Australian Watchdog Alleges Dell Misled Consumers, Federal Court Proceedings Initiated

Dell monitors are seen for sale in a store in Manhattan, New York City, on Nov. 24, 2021. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has initiated federal court proceedings against Dell Australia for allegedly misleading consumers about the cost of buying add-on monitors.

The ACCC alleges that between August 2019 to December 2021, Dell Australia made false or misleading representations on its website about the prices of monitors and the potential savings when a monitor was purchased with a computer.

According to the federal court’s notice of filing statement (pdf), it is alleged that Dell Australia misled consumers with the use of “strikethrough” prices to represent purported discounts on the monitor price—when offered as an add-on to the purchase of a computer.

However, the “strikethrough” prices did not correspond to the prices where the relevant monitors were previously or usually sold.

“This had the effect of overstating the supposed discount being offered to the consumer. In addition, in many cases, the price offered for the monitor as an add-on to the purchase of a computer was, in fact, higher than the price for the same monitor when sold on a standalone basis,” the notice of filing states.

Among the statements made about the “discounted” price of add-on monitors on Dell’s website were: “Total Savings,” “Includes x% off,” “Discounted Price,” and “Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product.”

“Cases involving allegations of misleading ‘was/now’ pricing by large retailers of consumer goods are a priority for the ACCC. Businesses should be well aware of their legal requirements and should have effective compliance programs in place to prevent this type of consumer harm,” ACCC Commissioner Liza Carver said in a statement.

ACCC Allege Dell Broke Australian Consumer Law

The ACCC alleges that Dell contravened sections 18 and 29 of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) for misleading or deceptive conduct/representation.

The maximum penalty per breach for corporations is the greater of: AU$10 million, 3 times the value of the benefit received, or 10 percent of annual turnover in the preceding 12 months, if the court cannot determine the benefit obtained from the offence.

Carver said that these proceedings were significant as the alleged misconduct occurred when families were in COVID lockdown.

“We know that many consumers turned to online purchases to buy equipment for working and schooling from home,” Carver said.

“While the total number of misled consumers is unknown, we believe many thousands of consumers were sold an add-on monitor which was advertised with a representation that an inflated discount applied.”

“We have commenced these proceedings because we are concerned that Dell’s presentation of allegedly inflated discounts meant some consumers may have added monitors to their purchase which they may not have otherwise bought, or which they could have bought more cheaply from another section of Dell’s website,” Carver said.

In an email to The Epoch Times, Dell said that approximately 2100 customers were affected during a two and a half-year period.

“Due to an error in Dell’s pricing processes, there was incorrect information displayed on our website about the pricing and savings associated with certain monitors.

“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.”

Dell Australia added that it was actively working to update its systems to prevent the error from re-occurring.

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