Dell rapped for £60 delivery charge on £200 laptop Dell has been criticised by the advertising watchdog for not making it clear enough that a laptop would incur a £60 delivery charge. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that the charge "added significantly" to the cost of the computer. In a direct mail advert for Dell computers a £199 laptop computer was offered for …
All of thier business practices are unfair.
Use to be a time when Dell meant customer support, and decent computers for a decent price. Now it means crap customer server and even worst computers for jacked up prices.
Yeah to capitalism.
At least the penguin does not treat you like a b1tch
Dell has just been convicted of Fraud and other naughty things by the State of New York.
Read all about it in the New York Times .
Dell have become a bunch of dishonest ,deceitful heaps of dung from what has been going on over there in USA , as well as UK.
Icon of another naughty thing
I friend of mine bought a Dell Vostro laptop about a month or two ago. It was advertised to businesses at £179 + VAT. She was VAT registered so figured £179 for a laptop was a good buy (I'd have to admit it was a pretty good price, it had a 80GB hard drive, Sempron 3000+ CPU and 1GB ram but Windows Vista which slowed it down).
When it came to ordering we found that the delivery was again about £57. In the end she went to another supplier who was selling the same laptop at £220 but only charged £6 for delivery, so she saved about £25 which paid for a wireless router.
I've never understood how Dell could get away with charging so much. I could understand if it was a massive server, but even the 2U servers they sell aren't that heavy and no doubt wouldn't cost much more than about £15 for a courier.
Paris because I bet she wouldn't charge so much.
Rob
Their domestic leaflets (as in Sunday supplements) also show ex VAT and delivery prices, so the 'business only' excuse doesn't hold up. I've always thought their carriage prices ridiculous - saying that it's the same for all systems just makes it look even sillier for laptops, which can easily be sent, insured, for about £12.
And where are the Linux versions they promised?
With my last home delivered Dell, Credit agreement cleared Wednesday. I checked the website on the Thursday: Collect, assemble, build, test. Friday: same. Monday: Ready for despatch. Tuesday, I got a phone call: "Can we come tomorrow? If not, when's suitable?" (lovely Irish voice on the girl as well). Wednesday, turned up ten minutes early.
Shame "we" didn't mean the girl and a driver, but still, pretty impressive shipping and courier, build (Dublin) to delivery (SW London) in a week.
Since then, I've had two Dell notebooks, which at various times have run simultaneous enterprise class server products, plus a couple of heavy duty desktop apps, or 3 different VMs running servers, plus host desktop apps, with never a problem.
The only problem with Dell I've had is the casing on the lead from the PSU, which tends to come apart after about six months.
For the UK they shuipping does come from Ireland, still not clear why it costs 60GBP, probably a good price for a rack or big server box. Not so great for a laptop!
In comparison I bought a router from Amazon at 11:30 on Thursday for 65GBP in free P&P, selected "evening delivery for the next day" (usually an additonal charge with other vendors) and it actually turned up with a knock on the door at 6pm the same day! (result!) thats service!
Dell's being doing this for years.
I ordered 3 laptops at the same time from them and they charged me £150 for delivery!
Including the delivery they were still about the same price as from elsewhere, but they use the high delivery charge to hide the real price of their products until the final stages of ordering.
We bought a Vostro laptop and saw the £60 delivery charge, also saw the "Spend £300 and get free delivery" deal. In our case the total was something like £270 + VAT. So we updated the processor, added a USB memory key and a few bundles of software and only spent about £5 more than the delivery charge would have taken it to - but we got free delivery. :)
Having found the ASA investigation into Direct Line's Named Drivers no claims discount advert which only states that "Named Drivers earn their own no claims discount".
"In this particular case, the ASA Council was presented with both sides of the argument and after some debate came to the decision that they felt that the advertisement was unlikely to be interpreted as inferring that the Named Driver No Claims Discount would be exactly the same as the No Claims Discount."
I lost all respect for the ASA.
For clarification, I queried why the online quote for a policy for my named driver was £100 less than the one including all discounts from the phone agent and was informed that the online quote had assumed one years no claims discount, but the only allowance applicable was the "named drivers no claims discount" which was obviously considerably less. I complained and was told that "nowhere do Direct Line state they will be the same rate" and was referred to ASA, who had investigated and come to the above astounding conclusion.
Its not just Dell doing this sort of thing.
I've seen plenty of eBay and Amazon marketplace items when the postage is more than the cost of the item. In one case it was £4.95 p&p for an item costing £0.01
Shipping charges are rarely refunded as part of money-back guarantees so the profit is secured even if the goods come back.
The reason that Ebay and Amazon sellers load up the delivery charge is to reduce the host site's exorbitant listing charge. The host site doesn't levy a charge on shipping. Ebay is the one doing monopoly price gouging; the vendor is in a competitive market keeping the total price down.
So loading up the delivery charge is in both buyer and seller's financial interest on these sites.
Not so with Dell, the sole purpose is to deceive; with their volumes, they probably pay a contract delivery price of under a fiver for anything up to 30 kilos or so. The other £55 is to offset the silly sticker price on the product.
Treating customers as patsies to be tricked, bullied and deceived out of their money is almost universal these days. Apple and LIDL are two shining examples who don't do it.
Dell have been doing this for years, their delivery charges are just inflated so they can offer low prices.
Every time Ive clicked through a dell advert, the price changes, on one occaision it changed three times, & that was without adding any extras or re-configuring. God knows why, but in my opinion their online adverts are misleading
Comparing to a pallet of goods up to about 1 ton which can be sent anywhere in the UK for about £50 their delivery charge for a laptop is complete crap & should be no more than £15.00
However, you dont have to buy them.
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