Dell And The GrandParents
What timing! About four hours after I read Joel Spolsky’s article on Dell, and his explanation of how much the “play” with their channel pricing in an attempt to eek out the most bucks from their customers, I got a call.
My grandparents, who have been using an old Apple Macintosh for the last four years or so, decided that they’d really like to try life with a laptop. I think the overall plan is to have a portable machine that can move around their house with them (thus, a light laptop). And so, about four hours after I read Joel’s blog post, I got a call from my grandfather.
He explained that my grandmother had received a flyer for a Dell E1505 for $699, which was an Intel Core Duo machine, with 512MB of RAM, a 60GB Hard Disk, and that it came with a “skin” (my term, not his) that they liked. Not too bad of a price for this machine, but I recommended that he upgrade the RAM to 1GB if they would do it for under $100 (if not, I can do it for under $100).
He wasn’t really sure how to order one (note to Dell: despite your marketing, some of your target audience doesn’t see the phone number still). I explained that he could get online and order it, or he could call, or I could order it for him online. We decided it might be easiest if I just order it for him.
Before I got off the phone, I went to Dell’s website, and without choosing a type of customer, just plugged in E1505 into their search box. A few seconds later, and as the fourth hit in their search results, was the E1505 laptop. I clicked on it, expecting to see a $699 option. No such luck. There was a $669. The next model’s price went up to almost $900.
[Note: The prices have since gone up to $739, $942, and $1,252!]
I examined my grandfather’s ad, and the pricing and configuration were nowhere to be found on the Dell website. I suppose there was a coupon code somewhere in the ad, but I would stipulate that the use of a coupon code to Dell’s target customer base in their weekly mailings is probably not the way to promote a product.
Needless to say, the resolution was to explain to my grandfather how to purchase the computer over the phone with a Dell representative. He got the E1505 for well under what I can get it for directly through their website.
Considering that I routinely purchase thousands of dollars of hardware … there may be a reason I don’t purchase machines from Dell?
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