It's not exactly all that uncommon for Dell to misprice an item on its website and, if you're lucky, it might even honor it. But it looks like the stakes have just been raised considerably in Taiwan, where the company recently listed a 19-inch monitor for NT$500 (or about $15US) and promptly received more than 26,000 orders for close to 140,000 of the monitors. Now, ordinarily, Dell would simply send out a polite email explaining their mistake and call it a day, but Taiwanese regulators have now stepped in and
ordered suggested that Dell honors the misprice after receiving a couple of hundred complaints. For its part, Dell simply says that it plans to "compensate the buyers for the mistake," although it's not clear if that means it'll actually be sending out the monitors -- which, incidentally, would add up to more than $20 million at their full list price.
Update:
Engadget Chinese tells us that the Taiwanese government has
suggested to Dell that it compensates consumers fairly and will assist in legal action against Dell if they don't. Also, the $15 price applies only to the first monitor purchased with discounts applied to subsequent units for those who made multiple-monitor purchases.
Update 2: Dell has agreed to issue a NT$1000 (about $30) coupon for every monitor purchased including those made through multiple purchase orders. That sound more than reasonable to us.
[Via
The Raw Feed]
posted Jul 1st 2009 7:07PM
Oops!
Isn't their a legal clause that suggests that any reasonable person would have to pay a reasonable price for merchandise... just in case this type of thing happens.
Looks like someone is really going to get fired this time.
@Quantumphysics, actually there is it's something to do with fair price. It's under one of the merchandising laws.
(I shouldn't of slept through business law... hmm)
Remember how your teacher would always tell you to proof read your work? This is why.
@QuantumPhysics: Er, does that law apply in Taiwan? Because some US pricing law means fuck-all on the other side the planet.
That's just ridiculous... Dell owes them nada. any reasonable person would know this was a typo and those trying to profit (which I'm sure some of the regulators were too) from said typo by complaining should be given a talk about karma....
$15?
I'll take 5!!!
:)
@shinigami:
More like 100+ and sell them all and make a nice profit!
Hahahaha! Fuck off, Taiwan.
@Quantumphysics: Under the U.C.C. this kind of pricing mishap wouldn't fly, but that's only applicable in the U.S.
@Quantumphysics: doesn't it cost them about $15 to build one of these in a Taiwanese factory?
lawyer'd
A) Someone at Dell is getting fired for this.
B) Dell will give a large "fuck you" to the Taiwanese government and pull out of Taiwan before taking a $20 million loss over a typo.
Maybe this will teach Dell and other companies to double-check before posting things online!
To all those people saying "American laws don't apply across the planet" To hell with you...Dell better not pay them shit.
Really? A Shitee logo?
Nice to see Dell finally getting called on the bait and switch BS they've been pulling for years.
Exactly, Obviously they can purposely add the misprint, have all these orders placed. Then renege on their promises, maybe send out a voucher for their mistakes. Hoping to get more people to spend money on things they probably don't want, because they have a voucher they don't want to go to waste.
it's not a bait and switch if you KNOW it's a mistake. This is an incredibly obvious typo because it's just about 10% of what Dell would normally price them at and what you would expect a price to be. There is no one here who can say with a straight face that they would expect to be able to buy an LCD monitor for $15. If you expect companies to treat you well, and, to quote Jon Stewart "be a f#@$ing person", then don't justify taking advantage of an obvious mistake by saying that they can afford it and it will teach them a lesson. If you were told to sell a care for $2,000 instead of $20,000, you'd be mighty pissed off too.
I have to say that I side with Dell on this one. I have purchased some of these price mistakes in the past and I always assume that I am going to get the email telling me it was just that, a mistake. Can I be mad, no, not really, as long as it is not a scam just to get you to go to their site in the first place.
its more like advertising to go to their site. since the price mistake usually gets posted up on the internets.
But it kind of is. Do you recall those lawsuits against Dell a few years ago? Consumers of Dell's merchandise have been subject to bait-and-switch scams for years.
"Dell reserves the right to cancel orders arising from pricing or other errors."
We'll see how long this stands up.
From reading others people's comments, it seems that Dell makes price misprints quite frequently. In such a case, I don't think Taiwan actually expects Dell to let the monitors go for $15--that's just absurd. I think they just want to put the heat on Dell to ensure that this doesn't happen again.
