I would not bother with this report if Dell Computer Corp. Did not claim to be concerned with "building relationships directly with customers" and with business ethics.
I had never ordered anything from Dell before and decided to start with a relatively small purchase. On February 18, I ordered a 19 inch LCD computer monitor from Dell (VA1926W). I ordered the monitor because it was advertised for sale for $99.99 and shipping was free. It seemed like quite a good deal and in this bad economy, I am interested in good deals.
Within an hour of placing the order, it occurred to me that I might want to order some speakers that were compatible with the monitor, so I called Dell to inquire whether or not this was possible. I was told by a sales representitative that the order had not yet been processed (so adding to it was a possibility). She and I discussed various speaker options.By the end of the discussion, I had decided to stick with the original order (to simply buy a monitor and not to buy any speakers). I made it very clear that I still wanted to buy the monitor.
So, I waited for the monitor to arrive. Ten days had gone by, and it still had not yet arrived. Then, on March 3rd, I checked the order status and discovered that the order had been cancelled. I explained to the sales representative (and to the customer care representative, and to yet another representiative) that I had not cancelled the order and was waiting to receive the monitor. I was told repeatedly that "there was nothing they could do" about "reinstating" the order. The monitor was no longer on sale (it was now $149.) and was also now temporarily out of stock. I told them that I would wait the 2-3 weeks estimated for re-stocking, but certainly did not want to pay an additional $49. I was told that the best I could do was to check back in 2-3 weeks to see if the monitor had again been placed on sale.
In my view, this is "bait and switch" behavior. To say that "there is nothing we can do" is ridiculous. There is nothing a company can do about (for example) the weather or the movements of the solar system. Companies, on the other hand, have absolute control over their own sales policies.
I am obviously free to have nothing more to do with Dell and to buy a monitor from some other company, which I will do. However, I resent the loss of the time I have spent dealing with the issue and hope to serve as a cautionary tale.
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