Coupon Chief strikes again!

I spent a bit more time looking at coupon codes today. (I mentioned them a while ago in one of my posts.) While doing so I found a link to Dell Computer’s ‘Dell Outlet’ where you can find refurbished Dell products and get discounts. This is interesting, because the ads for Dell give you the impression that every single Dell computer is built to specific requirements for a specific customer. So obviously this isn’t entirely the case, or else these items have been leased out and Dell has cleaned them up in some way.

I had a recent experience with Dell with didn’t quite endear me to them, although the laptop we bought from them is fine. My son and I worked through the Dell website at great length, picking and choosing what I wanted for the machine, and eventually finished up at NZ$1677. The first email confirmation from Dell confirmed this price. The next email said the charge was $2047!
Now Dell is not the easiest company in the world to get customer service from. The first person said the difference in price had to do with GST, which was piffle. The second person, whose first name was Annie, was more helpful, but didn’t really get hold of the problem for a while. The difficulty might have been that I was speaking New Zealand English and she was speaking Malaysian English, and only occasionally did we meet on common ground.
However, Annie stuck to her guns, and over two or three weeks we did manage to communicate a bit more effectively, mostly by email, but also, to my surprise, by cellphone. Presumably I put my cellphone number on the Dell site, but I don’t particularly remember doing so. Anyway, out of the blue, she rang me on it.
They’d charged me for two extra years warranty. In the end I think it was easier for me just to let them charge me and be done with it. At least I’m supposedly getting something for the price.
To go back to the Dell special prices site. I don’t find it easy to see what the special prices actually are, but then I find the layout on some sites isn’t as obvious to me as I’d expect it to be. Dell talk about free shipping and such, but that’s no big deal. We get that with a lot of their specials here, so I’d be interested to see what their real deals are!
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