Good, serves them right. They're always doing this.
Agreed. Hence my reply to you, you happy looking avatar you.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=411606&t=1058540
It wasn't easy, but I made money off a price mistake once from Dell. They should learn to proofread, on the real. Yes, on the real.
Go to sleep!!
Sounds like the Taiwanese watched Used Cars too many times. Dell shouldn't have to honor such an obvious misprint, and the regulators trying to enforce that need to suckit.
Agreed, in court such a obvious misunderstanding will be allowed considering the large missundering in price. Asking Dell to take a loss of $18 million is completely out of the question. If anything Dell can make it up to consumers by lowering the price to around $100 - $125 down from the listed $148.
Wow, people are siding with the business?! This must not be digg.
Maybe the Taiwanese government put in an order for 50k of these to upgrade all of their office machines.
If these do go through, wonder how low they go for when they completely flood eBay.
Well Dell were only ordered to honour ONE monitor per order, so that's only 26k x $135 (as if the monitor actually costs $150 to build, $100 or even $75 might be a bit more realistic) which means they lose out approx 3.51 mill (or 2.21 mill assuming each monitor costs them $100 to build and ship, or 1.56 mill assuming $75 cost. The rest of the orders Dell were ordered to give a 'discount' so probably at cost price. Not a massive slap in the face for a company like Dell, but they do need to be taught a lesson for their frequent 'mistakes'.
"Did she just say 'mile of cars'? She said she had a 'mile of cars'!"
@Ghatid
I think even on Digg the majority of the people would side with Dell (Gateway may be a different story though).
I agree. fuck China. (and i'm chinese) Dell needs to stand up for itself and say No to China. Plus... stock owners would lose money.
No, they probably should have to honor it or be fined for making this kind of mistake. I see this as more of a marketing ploy or a bait and switch tactic, its free advertisement and most people aren't going to be pissed because they'll be like oh i knew it was to good to be true. On top of that they are giving a discount to people who already decided to buy it, its like well i guess i'm already here and THEY are getting me a discount, i might as well get it. $$$
@gun point, if you were Chinese, you would know that China and Taiwan, um, not exactly the same from a political standpoint. dipshit.
A mile of Cars!!
That's really true that it happens really often. Whoever that's in charge would already been fired a long time ago. They probably pull this kind of price mistake crap to drive people to their site.
Right, because every time you make a typo you should get fired. It's not like the big corp execs are setting the prices...it's just some marketing guys telling some code monkey to put it on their website...
Oh Snap!
I thought it was a customers right that if the company mis-labels the price on an item they honuor that price, hence why I nabbed a mis-priced £13 PS3 game at HMV last week.
Unless that's UK only? but normally I find if it's a mis-priced item the store will honour it and quickly send someone to re-price it.
So if Dell slip up tehy take the hit n make sure someone proof reads their websites next time.
It depends on local laws, I guess. In the US greedy customers have taken companies to court attempting to get price typos honored and they always lose. The US government suggests that companies should honor mismarked prices "within reason" but they are under no requirement to honor obviously wrong prices.
I have no idea what the precedents are in the UK or Taiwan, though, it could be a completely different story.
chefgon_ign - in the UK if the contract is binding (i.e. you accepted their invitation to treat and they took your money) then they have to supply the goods.... If they haven't yet taken the money then they probably haven't completed the contract so they could subsequently back out of it. The internet complicates things though as you need to define at which point the contract between the parties is 'signed'
That sucks.
Imagine the amount of credit cards and/or bank informations Dell is getting from all the order "mistake."
Do you really believe that Dell steals credit card/bank information...?
Wow, they actually honored it? I remember a while back they fucked up the prices on some nVidia Quadro's, too bad they didn't honor that =(
I guarantee that Dell will stop doing this if they are forced to sell them at that price. Good for Taiwan. Too bad the US won't stand up for consumers like this.
How is this even standing up for consumers?
This is simply standing up for the idiocy of today's society.
The "If it sounds too good to be true, then it likely is." quote still applies in modern times.
If a local shop misprinted a price in an advertisement, received thousands of orders, were then ordered to honor the printed price, and were then hurled into bankruptcy due to the significant loss, would you still agree then?
$15 dollar monitors?
HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THOSE??!?!?!?!?!?!
