hi.

I have been toying with the ide of getting one of the very nice Dell 2407WFP monitors as the new one for my 4-head system, and have found there seems to be an enormous discrepancy in pricing on the thing.

Here on the US site it is $699, or about £362. Here on the UK site it is £759.05, or $1461, a 109% increase in price!

Even worse, in Germany, it's 1558.90 euros, which is $2055 or £1064, representing a 193% or 40% rise over the US or UK prices respectively.

Now, you can't tell me that this huge difference is down to import duties, shipping, etc, especially as the things are going to be imported from china to all three countries anyway. Also, if you hunt around, you can find the same Dell monitor sold by non-dell suppliers for considerably less than dell sell it, even in the UK. Here, here, and here for example.

I phoned Dell, and after being transferred around several indian call centers, ended up talking to a fellow who first claimed that the reason Dell sold them for so much is that all the other suppliers were flogging reconditioned units. I pointed out that the biggest price difference was between the US and the UK, and he then said it was because the Dell supplied ones were fresh off the shelf, while other suppliers had old, stale stock. After some more talking he offered me one at £675, a mere £125 more than the next most expensive supplier, and said the difference was down to the fact that Dell would replace it in 24 hours if there was a fault.

When I pointed out that at least one of the other suppliers was someone I've used a lot, and they would do the same, the price came down to £660. Still too much, so I gave up.

It's a little thing, but it's annoying. Dell constantly run huge advertising campaigns on TV alleging they're the cheapest and best PC dealers around, but they seem to have a fairly odd attitude to what 'cheapest' and indeed 'best' seems to mean.

I have actually seen genuine reconditioned 2407WFP monitors going for as little as £240, but I'd prefer one with a real warranty. I just don't want to pay twice as much as the next guy to get it, bearing in mind the next guy is only on the other side of a really, really wide lake

pca

Edit: Fixed links (URL-encoded a doublequote) -wfaulk
Edit: didn't notice it had already been fixed, broke it completely, can't fix it, no idea why - pca
Edit: Fixed again, more properly this time -wfaulk