacement.
This is all speculative though.
satisfaction in knowing that the advice I have given others that Dell isnt all its cracked up to be level 5
No smoking sigs indoors.
my cousin will sit all day adding and removing components from the dell website. There are lots of hidden discounts to be gotten if you are persistant. You can make a PC for 800$ or make one with more ram and a bigger hard driver for $600. One time he even got 6 free palm zires and an axion.
...every economy seat on an airplane is bought for the same price too.
a 512MB memory module ... $289.99 ... $266.21 ... $275.49 ... $246.49 .... priceless.
:)
a 512MB memory module
a 512MB memory module
a 512MB memory module
Not buying from Dell
But seriously, it always pays to shop around. You just wouldn't expect to be shopping around from the same suppiler.
A lot of desktops are cheaper in the home user section than in the small business section.
I work for a large direct marketer who competes with Dell.
We set prices not only for different segments on any given part, but sometimes for specific customers. This practice has been done for years, and is a smart way of maximizing profit from different segments.
Dell seems to be making a mistake by telling consumers they can buy at the cheapest price if they want.
In the company I am in, if you sell to the wrong segment at too low a price, you (the sales rep) will loose out, becuase any lost GP (Gross Profit) that happens as a result of the sale directly comes out of your paycheck.
Also, on our web site, if you account is clasiffied for a specific pricing segment, you get prices for that segment only.
That way we make sure that the right segments get the right prices.
it depends on whether or not you're 'researching' from work, since you're being PAID to research for your own personal crap. Then again, if you get caught, you might just get SACKED. :-/
aka "capitalism"
Same can of pop from aisle inside the supermarket = 20 cents.
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!" -- Karl Marx
If a segment can afford to pay more, Dell and other companies will find a way to get them to pay it. You find it in airline ticket prices (last minute, weekday travel fares catch business travellers), remodelling projects cost more in rich neighborhoods, sales people judge the buyer and set the price accordingly, etc.
Is it really that different from a progressive tax system in which the rich pay more than the poor?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This goes on everywhere. The buyer continues to be responsible for getting the best price. Ever asked for your "promotional" code when ordering from a catalog. Different catalogs have different pricing and they want to make sure they quote you the price you expect to see. Buyer beware. Now as always.
P.S. The small biz prices they offer on the 2001FP flat panel a couple times a year KICKS ASS. If you will be in the market for an LCD, check it out.
I mean, come on. Has slashdot been living under a rock since the invention of the cash register?
sulli
RTFJ.
This is old hat to those lurk in deal forums. Dell Small Business has the best deals... but then they smack you with shipping. The same computer over in Dell Home has a higher price... and the coupon codes don't work.
Accordingly FedEx apparently only charges Dell about 20$ to ship a computer. Ones that are damaged go to the dump. Dell charges 99$ shipping.
This is a standard practice. It is the same as giving senior's discounts. You can often make more money if you can divide your customers into different groups and charge each group the optimal price. An example is senior's discounts. Senior citizens are often more sensitive to changes in prices than other customers, so lowering the price for them gets an increase in sales that make up for it, at the same time you keep the prices high for the younger customers who will pay it. The only difference here is rather than diving customers on age, they rely somewhat on customer ignorance to allow them to charge difference prices.
In some cases (certain items/products) you'll even find that the GSA "discount" prices are far higher (even approacing double) than the other prices.
The "justification" for this is that the DOD requires the product to meet certain specifications for things such as "durability" or to have finer tolerances on certain performance attributes etc. So, since they are the ones causing the need for the "more costly" manufacturing process, they are the ones that foot the bill to make sure it meets their specs.
The point of business is to make profits. That's exactly what Dell is doing. What's the problem?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Dell has been doing this for a long, long time. It hasn't been a big secret that about 90% of the time, you're best off (financially) buying things through the Small Business side of dell.com.
High-end LCD monitors last year were seeing 25%-50% discounts on the Small Business pages. For the individual user, it makes sense (as usual) to shop around. Institutional customers are usually stuck with whatever prices their contracts are for -- the US Govt can't buy through small business, and your academic customers can't either.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
1) Buy Dell 512MB memory module ... $246.49 ... $289.99 ...
2) Sell Dell 512MB memory module
3)
4) Profit!!!
I thought everyone did. If they're giving away free upgrades you almost always get memory upgrades from the Small Business unit while you get some sort of cheezwhiz music ripping software free from the Home division. Plus the prices are usually cheaper. I doubled my memory and saved $200 by buying from the Small Business division. That's hardly a waste of time.
back in the late 90's I worked at a body shop as a side job for a while. We got in a Dodge viper a guy had curbed.
I was tasked with the job of locating and pricing the suspension parts we needed for this and another project, a small dodge pickup.
Well, long story short.
I found that the part numbers on the lower control arm on the truck and the viper were the same. But the Viper part cost $900, and the truck part cost $300.
I was shocked, but I'm not surprised that electronics dealers would do the same thing on stuff.
Pretty Pictures!
The comments of "Wow! That's hilariously dumb" are starting to come in already. Dell is not stupid. Keep an open mind to the fact that something that is counter-intuitive might still be the best way to do something.
In this case, Dell is taking advantage of an inefficiency in the marketplace. Specifically that customers are honestly identifying themselves and they're offering the highest price they feel that particular type of customer will pay. Of course, this starts to break down when customer knowledge makes the marketplace more efficient, but the average person is not a Slashdot denizen or FatWallet (or similar site) checker.
I'm a big tall mofo.
As noted in a previous article, this is nothing new. In fact, Amazon.com has already done this.