I'm all for strict laws about false advertising, but I think a fair solution for something this extreme would be to send each of these people NT$700 / US$20, etc. That would be way cheaper than sending the monitors, yet everyone is still getting a good deal. (I mean really, how could you argue with free money?) Although the government should insist that it come in the form of actual cash (or credit on my bank card, etc.) and none of that store credit nonsense.
That's still $2.8m, likely because some data entry monkey made a typo.
There's a lot of comments here about a simple screw-up costing Dell $20M... that's only the case because they're fast and loose with their price changes.
Hate to bring up Apple, but at least their prices (and even discounts) are very static, so a mistype would be clear as day.
Dell constantly "restates" prices after people legitimately buy the product, I've had this happen to me, and no in this case I would NOT want an order fulfilled for 2 monitors at $300 (or even $200-250 as Rich says), when I expected to pay $30.
Serves Dell right, but I'm sure they'll "work something out" that is a win-win (vouchers).
Heck if you're dumb enough to think a $15 dollar monitor deal is real then you should even be refunded your money.
yes
Too right they should have to honour the price - think about it - the code monkeys or marketing team who is to blame made a "typo." This is what they do for a living - their competence at their job is what is supposed to feed and house their family, so if they can't even be bothered to check their work properly, Dell should be firing them anyway.
yes - fire everyone who ever makes a typo! Programmers must be held to a zero-bug policy!
And Dell is the only company I know that makes these typos as often as they do. They get massive traffic to their website, and then they send an e-mail to everyone that they will not honour the price error. Good for Taiwan.
This happens far too often. It can't possibly too hard to put some limit checks on the prices. A value of something
Oh dear :/
Some insight:
1. The "Regulator" in this case is a non- governmental organization. it is not like the government try to enforce this.
2. The organization "suggests" Dell only honor the first quantity at $15 to each buyer and negotiate discount for the balance quantity.
3. Dell Taiwan absolutely needs Dell HQ to give instruction. It has been six days already.
4. The customer complains "We wonder if Dell will honor this to US or Chinese. Dell may not care about us since we are small market?"
Kevin - I think the "regulators" here are the "Consumer Protection Committee"(not "Consumers’ Foundation") which is indeed a governmental agency. But yes I think the committee only "suggest" Dell to comply.
From my understanding the committee (or the government) can fine companies like Dell but they cannot really order/force the sales to go through - these are civil cases after all and need to go through the due route.
In my country happened the same with a notebook for $50 , but the legal system of my country is corrupt. U_U
Wait...do you live in the United States? California, right?
Dell must be using their own crappy computers to handle their pricing/ordering system.
Hey Dell, thanks for the lousy PCs over the years. Payback is a bitch.
The sold me 3 computers at a good price once, and canceled the order because it was a good deal. Screw Dell! They do this crap for free advertising. Take that.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... this is funny
If a store were to mis-price something, they have to honor the price.
Now granted online orders can get out of hand when word spreads. HOWEVER they should be forced to honor the price for the first... (100+) several orders.
Dell is horrid about this, they mis-price things more often than any other online retailer. It makes me not want to order from there, as I can not be sure if I will get my order, or if they will e-mail me telling me "Sorry".
They say directly on pretty much every page "Dell is not responsible for pricing, typographical, or other errors in any offer by Dell and reserves the right to cancel any orders resulting from such errors." and if not right on the page, it's for sure linked to from every page. I don't see any way they could legally be made to honor $15 monitors.
as for "It's Dell. serves them right for pulling the old bait-and-switch" comments. Gimme a break. Nobody in their right mind expects to get a $15 LCD. Yes, Dell does like to occationally advertise specials that the base computer is almost impossible to configure to that "specials" price but this is VERY clearly a typo. when all you do is sit at a computer and do data entry day-in-and-day-out, typos do happen. Although I am a little confused how orders for 140k monitors got through and were accepted before it got caught.
as someone who has gotten in on price mistakes from Dell (both ones that have gone through, and ones that have gotten cancled) the "compensate the buyers for the mistake" I can almost guarantee will be a $15 off $50 coupon or something similiar.
that's just Dell getting around the bait and switch tactics...
So, by your logic, all I have to do is wear a sign that says "EricC reserves the right to shoot you in the face for looking at him. Looking at him implies agreement of these terms." and then I can shoot you in the face? Awesome!
you might not like it, and you can draw silly comparisons, but that is EXACTLY how every EULA works. thats how the licensing for music and movies works. simply by installing and/or using their product you are legally agreeing to all their terms.
