Dell walloped with $6.5M fine for fake monitor discounts

Dell storefront in Asia.
(Image credit: Getty - SOPA Images)

Dell's Australian arm has been hit with an AUD $10 million ($6.5 million) fine for fake monitor discount prices.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (via Ars Technica) says that Dell is guilty of "making false and misleading representations on its website about discount prices for add-on computer monitors."

Arguably, what isn't surprising is Dell's advertised discounts not being quite what they seem but the company actually being held to account. Anyway, the specific ruse here involves advertised prices placed next to a higher price with a strikethrough line. That implies the advertised price is lower than the monitor's usual cost.

But the strikethrough prices weren't actually representative of the typical cost. If fact, the whole thing was so out of whack the actual offer price was sometimes higher than what Dell Australia typically charged for a given monitor, making the strikethrough price even higher than that.

"In some cases, consumers paid more for the add-on monitor advertised as 'discounted' than they would have paid if they had bought it as a stand-alone product, which is shocking," ACCC commissioner Liza Carver said. Overall, the ACCC reckons Dell customers spent an excess $2 million AUD (about $1.3 million) on Dell monitors from August 2019 to December 2021.

Dell has been ordered to provide full or partial refunds to customers. Dell also told Ars Technica today that it is paying interest on the overcharges to customers and "taking steps to improve our pricing processes to ensure this sort of error does not happen again."

If that all sounds above board, well, one could argue that sharp pricing practices abound on Dell's websites, that this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Dell's monitor ruse

"Estimated Value"? Yeah, right! (Image credit: Dell)

One of the more egregious Dell practices involves its "Estimated Value" ruse. If you peruse Dell's gaming monitor pages right now,  you'll find that most monitors have offer prices listed below a cheaper strikethrough price.

That strikethrough price is labelled "Estimated Value". According to Dell's legalese, that refers to "Dell's estimate of product value based on industry data, including the prices at which third-party retailers have offered or valued the same or comparable products, in its most recent survey of major online and/or off-line retailers. Third-party retailer data may not be based on actual sales."

Screen queens

(Image credit: Future)

Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC.
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick.
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do.
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K gaming.

In practice, that is pretty much unpoliceable. In a strict legal context, it would be very hard to prove, for instance, that the $799.99 Estimated Value of the Dell G3223Q 32-inch 4K Gaming Monitor is intentionally misleading, even though looking at its specs you could easily buy something comparable for $600. Because you could also easily buy something comparable for $800.

So, Dell runs a strikethrough price of $799.99 and offers it at $699.99, giving the impression of a $100 discount. Is that every bit as misleading as what it has been fined for in Australia? You could certainly make a case for that. But it's been carefully designed to make it hard going on impossible to hold Dell to account. After all, there is no single best way to estimate the market "value" of any product.

Whatever, the obvious advice is to ignore the strikethroughs, they are never to be trusted. Do your own due diligence and your own price comparisons, or you could always let us do that for you, too. Never take Dell's or any other manufacturer's word for it.

Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

Read more
Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 from the front on a desk.
Best cheap gaming monitor deals today
New Alienware OLED monitors
Alienware launches two new OLED gaming monitors and one of them is its cheapest yet at $550
Gigabyte M28U gaming monitor on a white background
The best budget 4K monitor is now even more tempting, with this $50 saving on its usual sale price
Acer Predator Z57 dual-4K monitor
Acer Predator Z57 gaming monitor review
The Innocn 49Q1R 49 inch curved ultrawide monitor on a blue background
This huge monitor is ultrawide, curved, OLED, and pretty much every other monitor tech you need and I'd be tempted at $200 off
MSI MPG 242R X60N
MSI's new 24-inch gaming monitor hits a sizzling 600 Hz and has me wondering how many Hz you genuinely need
Latest in Gaming Monitors
Samsung 3D monitor
Samsung has a crack at ye olde glasses-free 3D monitor thing but its new cheaper 49-inch ultrawide OLED is far more interesting
Acer Predator Z57 dual-4K monitor
Acer Predator Z57 gaming monitor review
Sony RGB LED panel tech
Sony's fixing the wrong panel problems while showing off its new 'RGB LED' backlight tech with outrageous colours and brightness
Alienware 27 AW2725Q QD-OLED
Alienware 27 AW2725Q QD-OLED review
Asus's new ultrawide sucks as hard as it blows
Asus' new monitors purify 90% of airborne dust from your desktop and I've definitely seen some gnarly gaming setups that would benefit
Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM gaming monitor
Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM review
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event