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In AU, Dodgy Dell Deal Faces Consumer Backlash
Ben Seberry writes "It appears Dell has been caught red-faced by yet another pricing mistake on their Australian website. Many customers thought they had spotted a fantastic deal when they came across a 55%-off offer. Dell later denied that this was a valid special and telephoned customers to offer them a choice of the standard price, or a cancelled order. Dell's senior manager of corporate communication came out and apologized for the mistake, promising processes would be reviewed to prevent it from happening again. In the days after the original 'incorrectly priced' offer was fixed, Dell made a different error leading to an even cheaper price being advertised. This time, on many user forums and blogs, users are debating Australian contract law as it applies to this matter — it is not as clear-cut as many originally believed."
Lets be honest - When its not a sale at Dell, its usually over priced (Especially when adding components)
55% off old hardware sounds right to me!
As per English Contract Law(which australia must be following), a publicly displayed advertisement for a product/service displaying a price for the same becomes a contract when it is accepted by anyone who pays for the same product/service to the advertiser.
In short, Dell has signed a contract with each one of the paying customers to provide the advertised product at advertised price.
If Dell fails to do so, it is in violation of the applicable contract law and as such the counter-party to the contract may sue Dell for violation and subsequent consequential damages.
The fact that Dell claims it is a mistake is not relevant and is not the customers' responsibility.
All a customer has to do is to swear in front of a magistrate or sign a letter thathe acted in "Good faith" that the advertisement was genuine.
Dell Customers Australia: If you have placed the order, do NOT back out and accept a refund. Write to Dell to fulfill its contract and threaten it with a lawsuit. Am sure 200 lawsuits in 200 courts is not a small matter for Dell.
The law is on your side for a change.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The equivalent in Australia would be the Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). Especially the boxing day morning. There are long queues outside any retail shop in all major cities. Usually everything is sold out by midday. I lived in UK for a while and it's even bigger than the sale they have over there. Reading the Wikipedia page, it seems like the same phenomenon exists in Canada and South Africa as well, so it must have been a British Empire thing.
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This is wrong. Retractions/corrections are routinely published in Australian newspapers. No one is obliged to do anything in these situations.
Actually the laws governing this are state determined by state government legistlation.
In NSW (where I live) it _used_ to be the case that retailers were obliged to sell at the advertised price, this was changed a decade or so ago.
Unfortunately, the consumer protection laws were comletely watered down; I can see the argument for a mistake in an advertisment, but the laws covering warranties are now effectively non-existent. If you have a problem during the warranty period the retailer can pass-the-buck onto the manufacturer or distributer and of course when they inevitably turn out to be in another state or country the only recourse you have is to file a civil suit.
I found this out the hard way, and was told by the NSW dept of consumer affairs (or whatever they call themselves these days) that they were unable to do anything other than contact the retailer on my behalf, the retailer told them to get stuffed, so they said the only way forward was to sue.
In Australia the retailer is obliged to honour any published price, even if the price is a mistake or a typo in the printing of a catalogue. Failure to do so will leave the retailer liable to legal action if enough people raise complaints to the ACCC.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Once we advertised a service, we created the ad before we decided on the price. Long story short, it ended up being advertised as $0.00. Our lawyer informed that the advert was not binding. IANAL and YMMV ofcourse.
Here in Italy the law is totally different. If you make a mistake and advice a product at a ridicolous low price then you are obliged by law to sell it at that price. It does not happens often but I have made very good deals appealing to the law.
August 18, 2005.
And this is news?
And you pay for what you get. All my dells (all laptops, all inspirons, all 3 of them) have died within a year of my buying them, and every month or so after that. To be fair, i always got the warranty so for medium-low reliability it works great: every time it breaks, Dell fixes it in a few days.
Eventually I got sick of a few days downtime very month or so on my primary system and just forked over the cash for a thinkpad.
It was a wise decision. I still see TPs around from six or seven years ago, still in working condition.
Then again, my usage profile is...nontypical. I don't drop it but I do carry it from place to place a lot. I wouldn't say I abuse it, but I do use it quite a bit. Inspiron is consumer grade, thinkpad is corporate grade.
