Dell’s Australia arm has been slapped with a $10 million AUD (about $6.49 million) fine for “making false and misleading representations on its website about discount prices for add-on computer monitors,” the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced today. The Australian regulator said the company sold 5,300 monitors this way.
They were fined $1,900 per monitor they sold (at a price of $990) this way.
So the fine was double the price.
That does not sound like pocket change to me.
What do you think would be a reasonable fine?
They clearly meant the fine is such a small amount of money to the company that it won’t cause long term change in its practises.
They almost certainly will change their practices when it comes to this specific misrepresentation in Australia. Their ROI for this campaign would be in the negatives, and head office would not be happy with whatever department marketing lead ran this campaign.
Other countries will need to follow suit in providing decent consumer protections if we want to see wider-impacting change though. I would expect this tactic to still be used by Dell in other markets which do not have as robust false advertising legislation and enforcement.
What would be a reasonable fine to you?
Dell’s 2022 revenue was $102 billion. $6.5 million is 0.006% of their overall revenue.
To put in perspective, were I to make $75,000 annual income, 0.006% of that would be equivalent to $4.50.
EDIT
Math is hard, yo.