Dell Black Friday "Doorbuster" Scam

cthulhuiscool

2[H]4U
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So I was interested in the dell black xbox one black friday bundle. I was online, logged in. Ready to go at about 250 pst (sale opened at 3). Was mashing F5 from 258-3something and... nothing. The price stayed it's value of ~470$, never dipping but also never going "out of stock" (you can still buy it at list price, showing they still have "stock" of it). I didn't know if maybe it glitched for me, or I was trying to access to wrong listing, so I pinged up chat support... que of almost 1000... So did a little digging and found that this issue didn't just happen to me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackfriday/comments/3ueh2v/dell_xboxone_deal_already_sold_out/
http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Dellcom/internet/Dellcom-Dell-Black-Friday-XBox-Scam-Internet-1270465

This is pretty damn shameless on their part... and I was prepared to buy a tablet from them as well. Blame it on malice or incompetence, but I think dell's tactic of bait and switching their "doorbuster" is pretty damn poor. Good chance someone in the marketing dept loses their job over this (whether or not it was even their fault).
 
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yeah, i'm right there with you. pretty unhappy about the whole thing. it went OOS within 10 seconds. so quickly, i'd argue it would have been impossible to check out with their absolutely retarded UI. i have a $300 dell gift card, i was all lined up to get the whole deal for $16.50, ended up getting another shitty bundle.. which, i'm sure, was their plan all along. :rolleyes:

not to be a huge bitch about the whole thing, i mean it's just an xbox, but.. i will most definitely be rethinking all my future purchases with dell, including my imminent infrastructure upgrade at work, just out of spite.
 
I send out a Black Friday report to everyone in my office which amounts to a few hundred people. I always warn people to ignore Dell because they will be scammed. Walmart always has tons of items and is the best bet overall.
 
So I was interested in the dell black xbox one black friday bundle. I was online, logged in. Ready to go at about 250 pst (sale opened at 3). Was mashing F5 from 258-3something and... nothing. The price stayed it's value of ~470$, never dipping but also never going "out of stock" (you can still buy it at list price, showing they still have "stock" of it). I didn't know if maybe it glitched for me, or I was trying to access to wrong listing, so I pinged up chat support... que of almost 1000... So did a little digging and found that this issue didn't just happen to me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackfriday/comments/3ueh2v/dell_xboxone_deal_already_sold_out/
http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Dellcom/internet/Dellcom-Dell-Black-Friday-XBox-Scam-Internet-1270465

This is pretty damn shameless on their part... and I was prepared to buy a tablet from them as well. Blame it on malice or incompetence, but I think dell's tactic of bait and switching their "doorbuster" is pretty damn poor. Good chance someone in the marketing dept loses their job over this (whether or not it was even their fault).

I was doing the same thing but I actually saw it available and hit add to cart. A message said something about it being a limited time item and 114 we're left available, but it successfully was added to my cart and I proceeded to checkout. I already made a Dell acount so I went directly to payment, hit confirm, saw a processing payment screen, and then "product no longer available" and advertisments for their more expencive bundles under that.

Pretty much a scam to get people on their website, they probably only had 100 or so of them.

Instead I went to target and got their 299 bundle with a $60 gift card. Will use the gift card to get a 2nd controller, it will make a nice Xmas gift for my younger brother.
 
Yep...I was waiting for it too...hit refresh right at 6, saw it, added it to cart, got to checkout and then same thing, processing and out of stock, with links to more expensive bundles.

I ended up going to Walmart, asked the manager if he'd price match the Microsoft Store deal, he did and then some...ended up with:



Xbox One GOW Bundle
Fallout 4
Halo 5
COD Black Ops 3

Total OOP was $361.08

He price matched by giving me a $60 gift card, and they didn't explore the deal too deeply, the Microsoft deal was a crappy game, but instead I ended up getting Fallout 4, then they had a promo on the walmart site for 2 games for $89.99, which was OOS online, but they honored that, so I got COD Black Ops 3 + Halo 5, then used the $60 gift card towards that.


Good deal or no?



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damn... rub it in haha
I ended up going to Best buy and getting the tomb raider bundle of theirs. Not wholly pissed by it, but still would have preferred what dell advertised... I really hope tacos was ferreal because I would love to think that their bait and switch fuckery cost them tens of thousands of dollars haha...
 
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Why are door busters treated differently in the consumers eyes than in store? .... I remember goign to stores for a door buster, where they had like 20 at that price, and that was that .... this is no different from Dell....I think people are mistaking the term Door Buster for Black Friday sale .... the point of a door buster is to get ALOT of people to come to the store, while only a few will get it...
 
Yeah this is pretty absurd. It seems like we are at the point now where unless you are running some kind of automated program designed to get the transaction done in the first 50 milliseconds, then your chance of actually getting in on a deal like this is Zero.

I'm thinking $1000 fine for every person burned by this would alter their financial calculations and make these textbook bait-and-switch operations less profitable.
 
Yeah this is pretty absurd. It seems like we are at the point now where unless you are running some kind of automated program designed to get the transaction done in the first 50 milliseconds, then your chance of actually getting in on a deal like this is Zero.

I'm thinking $1000 fine for every person burned by this would alter their financial calculations and make these textbook bait-and-switch operations less profitable.

So all the companies that do this in a brick and mortar are just doing good business, and online companies cannot?
 
