The Dell Community has contributed: 9392 ideas | promoted 642691 times | 71715 comments

How IdeaStorm Works:

Post Promote Discuss See
Advertising and Marketing Comments | Advertising and Marketing Ideas | Sales Strategies Comments | Sales Strategies Ideas | XPS products Comments | XPS products Ideas
350

Make Prices Reasonable and Allow All Possible Configurations for All Dell Machines!

350 points posted to Advertising and Marketing, Sales Strategies, XPS products by perfectcode 08/02/07

4 days ago the XPS 720 was around $2,900 dollars. Yesterday it was at $3,000 or so with the Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer (D) Sound Card standard, but Dell changed the price of the 2GB Corsair Dominator ram to $270 instead of the $100 which it was at.

Now the price of the red (they added the black XPS 710 to the XPS 720 selection and you are extremely limited to the configurations of that one) XPS 720 is at $3,299 with the same features as when it was priced at!!! I was going to buy it 4 days ago but didnt have time due to one of my family members health issue and now this happens... great... as if things can't get any worse. =/

I also dislike how limited you are when customizing a Dell computer and how inflated the prices can be sometimes. They always start you (by default) with the lowest priced configuration and then everything else that can be added costs more money. Let's say there is a 320GB HDD at 10,000RPMs, well what if I want the 160GB because 320GB is too much? Let's say it starts me out with a Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD drive, well what if I want a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive instead? There is no options for things like that. : (

Well that's just my two cents.

perfectcode
08/02/07		 Sorry about the typos.
maverick4ever
08/03/07		 I totally agree with you on this. I'm in a somewhat similar situation, cus I have been planning on getting an XPS 720 for a while now, but the prices and the available options never stick around long enough for me to make up my mind. First they took away the X-Fi sound card and replaced it with an integrated sound card (yuk), then they took away the black case I wanted and later put it on the 720, I was almost gonna go with the red 720, but it didn't come with a TV tuner, which an absolute must for me. Now they have a TV tuner, the X-Fi soundcard and the black case on the 720, but not the cheaper quad-core processor nor the 8800 GTX graphics card!!! Why can't dell just give you an option of looking through EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE component and accessory and piece of software you can possible have with the PC you want to get??? I think the price is OK right now, but it shouldn't go up any further (base price).

I sure hope Dell is listening to us on this issue, cus it's a really annoying problem for us customers.
perfectcode
08/03/07		 I hear ya maverick. Sucks
perfectcode
08/03/07		 Any more thoughts?
maverick4ever
08/03/07		 Well as far as the HD-DVD drive goes, I must say that it would be a waste of money. Seeing how Bluray is selling much better at the moment and also is now exclusive at Blockbuster, it doesn't seem like HD-DVD will live for much longer. Besides, bluray has more going for it in features than HD-DVD does. So I think sticking with Bluray is better for the consumer in the long run.
maverick4ever
08/03/07		 Also related to my first comment, they do now offer the 8800 GTX with the XPS 720 black edition, but for it to be just what I want they would still have to make the Q6600 guad core processor, the 2 GB 800 MHz RAM and the single 160GB 10,000 RPM hard drive available.

Again, why can't Dell just give us an optional list on the website, which would show us every single thing that can be put in the PC we're looking at?
perfectcode
08/04/07		 Well some people like HD-DVD and some like Blu-ray so choice is always good. One reason why Blu-ray is doing much better than HD-DVD is because every PS3 made comes with one built in, extremely increasing the number of blu-ray players.

But yeah, I would get the black XPS 720 if I could get the Q6600 Quad Core and the Western Digital 10,000RPM HDD. I REALLY wish the admin of this website would inform their marketing staff or whoever to give customers more options when customizing a maching and at least have the prices more reasonable. We'll see...
perfectcode
08/05/07		 Dell would sell so much more if they were more honest with their prices, and offered a lot more customizability with their machines. The potential is there, just not being used.
perfectcode
08/06/07		 Geez, Dell just keeps switching stuff around for the XPSs. Do they want my money or not? This is just sad now...
perfectcode
08/06/07		 Does anyone else find it interesting how none of the admins of this site post in 'ideas' like these?

Anyways, I had selected the Dell XPS 720 black (the black was in the XPS 710 series) yesterday and it had this:

Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX6700 (8MB,3.46GHz Factory overclocked) (had the X6800, and QX 6800 available to select as well)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
2GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz OC'd to 1066MHz-2 DIMMs
320GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache (I wanted the 160GB WD Raptor 10,000RPMs but there was no option!!!)
20 inch UltraSharp™ 2007WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
13 in 1 Media Card Reader
768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX
AGEIA® PhysX® physics accelerator
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer (D) Sound Card
Dell WL6000 5.8GHz Wireless Rear 5.1 Speaker System with Subwoofer

Price was around $3,700 (still overpriced!)

So it had all of this along with some of the default stuff, and I put this configuration into my wishlist. Then I come online today to go to checkout and it says it is invalid!!! Dell changed the configurations again! Wtf!? Do they want my money or not?

I called up dell support or whatever to see if I could get my configuration back (make a purchase) and they try to persuade me of all of this bs acting as if I was thinking of XPS 720 H2C. The processors was switched to the XPS 720 H2C today. But I have spent hours on the Dell website checking things and I know %100 for sure that it was available on the XPS 720 black. Any of you check yesterday and notice that too? I just can't believe how corrupt some of the marketing people that I have talked to are. It is sad.

One time I called support when they switched the XPS 710 black and put that into the XPS 720 series and the lady on the XPS sales chat tried to persuade me that the XPS 720 black has been there for a while and was never once in the XPS 710 series. Complete bs.

Gotta love humans...just gotta have power and be greedy. Thankfully not all humans are like this and some are honest people. I hope some day Dell can rid themselves of some of their corrupness.
perfectcode
08/11/07		 So why can't the Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX6700 (8MB,3.46GHz Factory overclocked) be switched back to the XPS 720 black like it was at? Wtf Dell.
Please log in to post a comment
recently promoted by:
recently demoted by: