Shopping for major discounts at Dell (how-to)

I'm not here to say I got the lowest deal, but I think I faired pretty well using the tips on this thread.

2405FPW
Online Price in SB: $1,199.00
Online SB Discount: 15%, so new total is $1,019.15
Shipping: $13.00
Tax: $68.79
Total if I bought it online: $1,087.94

Before calling, I had to figure out a realistic price of what I could get this thing down to. The original post said 30% off was possible. I believe that was possible on THIS monitor a few weeks ago before the end of the quarter, but now for THIS monitor I'd assume it would be 20%. Plus, I'm not the best haggler in the world, so being relistic I set my goal around 20% off the above price. So 20% off that is $870.

Now... I read what was said in this thread about social engineering. I created a business name, and some general stuff about the business. Then I wrote out a screenplay of what I'd talk about. I said I wanted a new monitor, but had a few questions about some plasmas because I wanted a few for my stores in the next few months. After discussing stuff for a bit, he wanted to get some info about my business which kind of surprised me. The bad part was when I had to provide my address because I live in an apartment. I should have said that I work out of it, but oh well. I think he didn't put 2+2 together.

So he quoted me a price for the 2405FPW of $1,019.15 and I was like, "Umm, that's a bit expensive" so he was like "well let me see if I can do a little better" and came back with a "$980." Now I thought with a goal of $110 less ($870) that might be pushing it with this rep, but he did seem like he wanted to make a deal. So I asked him if he could do $900 after shipping and tax, and he paused for a moment (where I assume he pondered the thought of me buying a few plasmas in the future for my three imaginary stores), and said "I can do that."

So while I didn't get my goal of $870, I still got awfully close at $900 which turns out to be 18% off the current lowest online price in the SB section. And again, I'm not here to say I got the lowest deal on this monitor, because I know a lot of you freaks (j/kin) who scan the deals section daily got it for about a hundred less I think, but hey... for a guy who missed the boat, I think I did pretty well and proved that some social engineering can work so long as you don't get greedy. (remember, people that are going to buy plasma tvs aren't going to haggle over a few dollars too long).

By the way (I'm the guy who posted the reply directly above). I placed that order on Aug 17, 2005 in case you were wondering.

Also a word of caution. This deal will be hard to do if you live at a university. The guy asked for my business address, name, email, etc all before we got to the "deal" so... it looked kind of funny to say I live in an apartment since it doesn't seem like a guy who owns three stores. So be aware of that fact. Also irregardless of what address you give, if you live at a university, it's going to look like you're lying through your teeth if you give him your university address for the shipping or billing address. And while that only occurs after the "deal" has been made, if the rep is pissed enough he might just cancel the entire thing and not bother processing your order. So just a word to the wise.

I am interested in picking up a xps gen2 laptop and was wondering if anyone has used this method of social engeneering when purchasing one. With the upgrades I was looking at, the computer will cost about $3000. I am curious to see if anyone has tried with this model before and what price they may have acheived.

Sorry, but just because you can get 20-30% off of crap Dell boxes, dosent mean you're getting a deal.
Here are a few reasons.
Dell uses CRAP hardware, e.g.:

Cases that overheat
Intel Motherboards (cough)
Only Intel Chips (cough even more)
They bundle software, with 85% of it being software you will never use.
They flood your hdd with progs that carry spyware
And I am sure much more.

Sorry but Dell sucks. Their hardware sucks, and if you're a true techy you should always build your box from scratch, and never buy crap from Dell, Gateway or any crap like that.

you may complain about all those things, but at the end of the day, there's no way possible to compete with a $929 P4 3.0 with 512MB, 80GB HDD and 24" LCD. The dude above paid more than that just for his 2405FPW! (if he would have checked the deals, he would have gotten the computer free)

but getting back to the main topic, i've tried this numerous times with the BFG 7800GTX OC and am having absolutely on luck. Dell had a 30% off on this thing, bringing it down to $466.90, so of course I tried for 40% off. I couldn't get the reps to go past 15%, no matter how much other crap i told them i was looking to buy. i'm in sales myself and know how important it is to play nice with whomever you're dealing with, and still these guys won't budge. even when i tell them they offer the same product online for a cheaper price, instead of competing they simple say to buy it online! i'd be hard pressed to believe these guys on the phone can do any better than the discounted pricing offered over the web. i bought my 2405FPW for $730 shipped. there's no way a rep would sell it to me for that low!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am interested in picking up a xps gen2 laptop and was wondering if anyone has used this method of social engeneering when purchasing one. With the upgrades I was looking at, the computer will cost about $3000. I am curious to see if anyone has tried with this model before and what price they may have acheived.

I would highly suggest keeping an eye out for the 40% discount currently going around. I priced one out myself, fully loaded (they come pretty loaded already) and got the price down to $1800 after discount. they have these sales constantly and you'll have better luck buying online that you will with a rep. i've tried to get a rep to beat the deal on the web and they won't.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The dude above paid more than that just for his 2405FPW! (if he would have checked the deals, he would have gotten the computer free)

1. I didn't buy a computer. The 2405FPW is a monitor.

2. There are no current deals on that monitor, nor will there be for awhile since the previous deals were simply because it was the end of the quarter. I challange you to show me a way for the public (without using a rep) to get the monitor for $900. It can't be done at the present time.

