Australian watchdog drags Dell to court for misleading customers about cost of monitors

The Australian watchdog has dragged the local unit of American tech company Dell to local court over allegations that it misled people about the price of the monitors that consumers could add on.

From August 2019to December 16, 2021, Dell Australia duped people on the potential savings a customer got when an additional monitor was purchased with a computer, the AustralianCompetition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said.

“The ACCC alleges the monitors were not sold for the ‘strikethrough’ price for most of the relevant time and, in some cases, the add-on price shown was more expensive than if the monitor was bought on a stand-alone basis,” ACCC Commissioner Liza Carver said, according to Reuters news agency.

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The ACCC said it is seeking penalties, declarations, consumer redress, costs, and other orders.

In an email statement, Dell clarified that an error in the price process led to incorrect information being displayed on its website about the prices of certain monitors, adding that about 2,100 customers were affected by it.

The company further said that it has deactivated that functionality on the website and that they are actively working to update the systems to “prevent the error from re-occurring."

"This occurred during a two-and-a-half-year period and we believe it affected approximately 2,100 customers," Dell said.

"We have fully cooperated with the ACCC throughout their investigation, have been working with impacted customers to provide appropriate refunds plus interest and are taking steps to improve our pricing processes to ensure this sort of error does not happen again.”

(With inputs from agencies)

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