[OAC_Sparky]

<rant>

I called Dell tonight. Still shaking my head.

I always enjoy making my own PCs, but a few weeks back my 5 year old Toshiba laptop died. We already have 2 PCs in the house, one for me and one for the kids/wife. But the laptop was handy; I'm not a TV watcher, my wife is. So at least with the laptop I can at least be in the same area code as my family (not "hiding" in the den) and surf while my wife does her own thing.

So on the Monday, about 11PM, I was looking at a system -- there's a sale on the Inspiron 6000. The long and the short of it, I optioned it out, put it in my cart. $1239+tax -5% Ford Discount. I thought it would be a little late in the day to start dealing with an order, so I went to bed.

So, I called Dell tonight. When I pulled up the saved cart so I can rattle off the specs -- the price had went up $50. Looks like the extra $50 was a limited time offer.

No biggie, I thought, they'd just honour the deal. Seeing that it was in my cart since yesterday before the deadline.

I guess not. The deal was made -- and lost, on a day and $50.

I know I'm partially to blame for not striking when the iron was hot, but jeez...assuming places like BestBuy and Futureshop have their usual monster Boxing Day sales, you'd think that they'd do the "let me see what I can do" routine.

"The computer automatically adjusts the prices." I can't blame the salesperson, in a sense, but you'd think there'd be some discretionary mechanism in the system.

Oh well. I'll likely get a laptop over the Christmas break, but it's even money that it won't be a Dell now. They went from a sure sale to likey no sale. And that'll be that for another 4-5 years.

</rant>