When configuring my latest Dell server, ordering 2GB with the machine was additional $900 (and you did not get the 256K module)
Ordering the memory separately via small business was IIRC about $300 each (total of $600) and you get to keep the 256K.
But wait, it gets even better... ordering via home user, and using a Dell coupon, I got each stick for $220 and free shipping.
But wait, there is still more... I returned the 256K that came with the server (other than a single 256K, must use pairs) for $125.
Bottom line, instead of $900 I got 2GB for only $315.
The server itself is a 3.0 GHz Xeon 800FSB EMT64 and a 160GB SATA, was only $450 after coupon and free upgrades to CPU and HD, and so I have a really nice server for $765 (instead of about $2000)
-avi
-avi
We wanted to purchase a couple LCDs from Dell and we noticed that "consumer pricing" was cheaper than our "government pricing." So we ordered it from the consumer's site instead.
I'll join the chorus of folks who've pointed out that Dell has done this for, like, ever and that it's quite common in the industry. Best Buy, CompUSA and Circuit City each pay different prices to manufacturers and distributors for the same parts, too.
By the way, Dell's pricing strategy is primarily the reason that the first question you're asked on the Dell home page when you begin shopping is not "how much do you want to spend?" but "where will you be using it?".
At the large company for which I work, whenever we buy Dells, we simply have somebody buy them on a personal credit card and have them shipped to a home address.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Unless I'm looking in the wrong place the article actually talks about 256MB modules not 512, but anyways:
"Depending on the link he followed, the 256MB SIMM cost either $88 (Small Business), $99 (Home & Home Office), or $110 (Medium & Large Business)."
Why in the world anyone would ever buy memory from dell continues to confuse me. A 256MB dimm from crucial for a dimension 4600 runs 42.99. A 512 one runs 76.99.
Why pay more than double from dell???
If you decide to buy something from Dell, you have to do your research and be on the lookout for coupons and sales, or you will lose potentially lose hundreds of dollars.
For example, several months ago when I ordered a Dell laptop, you could choose between a regular or high capacity battery. The interesting thing was that it was cheaper to get a spare high capacity battery and keep the regular one, rather than upgrading the default battery to high capacity with no spare one.
Unfortunately, smart consumers are rare, and Dell profits from things like this.
And it's been around for millenia.
I've noticed this with Dell for a while now. Sometimes Dell will have different prices, sales, or coupons codes for the different stores. If you don't know of a particular discount from elsewhere, such as a coupon web site, you have to check EACH STORE. SEPARATELY.
I take it that since this irks me, I must not be their targeted customer, so I plan to buy elsewhere.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Their Dell suppored cheap deathstar notebook drives (40GB 2MB Buffer 4200RPM) are also more expensive at $89 than a unsupported Seagate 'Cuda 40GB 8MB 5400RPM drive at $75... Last time I checked.
which dump? I have some vacation time saved up..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is a prime example of the failure of Capitalism.
The idea was that competition would bring down prices of products to the lowest sustainable price.. Instead we have the same corporation pricing items discrimatorially. This is the opposite effect that the founders of this country (based econimically on Capitalism) intended.
My GF just ordered a laptop from the Dell website. We noticed that the pricing for the 700M was different between the home user section and the small business section.
I had also noticed in December that if you browsed straight from dell.com to various desktop PCs, you would sometimes get different pricing than if you started from the dell.com/tv url that they give on the TV commercials.
I assumed that this was about promotional deals tied to the advertising medium.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
what if you plan on buying 300 of them tommorow?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Meanwhile, you can get the same memory from crucial.com for less than half that price, complete with a lifetime warranty...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Regular or Premium?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yes, there is a difference in pricing in the different sections, but one of the things that is different is the return/exchange policy. If you buy an LCD from the Home Consumer, you can exchange it for absolutely any reason, including something superficial like a scratch on the mount. I had a friend with a bright spot on his 20" lcd, not a dead pixel or anything, but just a bright spot, and he sent it back in no problem. However, you don't get such a policy when you buy from Small Business.
So, yes, one may be cheaper, but not necessarily better, if you're unlucky.
I have known this for years. My last 8 systems were 'small business' purchases [only one of them is a Dell, so its not just dell], and it is amazing how much you save sometimes. As long as you know what you want, and how much you want to pay for it, its all good. Also, sometimes you can get a better price just by using ye-olde telephone. Just ask them for a price on a system and read off all of the details that you just selected on the website, see what they say.
Video Production Support
$246.49 for 512 meg of memory in todat's market and the post can call this "fare even better" ? Hardly, it's a huge over charge for buying from Dell. Sadly, some Dell systems do require "special" memory, I had tried to help a girlfriend add memory to her Dell system a few years ago and we learmed that standard memory would not work in it. Dell used some memory with very strange clock requirements. Still, we were able to get the memory from any of several large memory suppliers for about half of what Dell wanted for it (although for significantly more than "standard" (and faster) memory would cost. The lesson is don't buy memory at all from Dell, and to avoid getting "locked in", don't buy at all from them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
When WalMart, or whomever, decides to sell a product for *what it costs* vs. *what they can get for it*.
Please, no flames, I am not supporting WalMart, just interesting to think about the different perspectives.
Recently bought an iMac and went searching for RAM upgrades at crucial.com. Their PC3200 RAM was priced at about $76. When you use their RAM finder for the system you have, the "Apple Approved" memory was $86. But it was the same specs as the regular 3200.
I called Crucial and asked the difference and they said there was not a difference to buy the cheaper stuff. A couple of days later I checked back and they were the same price.
