Posted on 02/23/2005 7:46:57 PM PST by HAL9000
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Dell Inc. is being sued for allegedly pushing consumers into high-interest financing schemes, as well as other aggressive sales practices, the plaintiff's law firm said Tuesday.The suit accuses the world's largest personal computer maker of false advertising and bait-and-switch practices, fraud and deceit in its sales and advertising representations, and breach of contract by unilaterally modifying terms and conditions of sales and financing.
[snip]
First is the bait-and-switch accusation. A statement from the law firm given to Reuters said the suit was filed on behalf of a San Francisco nurse who claims that in 2003 she was led to believe that she was buying a Dell notebook computer listed at $599 and an $89 printer, but was later billed $1,352.
Dell is also accused of switching parts in the computers it sells. "The customer will order a computer with certain parts, but will not receive the machine they think they're getting," said Friedman. That includes installing lower end equipment in machines that a customer has been told will have better quality parts.
Second, the computer maker and its partners CIT Bank and Dell Financial Services (DFS) are accused of using false promises of low-cost financing to trick buyers with installment payment hikes.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Do liberals eat their own?
Dude, Michael Dell is a republican.
The Dell's I bought long ago aren't that bad and have everything in them that I ordered. Too bad I've built my own computers for quite a while instead now.
Thanks for the information....Will pass on to my son (you have FR mail.)
Dell treated me like the farmer in the Dell shop.
Ouch. I'm a Mac guy, but I hate to hear this. Dell's a Texas company that brings a lot of money into the state. They used to have a reputation as a rock solid company, but I've heard quality and incompetence grumblings for a while, now. This is the first time I've heard of dishonesty complaints. Hope they're not true.
Is that good or bad?
Yeap, son and I notice the exact same thing. They have a bare system for $499 or so... but the second you decide 128mb ram is too little, you are looking at a $1000 system.
Well, they wouldn't let me pick it up with my turnip truck and they kept my money for three months when I refused delivery.
My son worked for Dell briefly.......He walked when he was asked to do something he wasn't comfortable doing....Very proud of him! It certainly appears from what he told me, to be true.
I'm a consulting engineer with a lot of digital/computer experience so knew what I was looking for from the get go, and Dell provided it at the cheapest price/highest quality ratio possible.
I did price out their gaming machines versus upgrading a 3000 to do pretty much the same and went with the 3000's at much, much cheaper pricing. But, in their defense, the motherboards and other "extras" in the higher end machines are better than what I ended up with in the 3000's, it's just that the overall cost benefit ration wasn't in it for me.
My wife and I own four Dell's, including a dual-processor 2400 server. I doubt we would consider purchasing from a competitor. Dell's are pretty darn reliable. Of the four, our only service call has been to replace noisy fans on the 2400 server.
However, Dell is not perfect. We had trouble with a laptop for which Dell tried many fixes, including a new hard drive, to no avail. Dell finally refunded our purchase price and shipping costs. We lost time, but no money. At the time my wife and I agreed that Dell should have known about the problem since it had been documented by previous purchasers on Dell's own 'newsgroup'. But Dell is a large organization and, by definition, sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. So, all is forgiven, considering Dell's remarkable service history with our other computers.
BTW, Delta Power Tools (for woodworking) has the best customer service in the world, ever! Trust me. It is beyond belief.
Do you build middle of the road machines or high performance ones? I buy workstations that are always pretty close to the bleeding edge. I find it much easier to let Dell create configurations than to have to research what are the hottest components this week and trying to get them all to work together. I buy computers one at a time for the office, and the components are always different.
I usually go with high end gaming machines or servers. Buy them in parts and then continuously upgrade through its life. Makes it rather easy to stay on the curve and not get too far behind.
I buy all the cheapest systems for our office...then upgrade with memory from Crucial.com...most of my workers cant out-type a Celeron chip anyhow...
So what! The price is quoted for that particular configuration. I'm lucky if I spend less than $4,000.
Did your screen break like mine?
>>>We had trouble with a laptop for which Dell tried many fixes,
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