An employee at Dell Taiwan probably made the biggest mistake of his life when he posted an ad for a 19″ monitor for only 500NTD (15USD) at Dell’s website. The ad was up for 8 hours and during this time 26,000 customers ordered over 140,000 monitors, real worth over 20 million USD. What could have just been a clumsy mistake could end up costing Dell millions as the Taiwanese authorities stepped in.
Dell first announced that it had made an error and informed customers that it could cancel the orders, but the authorities suggested that Dell should honor the price it had posted, or come up with some sort of compensation, or it would assist the customers in taking legal actions against Dell.
What first looked like a mishap that would cost Dell dearly, has turned for the … “better” in lack of a better word. It will send along coupons for 1000NTD for each sold monitor, equivalent to about 30USD. That’s still a pretty decent rebate on a monitor that normally costs 4800NTD (145USD). We expect most will cancel their orders though, and in the end Dell will perhaps not have lost that much.