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
I remember many years ago when I got a new phone installed in an apartment. I used to answer the phone with "Greetings" instead of "Hello". The phone company said that if I didn't answer the phone with "Hello", they would charge me the much higher business rate. Same service, but if they can find some angle to extort more money from you, they will.
Now we live in an age where merchandising is an art form that revolves around the science of using peoples' laziness against them economically. Products are advertised with "rebates" fooling consumers into thinking that the published price is what they're paying. For those that don't shop around, they lose.
What bothers me most about this scene is not the variation in prices... I can respect companies' having different pricing schemes based on the market. What I can't stand is the marketplace being mined with "fluff" products that really don't perform as advertised. This has become a really slippery slope for the consumer. Walk into a Blockbuster and you'll find tons of crappy movies you've never heard of among more popular movies -- they seed the shelves with cheap products. This is rampant in the software and electronics fields too... nowadays you have to do a lot of research not only to get a decent price, but to even make sure what you're buying doesn't turn out to be a complete fraud.
Just yesterday I was in Target, I looked in the software section and there was a $50 piece of software from Nero that purported to "COPY DVDs". Way down in fine print it said, "This product will copy all non-copy-protected DVDs" -- does the typical consumer know that this Nero product is essentially useless and won't allow him/her to back up their movies? I doubt it. Next to this software was another package much cheaper that also promised to copy DVDs and it makes no mention of being limited to non-copy-protected media. It's like walking in a mine field trying to even find out if any of this crap will even do what you expect it to do... never mind the price.
I'm not saying not to buy your memory from your vendor, but in some instances youcan save money. Likewise, if you have to purchase older parts it is often easier to find compatible replacement parts (think inkjet cartridges) rather than pay the full amount to the vendor for the same.
This reminds me of when I had to get my windshield replaced. Call for an estimate, and tell them it's through my insurance company and they give me a price. Call back again later, don't mention insurance company, half the price. And since either way it was under my deductable, it really didn't matter all that much.
Joel on Software has a (typically) entertaining and insightful piece on pricing and market segmentation.
I read
Dude! Your getting a DULL
The GSA specifies you have to give them the best price, that is if you sell it someone else for less they automatically get that price goinf forward.
... and there were lots of tricks you could pull.
Price up a laptop with more memory then standard in it and you get one price for the memory upgrade. Buy the laptop and order a seperate memory upgrade at the same time (and fit it yourself) and you will find the memory upgrade is much cheaper. Most I once saw was half price for the memory.
Also, if you are buying in bulk and you wait until near the end of the quarter, the salesmen can be desperate for a deal to go in that quarter for their bonus. I managed to get £25,000 of equipment for £18,000 without too much trouble.
Bob.
One of my friends was trying to spec out a Dell computer.
He asked them for the price on the base unit.
He asked how much it cost to add X amount of RAM.
He asked him to take it off and asked them the base unit price again.
That is when he noticed that the price had gone up. I guess teh time spent putting the memory in the board and then taking it out cost them something...
Dell is the Wal-Mart of the PC world. When people stop being enarmored about the retail price and get a quality product you will probalbly see some some real competition. As it is, Dell is still the king of PC's.
(Some bought a few hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars worth of merchanise. Because the corruption was random, if you didn't like the prive, you reloaded the page.)
Fox Store, at first, threatened not to honor the sales, but in the end honored most of those that were less than $100.
The moral of the story is that the same part from the same supplier may well have different prices, but that until you have the product in your hands, you've no guarantee that the company will actually honor anything they've offered.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Embezzlement: "Easy as Dell."
Slums may be the breeding grounds of crime, but the suburbs are breeding grounds of apathy.
I understand that in the UK consumer protection laws have provisions for returning mis-ordered goods, but that this right is not extended to business purchases. So, I guess that if a vendor believes a significant proportion of its goods will be returned by private buyers (for example because the goods do not live up to customer expectations) it seems reasonable for businesses to be offered a discount. Conversely, businesses often demand a higher standard of account management and are willing to pay over-the-odds for this improved service.
[BTW - my last two laptops have been Dell - but after being seriously under-whelmed by Dell's poor customer service and underhand practices I intend to buy a different brand when this one requires replacement in a year or so.]
Dei watha thevidiya payale! Not everybody in India speaks Hindi, and this is especially true for half of Bangalore and the whole of Madras. If you want to verbally abuse someone (not recommended in the first place), please don't do it in a language that they hate more than the profanity itself.
This is called "Market Segmentation".
This is a good thing for companies to practice from a profit point of view. Its the process that makes the most money. It also means that people who can not afford to pay a higher price (e.g. students, the elderly) can get software/movie tickets at something they can afford.
Joel Spolsky wrote about it here.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
I noticed this the other day when I was browsing the "Small Business" rack-mount poweredge servers then I went over to see what they had in the "Medium & Large Business" rack-mount poweredge servers area.. I found the same thing in the large business area at a higher cost.
Some of dell's products are hard to beat price wise, their servers are very nice for small business. The only thing they get you on is the additional hard drives and lots of ram - you can easily get those at other online shops for about 30% off dell's price.
While we're doing Cranky User columns, I wrote about this long ago:
Pigeonholed!
I even used Dell as an example (either here or in the book I'm working on) of a company I won't buy from because I don't like being asked to pick a customer type before I can buy products.
VINDICATED!
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
..and found this out recently.
The guy that deals with buying equipment called Dell up wanting some machines like what he'd bought his kids.
For his kids, Dell charged 300gbp per box.
For the school, they wanted around 30% more!
