US computer giant Dell Inc’s online Hong Kong retail store experienced a glitch on Saturday night, resulting in the price of its Inspiron 13-inch laptop switching from HK$6,690 (US$860) to HK$206,699.
The incorrect price remained online for a few hours before the company withdrew the laptop model from the site. Yesterday the laptop was not listed on the site under the Inspiron product family.
The online price switched at around midnight on Saturday. Internet shoppers who clicked on the notebook model on the simplified Chinese version of the site saw the incorrect price.
Saturday’s glitch was the third time the company has experienced problems with its online stores in the past three months. The other two glitches occurred on the company’s Taiwan Web site.
On Thursday, Dell was fined NT$1 million (US$30,500) by the Taipei City Government for violating the rights of consumers by refusing to honor sales obligations on misquoted products and offering insufficient compensation.
The first glitch occurred on June 25, when Dell Taiwan’s 19-inch liquid-crystal-display (LCD) monitors were priced on the company’s Web site at NT$500 rather than NT$7,500.
Just 10 days later, Dell again experienced problems with its Web site when its E4300 laptop, which sells for NT$69,000, was priced at NT$18,558.
The Taipei City Government said Dell’s compensation to shoppers attracted by the bargains was insufficient.
Dell issued NT$1,000 in-store vouchers to customers who placed orders for the monitors and NT$20,000 vouchers to those who bought the laptop.
Taipei City Consumer Protection ombudsman Chen Po-ching (陳柏菁) had suggested Dell offer consumers a discount of 15 percent to 25 percent on the mislabeled products. Dell rejected the idea.
More than 1,400 consumers have filed complaints with the ombudsman’s office since the first pricing glitch.
Taipei City cited Article 58 of the Consumer Protection Act (消費保護法), arguing that the company’s compensation was insincere.
Yeh Chin-yuan (葉慶元), head of Taipei’s Law and Regulation Commission, said on July 26: “If Dell continues to demonstrate insincerity and keeps making disappointing computer mistakes, the government does not rule out the possibility of shutting down Dell Taiwan’s online store permanently.”
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
‘SACRED MOUNTAIN’: The chipmaker can form joint ventures abroad, except in China, but like other firms, it needs government approval for large investments Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) needs government permission for any overseas joint ventures (JVs), but there are no restrictions on making the most advanced chips overseas other than for China, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. US media have said that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has been in talks for a stake in Intel Corp. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but US President Donald Trump has accused Taiwan of taking away the US’ semiconductor business and said he wants the industry back
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS