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 July 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.
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??!?!?!?!?!?!