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."

Comments

Isn't This Just a Bait and Switch?

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Perhaps a class action fraud lawsuit is in order? It sounds like Dell makes these pricing "mistakes" on their web site regularly. While class action lawsuits don't directly benefit the customer all that much, the large penalties are highly visible to stockholders and should be sufficient to make sure that such "mistakes" do not happen in the future.

At the very least complain to the FTC and Better Business Bureau. Even though this happened in Australia, Dell is a US based company and therefore it should work to report their shenanigans to US based authorities.