Dell's excuse was really laughable. Something about "For schools, the computers can be further upgraded before purchasing so it gives you the option of upgrading at the point of sale.". They could be upgraded for home use too, so that didn't really wash.
I work in a campus computing store at a public university, and we have an agreement with Dell, so we get an academic discount. Our program is basically the same as Dell's Home and Home Office division, but they take a percentage off the top for the educational discount. We have a seperate program where we can get fixed priced systems (i.e. we have a constant price on a specific configuration that doesn't change every day) that goes through a different process.
But, when you order through those "storefronts" you have to pay sales tax, which you don't have to pay (or usually pay very little of) when going through the "Home & Home Office" or "Small Business" divisions of Dell, but you're supposed to claim those purchases on your income tax.
So we get stuck explaining to new students (and their parents) that they could buy the same system from 4 different places, and pay 4 different prices. The good news is, usually there's ~ $100 variation amongst all the pricing, so you can't get royally screwed. Our rep flat out told us that the different Dell divisions compete against each other for the same business.
But we (the employees here) almost always buy from "Small Business" for our own systems, because they usually have the best prices.
I managed a 35% reduction in price + free shipping and a printer last time.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
is that a "large business" never buys from the web site. They have their premier.dell.com site with prices that have been negotiated just for them. If they want something else they go to the large biz page, spec it out, then call their sales rep to get the real price.
Most home users don't call, they just order it off the web. Therefore no price breaks beyond the deals.
Another note is that if ordered from the biz side you must pay sales tax because Dell has biz presence in every state but this is not true on the home side of things. Shipping rates vary, etc.
Our purchasing department noticed the same thing about a year ago when purchasing from Dell. Our faculty were complaining that our contract computer price quotes were much higher than the quotes the faculty had generated using the "Home User" website at Dell.com. Even after accounting for longer warranties and "Gold Tech Support" (part of our purchasing contract), we were still being charged significantly more than if the faculty member had purchased the computer themself, then obtained a re-imbursement from the university. In some case, it was several hundred dollars.
caveat emptor
The company I'm at spends a LOT of money on Dell. Servers (~700), workstation (~7500) and printers (a lot...). We are able to use the employee purchase option to buy computers for personal use discounted through Dell. I don't personally do it (I like to build mine...) but for family members I recommend Dell as I refuse to build computers for family (I hate turning into a tech support operator...).
Anyway, the last three computers I've bought for people (2 pc's, 1 laptop) have been cheaper to buy as a consumer than they have been as an "employee". It's kind of aggravating to be honest - here, our company spends millions a year on Dell equipment, and we can't get stuff as cheap as Joe Schmoe that buys 1 pc every 4 years. It was the same thing w/ a couple of Axim's w/ all the bells and whistles we bought not too long ago.
oh come on, sell cheap to the small business so that they think youre amazing, once they get big rip them off when theyve got dell logos screaming at them in the office. home users cant order from business sections, but still get decent price.
you do have to remember though, this is dell. i doubt that people buying from them will be dilligently screening prices from different sources, more of an "oooo, ive heard those work" sort of attitude
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
I would never EVER buy a computer from Dell however Dell makes very nice Flat Panel Monitors. I recived one a a christmas gift from my uncle. He bought be a 17in and I really wanted a 19in, so I called Dell up and talked to a rep. Instead of having me send back the monitor, They let me keep it and gave me $200 off the $300 monitor. So I got 2 flat panels for $100. I have to say I was very pleased with Dell's service in that regard. Ossus
... I don't know why. Greed probably.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
discrimatory pricing is common practice, now that you know this you can get better deals.
people who take a moral stance against this practice are retarded
One of Dell's fun tricks seems to be charging far more for parts when brought with a PC then they would do if purchased separately. For example, a 1905FP monitor from Dell's UK site costs £284.59 on its own (including tax and shipping). A random Dimension PC from the home and home office section includes a monitor in the price and has the option of upgrading to the 1950FP monitor for £339.58. It actually works out cheaper to get the bundled 17" monitor and buy the other nice LCD screen as well then to just buy the good screen with the PC.
Once you've worked out you need to play the Dell website game to get the best prices from them, it is just adds an extra layer of hassle to buying PCs. Perhaps someone could make an app that scrapes their web pages looking for the best deals (e.g. is it best to start with a high spec PC and customise the components downwards or is it better to start with a low spec PC and add the bits you want).
I noticed this about 2 years ago, I figured it was common knownledge
anyways I don't understand why so many are anti-dell, they aren't perfect, but for the common user compared to hp and emachines and such, they are the best option, unless someone wants to shell out for an alienware, or can custom build or has a friend that will for them
Signatures are so 90s
as with anything, it is buyer be aware!
Caveat emptor.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I bought a flat panel monitor from Dell.com this weekend. The difference in price seems to reflect a difference in shipping. I paid a little more for the monitor, but got free shipping.
As I recall, to get a product put on the GSA schedule in the first place (for purchase by government customers), the vendor has to offer their "best commercial price" to the GSA. So it's not surprising that that GSA/DOD price is low. Collectively, the Federal government is buying in bulk after all.
s /9039-1.html and search on "best commercial price".
(Old) reference: http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/9_17/new
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
If you have the time, monitor a "Hot Deal" forum such as Anadtech or fatwallet and jump on Dell's occasional sales on low end servers and the like.
I got a my latest hot rod gaming rig for a song!
And unlike some other posters my support (and sales) experience has been terrific.
Cheers
Bill
bamph
DOD customers are a pain to deal with. Mounds of paperwork etc to execute an order. High hassle factor customers.
