NO "Price Protection" on Purchases

After 16 years of buying Apple computers (and usually Sony or ViewSonic monitors), I finally decided to purchase one of the new DELL 24 inch flat screen monitors since they were selling at a substantial discount to Apple's 23 inch flat Cinema display. The Dell unit had been selling for about $700 in early May at a huge discount from their normal $1,027 price. However, when I tried to order one on TUE 16 May, I talked to THREE different DELL representatives and got THREE different quoted prices. The best of the 3 offers was a small discount to $949 and I placed my order during the evening of 16 May (and received email confirmation of the order on the morning of WED 17 May).

This order was delivered on the afternoon of MONDAY 22 May, but, during the 5 days since the order was placed, DELL had DROPPED their offering price on this monitor by $190 to a new quoted price of $759 on MONDAY morning (5/22)......BEFORE I even received my order which had been confirmed at the higher price the previous Wednesday.

After several calls to DELL today regarding this $190 difference (and waiting UNSUCCESSFULLY for a Supervisor to return my call regarding this matter), I ended up finding out that Dell...unlike most most electronics companies...has NO "30 day" (or ANY DAY!) PRICE PROTECTION ON ITS SALE PRICES.

DELL'S POLICY: If the price drops the next day after you make a DELL purchase, you are simply OUT OF LUCK and end up paying the higher price in effect at the time you placed your order.

This will be my LAST PURCHASE from DELL!