Dells discount is total bs.

For U.S buyers, it seems your getting a good deal when your laptop that apparently costs 2700 is being sold to you by dell for only 2000 with some standard % off, right? Wrong. If you go to dell canada, and configure the same machine, it will cost less (given ca>us conversion) than its U.S counterpart without any coupons/percent off.

This leads me to conclude that dell hikes U.S prices to insane levels and just constantly offers some ****ty free % off to fool consumers.

 

Well that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. As someone living in the US, though, wouldn't the support and service become really difficult if you bought it thru Dell Canada? Or would they just kinda help you through US channels? It would be difficult if I bought something thru their Candian site, had the mail-in warranty and had to ship it to Canada and back to get stuff fixed. Or maybe it doesn't matter where you are anyhow and you can just use Dell support anywhere that's most convenient for you. Is that how it works w/ Dell?

 

i'ts not about the maze of coupons and discounts that dell offers or whether the "price is hiked". it's about the price you pay for the specs you get. when you look at it that way, dell has some compelling offerings in the notebook market. it's very difficult to find alternate vendors that can offer the same price/performance nexus.

i don't care what kind of hoops i have to jump through. i care about what i get for what i'm paying.

 

The amazing thing is people actually pay full price. They buy it cause they heard of Dell.

 

Many times with Dell the coupon models are only for vertain restricted configurations. When shopping for my last computer, for the same features, I was at the same price tier as IBM. Guess which laptop I picked?

They are like the GM and Ford of the computer industry. They cant seem to get people to buy their stuff unless it has 10 coupons on it, that you need to scour the internet for a few hours to find to come down toe reasonable prices. If you are lucky enough to get the student discount, you will find out that the amazing discounts you get are not that special at all. Spec for spec, dells consumer model price range seems to be at the range of other companies business models that are much higher quality. Then to top it off, Dell's business models are even higher and offer little discount, and are extremely costly compared to others.

Kinda gives you a headache trying to figure it all out

 

Alot of companies actually use this tactic. If you go anywhere that has specials like 25% off, they usually raise the price to say 10% higher. Granted you still get a discount, but it makes it look like you are saving more. This is why alot of people shop around.

Just my $.02!

 

i'd love to see an example of this.

 

This is just my opinion, but I think that Dell is playing a smart move by keeping the coupons.

How many of us are college/high school students or users that have a limited budget? We can't afford to get a 2.0ghz system for 3000. We want the best bang for our buck because we do have a limited budget.

That's why the coupons are so appealing. The inspirons might not have the best quality and make as other manufacturers do, but for those of us that need to save every dollar we can, its a good deal.