Small business, at the other end, have relatively straight forward paperwork etc, low risk, typically reasonably tech savvy.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I used to see this sort of thing all the time, except it was even more confounding because there was often no apparent difference at all between the products. In the specific case of a large wholesaler/distributor like Tech Data, I often found the exact same model components with different part numbers, different volumes in stock and different prices. There was rarely any differentiation between one or the other as in the aforementioned Dell cases. They were just the same things in the same product categories for different prices! I also recall seeing French and English versions that would sometimes differ in price with English usually being cheaper.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Heck, they even vary the price based on what system it is for. I was looking for laptop memory from them recently. I noticed that the exact same part number was either $124 or $140 depending on which Dell laptop you were ordering it for.
We spec'd a really cheap server to run a simulator in my department from the Dell SB for around 500 bucks. But because our IT has signed a deal with dell we have to use the "premier" service through dell. Same server now costs us 700 bucks. That isn't even the worst part. Base equipment was a Celeron D 32J. If you want to upgrade to a 2.8 P4 on the SB site, it is $99. But in the premier site the SAME UPGRADE was over $270 dollars. This is more than a retail 2.8 P4 even costs!!!!
To cut a long story short - various people in the company (accounts, HR, sales) had a look on the Dell website to try and pick and choose what he should get. Then it came to me and after looking up a basic machine for his requirements (reasonable speed and ram with some future proofing & Win XP pro) AND his precious TFT screen, the price came to almost double what they were offering on the frontpage of the glossy brochure.
What happened in the end? I spent the saved money on a 19" TFT for him and some speakers. Now the only thing left is to ask for a raise.
where the highest price is the only option
About a year ago we were shopping for laptops for our division of our college. I got an online quote from the small business area of the dell site, because it was the same inspirion laptop as the ed site, just $400 cheaper. Our dell rep would not sell us the laptop. According to her, and I believe her, internally dell is just like 4 separate companies selling the same machines. Her education division could not match it, it had to do with volume or whatnot. Regardless, I was still pissed. $20 or $30 bucks on ram is one thing, but $400 per laptop is another, especially when you're looking to buy 30 or more. We ended up getting 100 toshibas that were awesome, much better for the price. I still think it's pretty low to overcharge education customers. I've found the same pricing differences now that I'm in the k12 arena. P
-- My dog can beat up your dog.
Only on /. would a comment like this be modded +5 Informative.
Well, thanks for the info, I guess...
I just find it annoying, thats all, and a calculated risk of doing business.
It should be obvious to consumers that larger companies get 'breaks' on shipping. If that weren't so, do you think the tide of 'junk mail' you receive would be nearly so great? Think about it- if they were forced to pay 37 cents per letter (if that's the current cost...) instead of the bulk 17 cents or less... they'd use more targeted attacks.
Shippings all cool and dandy. I used to buy from an ebayer that got my companies spare equipment. When they started charging 60$ for shipping and would no longer allow local pickup, I stopped.
Don't buy from Dell!
Fuck 'em! Just fuck 'em!
It's worse than that. Whole product lines are unavailable to people with personal accounts.
Through some very weird circumstances, a trainer that came to our site did not have a working laptop. This adversely impacted the training we purchased, so I tried to straighten it out to no avail. (It looked like a dying video subsystem.) I set her up on one of ours, but it just wan't the same.
She wasn't getting satisfaction from her own IT people, and hadn't been for months. That's tough on a road warrior... 3,000 miles from the home office, and she can't fill out her timesheets because her IT staff won't fix or replace her company laptop. So I suggested that if she was really desperate, she should consider doing something extremely ruthless: Buy a new laptop and expense it. If she thought her boss would back up her expense report, anyway.
The glow of gleeful, righteous wrath lit her eyes, and she whipped out her cell phone so fast it hummed. As she dialed Dell and dug for her credit card, she asked me for a recommended system, and I gave her one from Dell's Lattitude line of business laptops. She tried to order it on her personal Dell account, and the Dell rep on the phone would not take the order. She was so astonished that she asked me to talk to Dell for her. I got the same result.
I said to the rep, "So here you have a customer willing to give you about three thousand dollars right now, for a product Dell makes, and you won't sell it to her because she has the wrong account type?"
"That's right, sir" came the reply.
"That's nuts!" I gasped.
"That's the way it is, sir."
I guess the customer isn't right after all.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I work for a school, but we always buy from Dell's small business site rather than their education site because of the huge difference in pricing. The only annoying part is that you can't order more than 5 machines at a time from the small business division.
-- Tim Buchheim
Dell has had a wildly varied price structure for years. I'm sure this is one of the reasons I always found dell.com such a hard site to navigate - to make it as difficult as possible to create exactly the same computer under two different sections, then compare the prices.
As the posting and TFA indicate, the easiest way to check their price practices is to look at components, rather than whole systems. We replaced my wife's teeny hard drive a year ago, and saved about $40 by going through the Small Business branch, even though the exact part# was available through other branches.
(Our other experience with Dell was that even when we got a price quote on a full system from them, they refused to honor it, bumping the price up by $100 three days later. Have not trusted them since.)
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
I vaguely remember someone telling me that GSA price is the lowest by law. Isn't it?
I'm surrounded by Assholes!
-- Hamster
Let's see, I can have expensive surgery with a 5-10% risk of serious complications (which include complete loss of vision and many others) and a 40% rate of more minor complications (some of which are also permanent and more annoying than contact lenses). And the surgery might not even correct the problem completely! No thanks.
and for those of us who can't afford lasik... any suggestions?
please me, have no regrets.
