[geeks] Cheap Octocore

[Dan Sikorski]

Francois Dion wrote:
> On 10/23/07, Mark <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> And thus we encounter Dell gripe number 2 - STUPIDLY complicated
>> pricing!
>>     
>
> It is even more convoluted than meets the eye. They run promotions,
> but also if you are a company with a "premium" account, once you are
> hooked, then they start offering machines  at higher prices than joe
> public would pay until you complain.
>   
I have a premier account, and if you consider a few things, i don't find 
their pricing all that convoluted.  The thing you have to consider is 
that most people on this mailing list has the knowledge of a large 
business IT department with the budget of a home user.  The average home 
user Dell customer, believe it or not, actually does want their computer 
to come with a monitor, software, printer/scanner/fax, and everything 
else they need, and if it doesn't have all of that, the home user thinks 
they've been ripped off.  So when you get a PC on the home/small office 
site, you get those things.  This means that the business site, which 
doesn't have as much crap, will be cheaper. 

So then, why does the home user site sometimes have cheaper prices than 
what i can get with my premier account?  Just like any other retailer, 
Dell has overstock, closeout, and other considerations.  Sometimes they 
need to ditch product inventory, so they cut the prices on the site that 
they think can get rid of it the fastest.  If your sales rep from Dell 
works well with you, he will inform you of these promotions, and match 
their prices.

Last week, I put together a few quotes on the premier site, and my sales 
rep, without even asking him, sent me additional quotes.  If he couldn't 
do any better with other promotions, i got the same price in his quote 
as the premier website, but if there were some promotions to take 
advantage of, it came back cheaper.

A few months ago, Dell had a promotion that was apparently TOO good.  It 
was a "buy one, get one free" sale on several models of desktops, 
servers, and laptops.  I say TOO good because the 5 day promotion was 
pulled after less than 2 days.  We got a couple dozen desktops, laptops, 
and servers at absurdly low prices.  Optiplex desktops that we normally 
paid $1100 for were $750.  (It was buy one get one free at list price, 
no discounts or promotions), Latitude notebooks that were normally $2500 
we got for $1700, it was like Michael Dell let "Crazy Steve" from the 
used car lot take over for a day.

Besides, why single out Dell on this practice?  I've heard from multiple 
sources:  "Nobody pays list price for (Sun/Cisco/HP) gear"

    -Dan Sikorski