Dell desktops, on the other hand, I've never been disappointed by.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Not precisely. When you buy from Dell, it's not a purchase it's a "sales contract". The laws you mention govern implicit contracts, eg posting a sign, money for product, etc. Dell explicitely states in the contract you sign at purcahse that they have the right to cancel it if it was found to be in error.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Your 'All-Time' must be a pretty short time. Around 6 years ago it was 20 cents lower than it is now.
The same applies in Belgium. If it is obviously a human error, then there is no deal. This can happen if you forgot a 0 at the end and the car is only 10% of the value. It must however be blatantly obvious. e.g. a car for 5.000 instead of the standard 50.000 is obvious.
55% would not be seen as obvious and in Belgium they would be forced to deliver the PC at that price. There are sometimes PCs that are end of stock and can be had had reduced prices. Also you can not sell at a loss in Belgium unless it is the sales period, which is fixed.
Here you must even have a reasonable stock of said items. So you can not say 2EUR for this PC and then only have 1 PC just so you hope people will buy something else. This is what you get in a communist country where the law in principle sides with the people not the companies.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Dell has been caught red-faced: 2005
... apologized ... : 2008
This goes as a warning for those interested in the old Latitude D-series notebooks. Great machines, and Dell says they're still being sold on their website. Well, I ordered one for a client about 3 weeks ago, and was just informed last week that they are being discontinued and the particular model I ordered will not be arriving. I love how you have to wait to the last minute to find out this information. More inventory control needs to be done on their part. As a premier partner, I have slowly and surely gotten more pissed at Dell as of late. I sell their computers because of their excellent NBD warranties with prosupport. but god damn this kind of simple shit has been pissing me off.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
This has happened here in Chile twice during 2008. In both cases Dell backed out of all sales, to great outrage. The second time it happened, I thought it was rather fishy; now that I see the same thing going on in Australia, it is starting to look like a corporate "marketing" policy.
In Australia the retailer is obliged to honour any published price, even if the price is a mistake or a typo in the printing of a catalogue. Failure to do so will leave the retailer liable to legal action if enough people raise complaints to the ACCC.
Not correct.
In most states in Australia the retailer can honor the published price or withdraw the item from sale.
If there has been a mistake in the publishing of the price the retailer would be expected to advertise a correction notice in say a newspaper and also have the notice at the point of sale.
heres a link to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission website (ACCC) explaining.
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/322984
the ACCC will step in if enough people complain and there has been a breach of the trade practices act.
[I wouldn't hold my breath on this one, they seem to like to take a hands off approach.]
In this case I think what they could get into trouble with is whats known as bait advertising.
heres a link to a story about a retailer called Harvey Norman getting into trouble for this
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1174381.htm
Not in *all* major cities. Perth, being still stuck in 1950, doesn't allow shops to open the day after Christmas.
I priced out some gaming machines [...]
Well, there you have it. Dell's gaming machines, either their high-end XPS systems or Alienware, do not qualify for their "cheap" parts. They actually use high quality parts for these machines and make you pay for it.
I speak as a Dell XPS owner who bought there lower-end of their high-end XPS system just before they acquired Alienware and compared prices between the two. Alienware was fairly more expensive for just about the same specs at that time. Though, now that they own Alienware, they're trying not to cannibalize their own sales so they likely set their prices comparable. (The XPS brand use to be a direct competitor to Alienware) So, you should be able to cheaper "gaming" PC's. Regular PC's? Dell does offer great price points in comparison.
I still love my XPS system. It's been running like a champ and only had one problem when we experienced flooding. Though, that was 100% covered by Dell since I dropped a couple hundred more for the accidental damage service, given I tend to move around a lot. Best service I ever had, though, you definitely have to pay for it to get it from Dell. My Inspiron 8100's service was another story that could rank up their will "Dell Hell".
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Its a Silly Slashdot Story time...
Around here we praise Linux, disagree on Apple and bash Dell. Its the way things are. Don't let facts get in the way of a good bashing...
For what its worth, the first link in story refers to the original time this happened (I assume in '05) - while the current mistake is what the story is about and is referred to as "yet another pricing mistake".
-Em
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