I got a call this evening from someone with an incredibly thick Indian accent and a terrible connection, who said he was from Dell. He wanted to know how everything was with my new computer and to tell me that they were running special deals today only on anything and everything from Dell. "Do you want any flat screen TV," he asked, "digital camera, software, printer, ink cartridges?" Anything at all and he would give me "a really great price." "Where are these deals listed," I asked. "These deals are only available today," he said, "and only over the phone." Yeah, right. B.L. Ochman What's Next Blog
Actually a friend of mine works their tech support for their silver plans. She also knows bronze and gold techs, and she as well as them are in the Austin area.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
and this will eventually kill them!
Nothing else needs to be said. They are their own worst enemy!
My company buys Dell, so they get to extend an employee discount to us for home machines. But I found that it is cheaper to buy without the discount. When I punched in the company discount code, all the free shipping and upgrade deals disappeared.
As a small business I bought some RAM recently, before that I was stuck on 64MB. It took me 10 months to justify the cost of the new RAM vs other things the business needs. This scenario is not uncommon and I bet that's why SMB get the lowest pricing...
Posting anon because I value my privacy...
You know, it doesn't surprise me at all that Dell has differing pricing tiers. What does really surprise me is that they charge businesses MORE for buying in bulk like this.
:)
I work in business sales for CompUSA. We too have tiers... there's retail, then there's business pricing. Plan to spend $100k a year? You can expect a lower price than the company spending $10k, or the individual spending $1k. Each customer, in my experience, tends to need about the same amount of customer support (processing orders and RMAs, creating quotes, finding hard to find equipment, etc.), but the costs to the company has to spend, in other opportunities lost and in payroll, for my time and for the time of everyone else involved is lower.
SELF PROMOTION ALERT!
By the way, if anyone out is a tech buyer for their company and there would like to deal with a rep who DOES price with an ounce of sense, drop me an email: brian.brianschweitzer@gmail.com
The best-case scenario is to make your org as much a monoculture as possible. If every machine is the same, you don't waste time trying to figure out whether it's the Jan2005 version of that Fujitsu hard disk that's giving you trouble, or if it's likeley to be something else becuase there have never been problems with the Nov 2004 Fujitsus. If every machine is the same, you don't have to troubleshoot how your new netword drivers cooperate with the code coming from your legacy AIX boxes running your custom-coded business database application.
Next best is if you have slightly different hardware, but just one software image, and regular automated backups. If something goes wrong on one box, it will be wrong on all boxes. If something is funny with just one box, you can fix it by wiping it clean and re-installing the original image, and then dragging custom files over from the backup.
of course, in normal businesses, this isn't possible. So you have maybe 3 kinds of boxes, with one image each, that you give to 90% of the folks you support. This leaves you with ten people who have an oddball machine, for an effective total of 13 different computers for you to manage (and you just hope that those ten 'special' people won't take up 50% of your support time).
Ok, now think big for a second. Think about managing an organization with 100,000 PC's. Now think about buying 100,000 BRAND-NEW PC's to replace the boxes you have today. You have the same basic desires- minimize hardware differences, consolidate images, standardize across the userbase. But if you call Dell today, I bet you a million bucks that they won't be able to ship you 100,000 identical PC's all at once- not tomorrow, not next month.
So what happens when you tell Dell you want to order 30,000 of PC model A, 40,000 of model B, and 25,000 of model C? They'll ask you for a roll-out schedule, and a list of delivery addresses, and give you a product roadmap for when they plan to run out of P4 3.2 GHz chips and move up to P4 3.8GHz chips, so you can sync your roll-out plans to their product roadmap. But that's not the point of the higher price for business. The higher price is necessary because you want a single hardware/software image, so when you order 95,000 PC's they have to order 95,000 of the same ethernet card to make sure that they can provide you with a stable hardware image. They pay up front for the components that go in your boxes- but you don't pay for your boxes until they ship (or even better, you don't pay until they have landed on your dock and you've had a chance to look them over). So Dell has to pay for inventory costs, and for the float on the money they used to buy your Ethernet cards ahead of when they can bill you for the computers those cards have gone into.
Contrast this with an order for 100 PCs- Dell just builds them all and ships them to you, because they have 100 of each of the relevant parts in stock.
now for the really complicated situation, which explains the different prices: Consider buying 1 PC per day, each day, for 100 days, from the consumer/small business line. If you open all of those computers and look at the parts, odds are good that several hardware components will have changed between the first order you place in January and the last one you place in April- for these lines, Dell just builds with whatever parts they happen to have on hand that day. The business-oriented products line is more expensive becuase Dell buys a large inventory of identical parts, and is prepared to commit to its large business customers that the hardware won't change more than (e.g.) once every six months. The argument is that the higher up-front cost of the equipment is more than offset by the lower overall cost to the organization that comes from managing just a few hardware configurations instead of 100,000 different PC's.
and this is a great argument, except it falls through when you realize that if you are in fact planning to buy 100,000 PC's, from ANY tier-1 vendor, you won't be paying anything near list price for them. Oh well.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
... of Dell computers.
Try as I might I couldn't come up with a business case to legally dispose of the material that I couldn't ebay.
Even as it was, I was taking a risk that there was really 60% salvageable bits of equipment within each trailer. We're talking laptops refused, LCDs, etc. I figured I could get close to 90% of value, but the cost of disposing of the material was astronomical.
That said: Dell picked up the stuff and drove it to New Jersey, backed in, and dumped it all into the pit.
Had I known thats what they were going to do I would've followed with a U-Haul and cleaned up at the back end.
