Taiwan consumer regulators have ordered Dell to honor a pricing slip-up on their website that offered 19-inch LCD monitors for only NT$500 (around $15). The pricing mistake was posted late Thursday, and while it has been fixed since, news of the supposed bargain spread quickly via email, blogs and sites like Twitter. In the eight hours before Dell corrected the listing to the intended price of NT$4,800 ($148), 26,000 people had placed orders for nearly 140,000 displays.

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Maybe those from taiwan should learn to read english better. There is a disclaimer right on the site that says they are not responsible for miss-prints and typo errors. Dell has canceled thousands of US orders in the past due to this. Everything from a PC for $99 to a 50 inch tv for $299.

I hope dell doesnt mail a single one. The last thing we need is a struggling US PC brand shipping all of its product out of the country to lose money.

Maybe you should read the article more closely. It was on Dells Taiwanese site. http://configure.ap.dell.com/dellsto...oc=S14E1909WTW

They added that disclaimer after having a similar issue in the US a few years ago. Back then the government made them honor the price. That's why you should always triple check everything that goes online.

There is a lot of misinformation here... Dell says they were not required to honor prices... nobody is... the international business community has resolved this decades ago... long before Dell was in the International marketplace. It is in every business law text book.

You can make a disclamer, its the law. They have no choice but to honor the price tag.

Dell takes a slap in my book if they don't, its that simple.

Maybe you should brush up on business law. They don't have to honor the price with the disclaimer in place.

Who knows... $15USD is probably above their cost price so they might've still managed a profit? Moving 140 000 monitors in 8 hours is brilliant - might even inspire Dell to venture into the 'cheap' shop market!

Should have order six of them when I had a chance, eh?

Heh.

there's no way they'll honor that,some companies have there own policies ,tesco{my friendly local supermarket} has a policy , if you pay more at the till than marked price you get a refund and the product free ,some people got barred ,because they went around the store's checking prices , buying a trolley of beer then saying the price was wrong and getting it for free . but if the cashier notices during the transaction you get nothing ,no cash was paid no t.v.'s

Baloney! Too many people on this subject, and too little knowledge of product law... business law, or common sense.
They, of course, do have a choice.

Disclaimer or not, people can sue them if they wish.
Why? they marketed a very low price and had huge orders for it and now, since they found out about the mistake, those people are supposed to pay the much higher price.

Taiwan has the right to sue them since you cannot place a price, get orders and then change the price 180 degrees.

IMO, since it was a typo, they should just cancel all orders instead so people would have to place their order once more. By the law they are allowed to cancel any product, at any time, so no one can touch them this way.

I sincerely don't see what's all the fuss about since we all know that things end well in the end.

Consumer greed knows no bounds, how about Ford places an ad for the new Taurus and it's goofed at
$199.00 instead of $19,900?

TELL ME ALL ABOUT HOW THEY HAVE TO HONOR THAT.

To the best of my knowledge ford does not sell cars online. Now if it was on ebay...

If I listened during my Business Law course then a price tag is only a 'offer of purchase' and must be confirmed or denied.

Even if a shop displays a price tag, they can counter offer it when you go to purchase it quite easily by law (most shops will honor the tag however).

A disclaimer would completely waive the price tag issue and Dell would have grounds to argue honoring the price tag (most likely by saying "read the fine print")

This is however in my country, unsure of American/Taiwan laws

As far as the Taiwanese are concerned, the law that applies is that of Taiwan. If Taiwanese law does not allow such disclaimers, the disclaimer does not apply. Analogy: implied warranties; you can claim any exceptions you want in your paper warranty, but if the implied warranty law of the applicable stay trumps it.

That was no "mistake" or "misprint" and if you believe that you are crazy. It was a brilliant move to cleverly attract record sales virally and then attempt to use a legal loophole to try and get out of it. This is far from being a new marketing technique. It is dirt old. That should have surged sales nicely in this down economy BUT, it was dirty and deceptive. And to boot, it was not their first time doing it. Man c'mon. Make them pay it all and it will never happen again.

Loloollol.
Yeah, you want a mature response to that? Too bad, it's just that funny...what are people gonna do with 140, 000 displays? Besides sell them.

well....maybe there's no disclaimer right showed on dell taiwanese website~ why don't you go learn chinese better and try to understand what was going on over there before you expressing your BS here???

well....maybe there's no disclaimer right showed on dell taiwanese website~ why don't you go learn chinese better and try to understand what was going on over there before you expressing your BS here???

Dell should sell them on at cost for these people, that's more than fair. I live in Ireland and if something's mispriced there's no obligation on the seller. It's called a 'mistake'.