An unethical way to save money on Dell products

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my televisions to 1080p for a while now. I know, hard to believe, Mr. Noobie^® doesn’t have 1080p. That’s the price of being an early adopter.

My plan was to replace my family room television first and, much to my surprise, I found that Dell had the best price on the television I was scouting. Yes, the Dell that makes computers.

So I went ahead and placed the order online with Dell late at night right before going to bed.

Buyer’s remorse

Well, I probably should have waited until morning to order because buyer’s remorse kicked in during the night and by morning I was wishing I hadn’t ordered the television. I could go into a long list of reasons why but suffice it to say I decided that replacing the television in my basement should have been my higher priority.

Luckily, Dell hadn’t shipped my order yet so I quickly called them to cancel the order. After about 20 minutes on hold, a representative finally answered my call.

Dell bribery

But then something strange happened. After I explained to the Dell representative why I wanted to cancel my order, he offered me a $75 discount if I didn’t cancel the order.

What?!?

I’m sure Dell has the best intentions in mind with this policy but it totally backfired with me. Rather than think how nice it would be to save an extra $75, I felt wronged knowing that to truly get the best price with Dell, you should order a product and then call a day later to cancel the order.

The title of this blog post says an unethical way to save money. But I ask you, who is unethical? Someone who calls to cancel and accepts the $75 discount? Or Dell for offering this type of discount only to people who call to cancel their order?

For the record, I didn’t accept the bribe and officially canceled my order.