Getting the Best Deal From Dell — Or Not 207
Nom du Keyboard writes "When The Consumerist published 22 tips for getting the best deal from Dell Computers, according to a self-described former Dell sales manager, Dell fired back with a take-down notice. You might want to look quickly, in the event it does get taken down. The Consumerist's lawyer's initial response was to deny the takedown request."
wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
When are these companies going to learn that trying to suppress information on the internet just makes it multiply?
Dell already apologized (Score:4, Insightful)
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/06/16
keeping people honest (Score:2, Insightful)
Somebody lets the cat out of the bag about the crap and value within a company product suite, and they go back to DMCA and takedowns.
We are reaching the middle of the sigmoid on information exchange - until now many have still been in the old model, and moving forward there will be more activity in the new (open free information exchange) model. Old-style enterprises are pissed off by the new model. How DARE they tattle on where they make some extra money at te expense of their cusotmers. This will only increase and radically change the nature of business activity for the better, so long as people really can continue to exchange information and know who each other really are.
Insurance Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Will this work? Yes. I knew a guy who did this with Dell's plan... got a nice upgrade for "free." I'm not convinced, however, that insurance fraud is really such a great idea. Nor am I convinced that this guy should be encouraging people to commit crimes.
Why I hate buying PCs from Dell (Score:4, Insightful)
If dell is trying to figure out why its market share is declining, it is likely because of the difficulty in knowing what you are buying is the best price. I don't think HP makes people go through all this nonsense.
Oh and also the whole small business vs. home office crap. What an annoyance how they both contain the exact same machines with just very slight differences.
Re:Insurance Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Insurance Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, and it makes me wonder if The Consumerist read the article carefully. They're pretty aggressive about bad behavior [consumerist.com] by companies [consumerist.com]. So it's OK if a consumer steals for personal gain?
Re:Insurance Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
As another poster has already pointed out, (Score:5, Insightful)
And this article was posted to Slashdot AFTER that happened, and there is STILL no "Update: Dell actually apologized before we posted this article, 'cause we're dumb."
You're doing them a huge disservice by letting this stand uncorrected, kdawson.
Re:Insurance Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes. The price of insuring your laptop may very well go up. Insurance companies aren't in the business of losing money. At the end of the day the of insurance fraud will be paid for by honest people.
Re:wtf? (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:2, Insightful)
The "These are the steps that we have taken to insure that this does not happen in the future" part.
Re:wtfraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't #3 bother anyone else? It is explicit instructions on how to commit insurance fraud. If I were Dell management, I'd want it taken down for that reason alone. ( How would you feel if someone posted your bank password on the net, thus enabling any reader to defraud you? )
Stop smoking your hippie dust (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, since it might get taken down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wtfraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
This looks pretty clear to me. On a certain date, deliberately damage the merchandise, and the insurance that you bought will get you a new one. This part is advice on how to commit fraud. Surrounding it with other advice doesn't change that.
Re:I wish Dell the best (Score:2, Insightful)
Where exactly do you think the parts in your Dell come from?
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but the downside is that you'll have to spend the rest of your life with a known criminal: you. Personally I think that's too high a price to pay for a lousy Dell laptop.
Re:Why I hate buying PCs from Dell (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't seen a rebate on a Dell deal yet (though I may be wrong) though they do have just about every other type of discount: coupons, percent off threshold, dollars off threshold, special base configuration prices, certain upgrade promotions (double memory, upgraded hard drive, upgraded CPU, etc.) and so on.
While you can relate the process to buying a car, the nice thing about Dell is that it is all online and it is fast. The online portion is great because there's not a team of salesmen trying pull a sale out of you; it's just you and the website and a simple click ends it all. And because it is online, the smart people postpone buying until they've found a deal they like. It is very advantagous to you (the consumer) because Dell cannot sit a sales rep that will try every trick in to the book to get a profit off you right at that moment. Instead, you can just go to the website, see what's offered, and compare their offer to others on the internet. If you like it, you buy, if you don't, you just close the window. All they can do is keep putting up different offers hoping that you'll eventually bite. But sometimes, they screw up.
For example, just last week they made a small boo-boo and priced a Dell C521 with an AMD dual-core, 1gb ram machine for $219 [slickdeals.net]. As a side note, the deal was posted 12:17AM early Friday morning which happens to match a certain piece of information in the article. The mistake was quickly fixed but not before it had spread the internet and was posted on various websites. Many users reported their sales going through (shipped) while some reported some orders getting cancelled.
Anyhow, the point is the system actually works for you as long as you're willing to wait a bit (there are typically good deals every couple months) for a deal that suits you. If you're extremely wealthy on time (waiting about a full year), then you can eventually hit one of these rare deals and come out on top. Some people have been able to get a good car sale, but it requires a lot of preparation and research beforehand, and it requires that you know exactly what you want to buy. With Dell, you can just check the website once every day (only takes a minute) to see if a deal suits you. (But smart people will just check deal websites so that they only get fed the times a good Dell deal comes up ;)