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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."
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
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.
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.
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 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.