So I was interested in the dell black xbox one black friday bundle. I was online, logged in. Ready to go at about 250 pst (sale opened at 3). Was mashing F5 from 258-3something and... nothing. The price stayed it's value of ~470$, never dipping but also never going "out of stock" (you can still buy it at list price, showing they still have "stock" of it). I didn't know if maybe it glitched for me, or I was trying to access to wrong listing, so I pinged up chat support... que of almost 1000... So did a little digging and found that this issue didn't just happen to me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackfriday/comments/3ueh2v/dell_xboxone_deal_already_sold_out/
http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Dellcom/internet/Dellcom-Dell-Black-Friday-XBox-Scam-Internet-1270465

This is pretty damn shameless on their part... and I was prepared to buy a tablet from them as well. Blame it on malice or incompetence, but I think dell's tactic of bait and switching their "doorbuster" is pretty damn poor. Good chance someone in the marketing dept loses their job over this (whether or not it was even their fault).

So a retailer had a very limited quantity of a "door buster" deal, instantly sold out, and you are surprised or angry? :eek:
 
So all the companies that do this in a brick and mortar are just doing good business, and online companies cannot?

Exactly my point. B&M have done this for how many years? And people are all the sudden butt hurt because Dell does this online. Color me amazed.
 
Exactly my point. B&M have done this for how many years? And people are all the sudden butt hurt because Dell does this online. Color me amazed.

As does amazon .... They just didn't do as good as an e-mail. For some reason people think they are entitled to it because they exist. If you don't get it quit fucking whining because the deal will pop up elsewhere. Dell is far from the only one to do this online, shit if you want to bitch at something the Fry's fiasco is a better one to bitch at. Atleast dell lets you purchase shit.
 
Pretty sure there were thousands of people just like you who mashed f5 and the lucky few got the deal and you didn't.

Not saying that there was a deal, there's a chance that there wasn't one but I'm sure a lucky few got the deal.
 
I like the way amazon does it. You actually have a chance of getting something unlike brick and mortar stores where you have to fight to get in.
 
So all the companies that do this in a brick and mortar are just doing good business, and online companies cannot?

I never said anything about giving physical stores a free pass. They should all be fined IMO.
 
I never said anything about giving physical stores a free pass. They should all be fined IMO.

Be fined for what? It is not a bait in switch if they had the product on hand at the advertised price. As someone mentioned a door buster is meant to get people in the door/on the site at a specific time. It goes without saying the quantities will be very limited.
 
So a retailer had a very limited quantity of a "door buster" deal, instantly sold out, and you are surprised or angry? :eek:

They didn't "sell out" though. They still had stock, just with the price raised back up to $470.
If the add had said "first 300 customer" or whatever, that's fine. But "limited quantity" implies that every one of the items in question they own are the advertised price, and after they run out THEN it's over.
 
They didn't "sell out" though. They still had stock, just with the price raised back up to $470.
If the add had said "first 300 customer" or whatever, that's fine. But "limited quantity" implies that every one of the items in question they own are the advertised price, and after they run out THEN it's over.

https://blackfriday.com/stores/dell-consumer/ads/black-friday/page-1


Bottom of the page "All offers on this page are limited quantities at this price"

Pretty clear to me, they have X number of bundles they plan to sell at that price, it doesnt mean every one they have will be sold at that price.
 
Fair enough. I'm not trying to make the case they did anything illegal. Just stating that the way this was handled was a really poor marketing move on their part since people tend to remember getting screwed far more than getting a good deal. A smarter move would have been to have some sort of lottery that for the first x minutes people could sign up for to randomly decide who gets the bundle. If they state the quantity up front and everyone in the raffle has an equal chance of winning, then at least no one can claim to have been cheated.
 
Why are door busters treated differently in the consumers eyes than in store? .... I remember goign to stores for a door buster, where they had like 20 at that price, and that was that .... this is no different from Dell....I think people are mistaking the term Door Buster for Black Friday sale .... the point of a door buster is to get ALOT of people to come to the store, while only a few will get it...

Couldn't have said it better myself. I knew the deal would be one of the first people would jump on. I also figured that Dell would have a very small stock available. Was a first browser come, first browser served scenario lol. Reason why I tend to not rely on online sales that are that good. I may be in my 30's now but I'm not quite ready to be a computer chair warrior just yet :D.
 
I never said anything about giving physical stores a free pass. They should all be fined IMO.

If they can prove they sold JUST ONE item at said price, they cannot and will not be fined. That is why 99.9999999% of the time, in the fine print, it states limited quantity or "while supplies last". And it's been this way forever.

Consumers are not entitled to pricing.
 
I got one of the dell 2 in 1 (last page of the black friday ad). Top right, says $279.99 with preferred account. I paid with preferred account, guess what, it was $300+tax. I'll see if I can get my $20 off once I have the bill tho. There was a screen that popped that said exactly how many they had. I hit the queue just seconds into it and they had ~460 of them. Sold out in less than 3 minutes.
 
So all the companies that do this in a brick and mortar are just doing good business, and online companies cannot?

With a Brick And Morter you do have the ability to queue and to get vouchers. Which mean if you put in the time of waiting in line you have a chance of getting it. Online is free for all.
 
If they can prove they sold JUST ONE item at said price, they cannot and will not be fined. That is why 99.9999999% of the time, in the fine print, it states limited quantity or "while supplies last". And it's been this way forever.

Consumers are not entitled to pricing.

Car dealerships do it to. !!!New 2016 Ford F-150 just $16,999!!!. Turns out it's just 1, with a manual transmission, no A/C, and just a basic AM/FM radio, and it's an aweful color. But for several thousand more you can get something that's actually driveable. And before you know it, you just spend $30K.
 
Their 229 deal for the inspiron with the 820m was a scam.

The deal started at 1pm for me and after a few F5's there was no add to cart option. It just showed out of stock.
 
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