Comments on: Dell: Unbelievable Deals*

By: Shell

Shell — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:50:18 +0000

I was purchasing a system online last year, and was interrupted during the process of choosing my option. I had to stop and leave the PC for about 30 minutes. When I came back and finished my options, the original “deal” I had clicked on was no longer available! I called Dell and got the same “marketing error” excuse, and canceled the order.

About an hour later I went back to the Dell website and, what do you know, the original offer was right back on their homepage! I went in, again, clicking on the link for that offer, chose my options, and once I got to the checkout, the offer was gone!

Needless to say, i didn’t complete that transaction, either.

By: lloyd chin

lloyd chin — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:19:12 +0000

Orederd Dell Inspiron 1520 notebook computer on December 10, 2007; got employee affilated discount, plus additional 15% coupon I sign up for at Dell website. I use option with additional discount to lower the cost, the 3 year in home warranty with lo jack norton intenet security also discount the system even more. I called Dell to see if I could do any better and they added a free all in one printer.

To make a long story short I never got the computer system, they delay the shipment many times, they eventually cancel the order on January 16, 2008; the reason was because of mail order rule. Whenever I would call customer service to find out what was the hold up, the customer service rep had no explanation and was wery rude.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 03:33:46 +0000

I saw a commercial on tv for this exact deal today! If Dell was a decent company,
they should honor the price until the ads are corrected. I would never deal with
Dell especially after this! We tried to buy a computer from Dell a year ago and
they tried to pull a quick one on us with a “bait and switch” -of course we figured it out and canceled the deal. I’d rather communicate by morse code than deal with Dell ever again!

By: Murph

Murph — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:04:12 +0000

Many comments are related to paying for “deals” and then not getting what was ordered. Presumably these deals were paid for with credit cards. Dell may say they limit returns to 30 days, but you have up to a year under Federal Law to have your credit card company cancel the payment. Getting your credit card to back you will require that you return everything that was shipped as part of the incorrect or incomplete order, but if people start sending Dell’s computer’s back after 10 months (when they are worth much less than they were new) and cancelling the payment (contact the credit card company for a “disputed charge form”) because the original order wasn’t delivered Dell would quickly change some behaviors. Keep documentation of the order–the email or print of web page from the original order, phone call times and dates, and copies of correspondence [when customer service is unresponsive use the U.S. Mail because it's a "paper trail"]. Your credit card company has as many lawyers as Dell does, and credit card companies are prone to make the payment denial stick unless the seller can prove that they actually did accurately fill the original order.

By: Diane

Diane — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:08:41 +0000

My friend ordered a Dell by phone and, after setting it up, couldn’t get the
Internet to come up. I had a look at the invoice to make sure she had all the
required components. A modem was on the list, with the comment “not requested.”
Would you, in this scenario, have specifically stated, “Oh, by the way, be sure
to include a modem”? Imagine shipping a computer in 2005, complete with Windows,
Norton antivirus, and misc. bundled Windows-specific software without including
a modem — or even questioning that fact! Their ads imply that a techie will
“personally” see that you get the custom computer you desire. Yeah, right. At
the very least the techie should have a checklist of items to ask about, such
as, “What speed modem would you like?” The solution? They sent her the missing
modem, which my friend had to pay someone to install (she’s not hardware-savvy).
I told her she should have insisted they replace the cpu in full configuration,
but they gave her some song-and-dance and she capitulated. I swore I would never
consider buying anything from Dell after that.

By comparison, in my own experience, I bought an IBM computer from a magazine
ad special. They honored their two-year warranty when the monitor failed 18
months later, no questions asked. They shipped a new monitor in two days and I
sent the broken one back to them by return UPS. Can’t do much better than that!