Oh well. Whats 50K$ gonna buy you anyway besides an IRS audit?
On a Friday I went to Dell's site and specced out a 2U server. On the following Monday I got ahold of a woman from another department and got our company's dell login. I logged in, and the same server was instantly 20% more expensive.
Fortunately I printed the quote from the first one with the component pricing, and when I compared, the new server was uniformly more expensive on a per-component basis; it wasn't like disk or memory something had individually gone up.
I went back and re-quoted as a generic user and the price was still high, although I didn't think to dump any cookies or anything.
I suspected they just were reaming us, despite the fact that we never bought a server from them and we bought a fair number (50?) of PCs per year from them, which should have made us a "priority" customer.
We've known about this for years. You don't see us blabbing about it on /., or posting 'informative' articles.
I ordered a machine last week and I'm sure this was someone's goofup but a 17" LCD was listed with it's part number at $300.00 then directly beneath it, the same part number was listed at $150.00.
:)
Guess which one I ordered.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
bear in mind that you're not likely to screw anything up TOO badly while cleaning your own bathroom, but getting a doing a DIY brake job badly can have interesting and exciting consequences.
http//www.paragoncrt.com/
Of the few patients we have trying it, about half love it. The other half hate it. You might get lucky.
at least with some hard drives. Just lookup some HD and then search the site for the same part number. Often four prices come out. A recent example was a 300 GB Seagate HD, it had four prices, from $223 to $239...
I think he just hates major corporations "pumping" the market.
Exec: Dell can get that 10% cheaper than their competitor. Buy Dell.
(a week passes while paperwork is filled)
Tech: Placing the order... Doh!@#% Dell cost us 10% more than their competitor.
This isn't anything new as far as I'm concerned. Fast food companies often do this. I've found McDonald's to offer McNuggets for one price, and offer it another place on the menu for another price (under the meal section, but you can choose to get just the nuggets and not the meal, which is the same exact thing as getting just a 6-piece, but cheaper by like 20 cents). Eh, just be aware of your choices.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/2 16255
Dell has been doing this for years. My dad realized this recently when he bought a computer from them and the "Small business" one had a nice rebate, while the home use and others did not.
Not news, but it's nice to keep people informed.
As a frazzled Dell customer I can tell you this is one of my grievances with them (based on my past experiences, I no longer go there). I started out loving my Inspiron 7.5K laptop (450MHz with linux) but not only would Dell refuse to give me a local copy of Windows, or fix it in Japan quickly, I was also told there would soon be a giant hard disk I could put in an extra bay (never materialized) and to go to the website. Okay website, you don't know which link to take even though prices are different, I figured small businesses or home users would be the cheapskates so used those. Then you have to search for products using a search engine that sucks. The interminable pages of search results are neither usefully sorted nor navigable, and half the listings are dubious yet expensive used and refurbished parts. Oh, and the battery conked out so it can't sleep, and it has limited RAM upgradability, and they stopped linux support (or did they start that up again?) and I would like a linux driver for the touchpad, etc. Perhaps 3-4 years is a long time to use the same machine even if it was computer of the year
Dell sells some cheap computers especially for businesses but I don't really trust them. For instant satisfaction I found the best thing was to take the box to a shop that sells all kinds of hardware parts and get them to check it while I wait. So Dell's fine so long as you don't need to hang on to the machine for too long, and you don't need any support. I find their website to detract from their products. Wish they'd fix it.
absolutely. I know some ophthalmologists who are actually ethically opposed to Lasik. Basically, Lasik is a procedure that has no real medical benefit, and the risks associated come in conflict with their "do no harm" mentality. They don't see the point in operating on a perfectly good eye (in that it's nothing that putting some optics in front can't "fix").
The best price will not be found on Dell's web site. Any business customer that gets assigned a dedicated sales rep will always have the opportunity to haggle with the rep about the final price. I've seen additional discounts of 20% or more off Web "small business" pricing when ordering systems. I have a Fortune-500 IT friend who is amazed at how cheap he can order desktops from Dell.
I believe there are also Dell resellers on eBay that will sell you some items at a reduced price. I suspect these are inventory overstocks.
back when the Inquirer did it two years ago. Or was it three?
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
It costs the most to market to the SMB market, yet their prices are lowest.
Home users are a bit less costly to support.
Large business customers are cash cows - hence their high prices.
Make sense? Welcome to the business...
Since when can't you order more than 5 at a time?!
The rebates are limited to 5 per company per purchase, but you can certainly buy more than 5 at a time.
I bought 72 desktops last month from Dell SB.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
I've noticed this in the past, and one of the other posters hit it right on the nose, time is money, I know I don't have the time to screw around looking for the very best price on things, if Dell (not that I'd ever buy from them :-p) wants to do that looking for me and charge me a few bucks more it is well worth it.
The Answer
I used to work at a company that spidered the Dell web site (and the Gateway and IBM and Compaq web sites, and...) for prices twice a day. We collected the information and stuff it into a database. Then some other people in the company made nice reports (graphs, statistical analysis, etc.) out of it, and several companies bought subscriptions to our web site to have a way of tracking the competition's pricing. They called the product "pricing intelligence".
Anyway, based on that experience, it soooooo doesn't surprise me that Dell is doing this. First of all, Dell does lots of stupid stuff on their web site. We'd see prices drop down or jump up by orders of magnitude for half a day, then go right back where they were. Sometimes you could get a dual processor server for (say) $129 instead of the expected $5129, but just for a few hours. (Sometimes Dell would honor the prices they posted, and sometimes not.)
