Unless that’s more than they made with their misleading pricing, that’s not really a punishment. Fines for companies need to be bigger or they’re not really deterred from shady behaviour.
From the article:
These tricky methods led to shoppers spending over $2 million AUD (about $1.3 million) on Dell monitors from August 2019 to December 2021, according to the ACCC.
So, yes, they were fined about five times more than their sales figures which was certainly more than their profits in those monitors.
That’s assuming they were only using the tactics during those exact dates, but I imagine that’s just the period the prosecutors could prove.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dell’s Australia arm has been slapped with a $10 million AUD (about $6.49 million) fine for “making false and misleading representations on its website about discount prices for add-on computer monitors,” the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced today.
As Ars Technica previously reported, the ACCC launched litigation against Dell Australia in November.
In June, the Australian Federal Court declared that Dell Australia made shoppers believe monitors would be cheaper if bought as an add-on item.
Dell Australia’s website would use savings-signaling lingo, such as: “Includes x% off,” “Total Savings” plus a dollar amount, and “Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product,” the ACCC noted.
Dell Australia also admitted to overstating “discounts customers received” since “monitors were not sold for the strikethrough price for most of the relevant time” and that it “contravened the Australian Consumer Law,” according to ACCC’s announcement today.
“We took this action against Dell Australia because consumers rely on accurate information about prices and discounts to make purchasing decisions," Carver said in a statement today.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Shoppers of Dell Australia’s website who were buying a computer would see an offer for a Dell display with a lower price next to a higher price with a strikethrough line. That suggested to shoppers that the price they’d pay for the monitor if they added it to their cart now would be lower than the monitor’s usual cost. But it turns out the strikethrough prices weren’t the typical costs. Sometimes, the lower price was actually higher than what Dell Australia typically charged.
Don’t believe in ads, folks. If prices are important for you, do you own research.
is this dell getting ducked for their “”“expected value”“” price listings