Originally Posted by Colin Dunstan

Note: [I]We received a note by today Dell's legal department demanding Mobileread remove all references related to their sales techniques. The note suggested that this post contained proprietary Dell business information and violated the company's trade secret rights and copyrights. Although we strongely believe that we didn't reveal any secret knowledge and only made information available found elsewhere on the Web, we decided to remove this content until further investigation.

Never fear, Google comes to our rescue.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...at+Dell&hl=en&

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Cases that overheat
Intel Motherboards (cough)
Only Intel Chips (cough even more)
They bundle software, with 85% of it being software you will never use.
They flood your hdd with progs that carry spyware
And I am sure much more.

hah. I got a SC420 for work... I have two 400GB drives set on mirror raid, and the temp never gets higher than 45 celcius. I don't see your problem with intel mobos and chips. I didn't get any software with the 420, short of network drivers, I didn't get an OS either, so the XP install I did is blank.

Try and make a comparitive system to the following for the $330 I paid for the dell:

-2.8ghz P4
-256mb memory
-two 80 gig SATA drives
-case, power supply, cd-rom drive,
-one year warranty

buy nice memory and mod it to take a pci-e graphics card, and you have something that can handle all of today's games.

basically: stop sippin the hateorade

Originally Posted by Unregistered

1. I didn't buy a computer. The 2405FPW is a monitor.

2. There are no current deals on that monitor, nor will there be for awhile since the previous deals were simply because it was the end of the quarter. I challange you to show me a way for the public (without using a rep) to get the monitor for $900. It can't be done at the present time.

Perhaps not less than $900 any day of the week, but def can get it under $900. I understand the 2405FPW is a monitor as I have one too, and I do know for a fact that they have gone on sale as I only paid $730 as mentioned above. the point i was making was simply the fact that if you were more aware of dell's discounts and deals, you would have found dell's Dimension 9100 WITH the 2405FPW for the same price you paid for just the 2405FPW, leaving you with a free Dimension 9100 computer.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Perhaps not less than $900 any day of the week, but def can get it under $900. I understand the 2405FPW is a monitor as I have one too, and I do know for a fact that they have gone on sale as I only paid $730 as mentioned above. the point i was making was simply the fact that if you were more aware of dell's discounts and deals, you would have found dell's Dimension 9100 WITH the 2405FPW for the same price you paid for just the 2405FPW, leaving you with a free Dimension 9100 computer.

I was aware of that deal, but the lowest online price for the BASE model is $1,299. That's as cheap as it will get. Then throw on another $100 for tax and you're at $1,399. Now assuming just for the sake of this discussion that you could coerce a rep to give you 20% off that, you're still looking at $1,119.

So again, I was aware of this deal, and I was also aware that I could not get this deal down to anything near $900 shipped and after tax. So I still lay the challange on the table: show us how to get the computer + monitor for $900 because you keep saying you can, but in reality you can.

And here is the link to the deal which you are speaking of:

It no longer comes with a 24", but here is the deal you speak of...

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...c=3d91w4&s=bsd
Price before shipping & tax = $1,379.00 (if you add on the 24" it brings it to this price)

So explain to me how you can get that to $900.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

hah. I got a SC420 for work... I have two 400GB drives set on mirror raid, and the temp never gets higher than 45 celcius. I don't see your problem with intel mobos and chips. I didn't get any software with the 420, short of network drivers, I didn't get an OS either, so the XP install I did is blank.

Try and make a comparitive system to the following for the $330 I paid for the dell:

-2.8ghz P4
-256mb memory
-two 80 gig SATA drives
-case, power supply, cd-rom drive,
-one year warranty

buy nice memory and mod it to take a pci-e graphics card, and you have something that can handle all of today's games.

basically: stop sippin the hateorade

Oh well nothing could be comparable to the ALL MIGHTY DELL!
LOL
Ok look, here is my system:

$506.75

RaidMax Cobra FullATX w/ 3 80mm fans
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium S939
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Stock = 2.1ghz, Mine=3.3)
1 GB PC3200 DDR400
100gb Hitachi SATA HDD
Antec 500w PSU
16x DVR+RW Combo
Windows XP Pro
Suse Linux Pro
Nvidia TrueHardware Firewall


And of course this did not come with a monitor, but considering the components, this system will blow any POS Dell out there away. Sorry to say.
And for the price of this performance, you would have to be a dip to buy a dell for 300 bux LMAO.

Sorry but if anyone who actually 'USES' their computer, e.g. - Multitasking, multimedia, gaming... and you bought a dell. I feel extremely sorry for you.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

And of course this did not come with a monitor, but considering the components, this system will blow any POS Dell out there away. Sorry to say.
And for the price of this performance, you would have to be a dip to buy a dell for 300 bux LMAO.

Sorry but if anyone who actually 'USES' their computer, e.g. - Multitasking, multimedia, gaming... and you bought a dell. I feel extremely sorry for you.

once again, the $100 price difference, and the fact that I will have a reliable working computer, without spending time fixing it, for a guaranteed year, makes the dell the better choice for a work environment.

I have my watercooled 3200+ for games.

Thought I'd mention something regarding getting that Dell 24" monitor by itself, or with a computer. If you buy the monitor separately, you get a 3yr warranty on it. If you buy it in a bundle with a computer, you get a 1yr warranty on both the computer and the monitor.