Issue #0429/3 - Dell has made some modifications to its web site to make pages consistent but there are other, more concerning issues.
Following the enquiry put to Dell at the time of writing last week’s article, "Gross confusion at Dell Europe", several of the discrepancies noted have been corrected on the company’s web sites and pricing is now more consistent.
However, there are still two major areas of concern.
One is simply that the photographs of the S2500 mono laser printer still appear on the Spanish and French web sites where there should be photographs of the 3000cn and 3100cn colour laser printers.
But, the other is far more serious. It would appear that there is an ‘error’ in the pricing of the products. Consider the following examples of, firstly, a small or medium business customer and, secondly, a home or home office user attempting to purchase the Dell 3000cn colour laser printer on the Dell web site.
Example 1. Small or medium business user - Dell 3000cn
The first web page visited shows the price as £259 excluding delivery & VAT. The user then clicks on the link to ‘Customise & Buy’ the printer. Here the price is shown as £266 including delivery and is also shown as £312.55 inc. delivery & VAT. Slightly confusing but, fair enough, it adds up, £7 is charged for delivery and the VAT inclusive price is shown as well – no problem.So, the user then clicks the link to add the product to the shopping basket and is presented with the table shown here.
Why has an extra £8 suddenly been added for delivery, bringing the final total to £321.95 instead of the £312.55 shown on the previous web page? By the time VAT has been added, the user appears to be being double-charged to the tune of £9.40.
The same situation exists in the Home and Home Office section of the web site but the layout is slightly different because Dell always shows VAT included for Home and Home Office users, as follows:
Example 2. Home and Home Office users - Dell 3000cn
Here the first page shows the price as £314 inclusive of VAT and delivery, a slight miscalculation perhaps when £259 + £7 @ a VAT rate of 17.5% equals £312.55 (as in example 1)?Perhaps the company is simply rounding the figures off. After all, the figure on the ‘Customise and Buy’ page is shown as £322 (rounded up by 5 pence). But why should it cost £322 when the figure of £314 is supposed to include VAT and delivery?
Once the product is added to the shopping basket, the buyer is presented with the following table, essentially the same as the previous example (but different layout).
Again £8 has mysteriously been added for a second delivery and, all of a sudden, the VAT exclusive, but delivery inclusive, price of £266 is shown as well as the extra £8 delivery fee.
In fact, other Dell printers on the UK web site demonstrate similar inconsistencies, and perhaps worse. For instance a Dell Laser Printer 1700, priced at £126 excluding VAT, ends up in the shopping basket costing £150 plus £8 delivery, which totals £185.65 inclusive of delivery and VAT. Even at £126 plus delivery of £8, the total should be only £157.45, which is £28.20 or 15% less than Dell is actually charging.
Although the UK web site has been used for this research, it could just as easily have been undertaken using other European web sites and the same situation almost certainly exists in the US.
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