EULAs are one thing. Online stores are required by law (in the U.S.) to adhere to the same laws that brick-and-mortar stores do. Having a "EULA" (for lack of a better term) for an online store that says they can violate the law doesn't mean they can. That was kind of my whole point.
LOL EricC... did mommy and daddy get the netz back for you today? Or are you just so pathetic that the last word on things is necessary for you?
24 days for this one. Ha!
Ohhhh...I get it it now. You're stalking me. How cute.
You're not my type...and I'm married. Sorry, dude =(
darn that dell.
reminds me of the time i found a $900 off coupon for a vizio tv, lowering the pricew to $100.it was all well the total price was going to be around $120. everything was right at the review my order page, but when i clicked submit it all went wrong and the price came out to be $900. oh well. i ended up gettin the tv a couple months later for $750.
Send faulty monitors with burned out guts (bought as rejects).
If anyone complains, explain that what you get is what you pay.
And offer full refund (minus S&H fees etc) conditional to the buyer
shipping the monitor back.
Who wants a crappy 19" monitor anyway?
For $15, I would take a few.
Exactly. You would have to pay me to look at a Dell monitor so it is still no deal at $15.
reconsider the resell options! :D
There are still some needs for 19" LCD, not everybody can/want buy a 22" .
But 26,000 customers ordered 140,000 in midnight is way too much.....
There is no way Dell has 140,000 LCD stock in Taiwan
At $15 each. I would buy a pallet of them.
If they were widescreen I would even keep one.
hmmmmm....interesting situation. I'm very curious as to how this is going to play out, and what implications for the future it may have. for serious.
Yes, if they give away all those monitors and lose all that money, that means no more "real" sales until 2010 for the rest of us.
I say screw the people who knew they were trying to take advantage of a big mistake.
Hey! I just got that exact screen through a dell price mistake!!!
24" LED Display, ~$13x, $147 after taxes :)... Retail price: $300
Dell: Blame hackers. Problem solved.
And people will begin to question on Dell's infomation security. That's not good
John, I would hope they don't take my "advice", but I agree they definitely would have that problem.
dude, they sell 15 dollars used CRT monitors on CRAIGSLIST.
$15.00?? thats what it costs them to make a dell notebook
and Apple never pulls such a low tactic like Dell to sell their wares, people buy apple because they like them and not because of the price.
that has to be by far the most random of ALL apple hater comments.
everything is going on nicely about how dell screwed up, and you, WITHOUT using proper grammar (a common courtesy) decided to bash apple.
do you have tourette's or something? sheesh
anyways, I don't mind much honestly. it was a mistake, i'd be pissed if I tried to buy one. but i'd understand when it was cancelled (like the ps3 plus 5 games for 275...only mine never got cancelled!)
@Vlangs - I think he was trying to praise Apple. Shows how badly he pulled it off.
Dell should be more careful, and customers should be able to depend on the prices they see on websites, but should also be careful and consider the possibility of typo when they see something outrageously cheap.
I think the government probably shouldn't get involved. As far as I can tell, these customers had no contracts, nor had they made any good faith payment on the offer; thus Dell owes them nothing. The only possibly 'good' justification a government could have in forcing Dell to honor the mis-offer is to correct a pattern of this type of behavior.
According to our (Taiwan) Customer Law, any buying/selling action taken on internet, as long as you click "ORDER", the deal is valid. And is as legal as a paper contract. That's why there were 461 customers who bought Dell's "typo" LCD had complaint statement to govenment on June 30. And that's why they make Dell honor the order.
@John
Honestly though. A company simply cannot take a hit like that. I don't know if honoring this would put the company under but it sure would hurt like hell in the morning.
Most people would expect this not to go through. They may complain a bit that the price should be honored. But I would think that they would be checking their email waiting for the letter telling them that they will not be getting a monitor for $15.
I do see this getting ugly though. The government telling them they have to honor the price and Dell saying not in 20 million years.
Just put the monitors on BACK ORDER.
And offer a full refund on canceled orders.
It's business, "there are no rules".
Dell just announced that they will buy components from Taiwanese firms. Any chance that this "mistaken pricing" ruling can prevent price changing among those firms? NO, because Taiwan does not practice common law. Every court case is independently judged in view of the law.