That said, I am now incredibly reluctant to even think about buying from them again. They’ve had three pricing snafus (of which I’m aware) in less than two weeks – one in which my sweetie lost out on a couple of monitors, and two gigantic issues in Taiwan.

I’ve worked most of my life in retail, and lemme tell you – I don’t know of a single place that wouldn’t honor the advertised price, even if it WAS a mistake. Even if the company has to take a hit. Even if that hit ends up being HUGE. Respect for the customers, and their continuing respect for the company, demands nothing less.

Dell, however, seems to think otherwise. I’ve heard tell of other pricing mishaps, and just as they’ve done with these, they’ve canceled the orders. That’s unacceptable. Once the transaction has been completed – even if the charge on the customer’s debit/credit card is still pending – there should be no ability for Dell to just say “Whups! Our bad – you can’t have that.”

I’m not a programmer, so I have no idea what the developers have set up as far as their pricing input goes. However, I am familiar with the employment hierarchy, and the necessity of accountability in something like this. With all the money they’ve lost in only ONE of these mishaps, they could very easily hire an intern or two to make sure these things are correct before the final change is made on the site. It doesn’t matter how complex the site design itself may be – look at a preview of the item before the change goes live, and if it’s wrong then don’t post it. Simple problem, simple solution.

Hey Dell? If you ever consider actually taking rational measures to fix this issue, gimme a call.

PCWorld article