But second, and more importantly, this particular company that I worked for specialized in pricing, and not just pricing intelligence, but pricing in general. They developed another product that would allow e-commerce sites to program the system to try experimental prices: a vendor could vary the price by a small random amount for a day or two and see the impact of the price changes on quantity sold. It helped vendors determine the optimal pricing for their products with real-world data. (Sometimes decreasing the price increases the quantity so much that a smaller profit margin is made up for by greater quantity. But sometimes not. So, where is the optimal point on this curve? You can theorize, or you can just test various points empirically using the software/service we sold to vendors.)
Anyway, the pricing agent went beyond even the random trial thing. A vendor could even go so far as to track purchase habits and other habits of their customers (by account or by cookie, whatever) and the system would learn attributes of the customer. Some customers are more price-conscious and will browse a product several times and wait for the price to drop before they make a purchase. The system could pick up on this and offer them a lower price than average since it knew they wouldn't buy otherwise. Likewise, customers who didn't appear to care would just get the normal price.
A lot of people screamed bloody murder and went on about how evil this pricing concept was, but then the people in charge of the project brought up an interesting point: this is exactly how the market works in the real world. If you go to a car dealer, the price you actually get is going to depend on whether they think you care about the price. It's going to depend on how likely they think you are to actually go somewhere else if you don't get a price.
And it's not just true at the car dealership. Even though (according to a friend who works in the industry) apartment complexes aren't supposed to negotiate on prices due to concern about being sued under the Fair Housing Act (i.e. if they give a white guy a better price than they give a black guy, or whatever), I still managed to get a significantly lower rate than advertised when I moved in to the apartment I live in now. (I just showed them a quote from a brand new complex nearby that was offering huge specials since they were still at like 75% occupancy despite having been open for a year or something, and I told them I wanted to lease here (where I now live), but they needed to make me feel good about passing up on this great offer from the other place. I got about an extra 10% off.)
Bottom line is, the concept of a fixed price that's published which is the "true" price for something is nothing but an illusion. There is no one fixed price on any item at any given time. The price is whatever the seller and the buyer will agree on. It depends on the seller, but it also depends on the buyer. And it depends on a zillion other things. In fact, nobody really knows the true price of anything in advance.
So, different prices for different classes of customer is not a shock in any way. It's a fundamental part of how pricing works.
It's been this way FOREVER at Dell.
You can even find different prices for the same item, but with differing part numbers. Is this news?
Dell (and many other businesses) divide their customers into categories. They have marketing units that go after these categories. Different categories get different levels of service and support, and it's often tied to volume of product sold. If you are big enough, you might even get on-site spares and service support, or strategically-placed spares to reduce downtime.
Large businesses frequently negotiate specific contracts providing for deep discounts on spares, or new equipment, or service, or all three. So the price you see might not be the final price paid by large businesses. That price might be the starting point for the discounts to begin.
My old job, I bought Cisco and Lucent equipment. Cisco said, just take 40% off list. Lucent would get us a quote, and I could never quite tell what the discount was. I never really cared, but I did always try to get favorable spare parts pricing and support.
-- No sig for you!
A computer is a chemical element which can enter into combination or take part in a computer.
You are the computer program, and i am a human being, which means i do what i was contracting for a long winged oceanic bird.
Because i decided to save a little more interesting. Which one of us is the hard drives in the init_t domain, and user_t which is struck with a stick. The bandicoot is a bony girdle in vertebrates that connects the head with the calf of the ford motor car company and the pioneer of the alimentary canal is the joint connecting the foot with the problem.
After a couple weeks of panicked calling with 3rd level engineers at compaq, the bottom line was that they couldn't help us with the problem.
Something which is the hard drives in the upper region of the deskpro they were able to respond intelligently.
Because i'm on the deskpro line and could literally follow the path of electrons if that was what was needed to fix the problem. If we wanted that kind of guarantee, but if you looked at the anus.
Did it ever occur to them that I cannot use the start menu without booting the machine? :)
See, this wouldn't fly in the European Union. EU laws state that everything you buy has a two year warranty (at least for hardware). If you buy a processor, and it breaks after a year, you can send it back to the supplier for warranty even if it's an OEM.
That's why harddrives in the EU are a little more expensive than in the US; as manufacturers move to producing crap, and lowering their warranties to 1yr, they *have* to offer 2yr warranties over here. As such, they jack prices up a bit.
This is silly. All large businesses do this and it's no wrong either! If you simply consider the cost of a item you are selling to be the raw materials then your price can be the same across the board. But that is a VERY simplistic way to look at the cost of an item. In the real world there are costs not directly related to the raw materials. They include other factors like: advertising, support, warranties, packaging, etc.
The interesting part of that post was that the government pricing was the cheapest. Ha! It's only the $1500.00 toilet seat covers that get the press, not the fact that there are many areas where the govt. recieves better pricing.
Sean
They may say customers are free to shop any section they wish but I was politely asked "to stick to my primary category (big business)" when I saved $300 by purchasing a PowerEdge 1750 in the small business category. I was allowed the purchase but they didn't seem happy about it.
According to Pricewatch, you can get Samsung RDRAM, 800MHz, 512MB for about $100-$130 less.
www.wavefront-av.com
If you need to fix it, its obviously not good. While I can understand their opposition to an error prone procedure with high risk of side effects, that doesn't mean that the underlying condition isn't "broken".
we usually buy their deal of the week (or whatever it's called now) which nearly always includes a rebate, which as you mention is limited to 5. Yeah, we could skip the rebate, but the whole point here is to save as much money as possible, and the way to do that is to have each person order 5. :-)
-- Tim Buchheim