RSSDell lands in hot water over Taiwanese pricing glitches
By Tim Conneally | Published July 30, 2009, 1:07 PM
In late June and early July, Dell's Taiwanese Web shop accidentally created some outlandishly cheap deals on Dell hardware which resulted in a huge influx of orders that Dell could not fill. The company is now facing fines from Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission and Fair Trade Commission for misleading customers.
From about 11pm on June 25 until 7am the next day, Dell mistakenly had a 19" LCD monitor on its site listed as costing NT$500, or roughly $15. In that 8 hour period, deal-crazed consumers ordered more than 140,000 of the cheap monitors only to later be told that it was a mistake. Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission reported 471 complaints, and then recommended that Dell give each customer one monitor at the $15 and then offer the rest (since everyone ordered multiples) at a discount.
Dell Taiwan later compensated monitor buyers with an NT$1,000 discount coupon, but naturally the consumers were upset.
As if that wasn't enough, a second glitch happened on July 4 at midnight that offered a certain configuration of the Latitude E4300 notebook --valued at NT$60,900 ($1,855)-- for only NT$18,588 ($566). More than 49,884 notebooks were reportedly ordered during that mishap.
The company offered coupons to those who placed orders, but the NT$20,000 ($600) discount was again not good enough to smooth over the costly mis-labeling.
So today, in addition to the discount vouchers Dell is offering for both products, Taiwanese authorities say the computer company must pay one million Taiwan dollars ($30,500) for failing to fully honor the online offers, and The Fair Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether Dell was misleading consumers on its Web site, which could result in a further fine of up to 25 million Taiwan dollars ($770,000).
It's actually quite a small price to pay. If Dell were to fill all the orders it received both times, it would amount to a loss of more than $76 million.
dell should lose
if you ask me if they had a advert and then the list price
this sounds a whole alot like bate and switch
Score: 0
|"Dell Taiwan later compensated monitor buyers with an NT$1,000 discount coupon, but naturally the consumers were upset."
Upset???
*laughing*
Idiots. Yeah...Dell's going to sell a monitor for $15. Right.
They *knew* it was a mistake and ordered anyway.
Score: -1
|when the "mistake" was available for 8+ hours, it's normal to not assume it was a mistake. And, dell WAS advertising "up to NT9000 off" on their front page at the time, which was what the discounts were on every monitor. I wouldn't call the customers idiots when an advertisement that matched the actual discount was up for 8 hours for you to order.
Score: 0
|"when the "mistake" was available for 8+ hours, it's normal to not assume it was a mistake"
I repeat: $15 monitors.
Sorry, but you'd have to be retarded to think that was intentional.
Score: 0
|From this article it would seem that the customers were greedy and that Dell should have gotten away scot free. But the problem was that Dell's offered compensation, which took them a week to come up with, still resulted in a higher price for the monitor than what you can get from other online vendors that sold the same thing, which angered the Consumer Protection Commission and the Fair Trade Commission.
Score: 0
|In the USA companies have disclaimer "not responsible for typo". Is that not allowed in Taiwan? Do all companies in Taiwan have to honor price mistakes, or is it just foreign companies?
And last but not least, how difficult is it for dell to monitor the top 10 selling items and put a stop when something look fishy?
This reminds me of the msn $400 rebate fiasco in Oregon 7 years ago. It goes to show that even large and successful companies do employ incompetent people.
Score: 0
|