Dell fined $30,000 for refusing to sell £9 monitors

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 31 Jul 2009 at 16:00

Dell has been fined $30,000 for the recent spate of pricing errors on its Taiwanese website.

The highest profile of the errors saw the company mistakenly advertise a 19in LCD monitor for only NT$500, equating to around £9.

During the eight-hour period before the company yanked the advertisement 26,000 people placed orders for nearly 140,000 displays, according to Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission.

A similar incident in July saw the company advertise its E4300 laptops for $562 instead of $1,850, taking 100,000 orders before the mistake was corrected.

Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission ordered the company to sell the monitors at that price, but Dell refused offering customers discount vouchers and apologies instead. An unsurprising move given the massive financial loss that would have been involved.

A flood of complaints followed, with customers reporting Dell to the police for fraud. The complaints reached such fever pitch that Dell's bank account was frozen for two days while an investigation was conducted.

The company has now been fined $30,500 for refusing to comply and ordered to come up with better compensation for its customers.