Haggling With Dell?

kah22

I'm in the market for a new laptop and have narrowed my choice down to two models Dell Inspiron-1764-N0076406 and
Acer Aspire 7740-334G50Mn

Price wise there is little between the two. The main difference seems to be the Dell offers an i5 cpu and 350GB HD while the Acer offers i3 plus 500GB HD

I'm not a power user or gamer, and I can't see the machine getting to many outings so this time I thought I'd try a 17 inch should be better for watching movies.

Anyway I was wondering if you can haggle with Dell. I'm thinking of emailing them giving them the two models offering to buy within 24 hours if they give me a better deal: lower price, higher speck, whatever. I was also thinking of cold calling them and doing the same thing.

I'm sure some members of the board have tried this, I'd like to know your tactics and of course results.

Kevin

MagicMarker

Good luck with that.

kah22

MagicMarker wrote: »

Good luck with that.

Thanks. But has anyone done it successfully and can they offer a few tips ?

Shzm

Ring them and tell them what you're after and ask if they can give you a discount?

It's not hard to find a code for atleast 5% off if you look.

Menengroth™

Yeah ring them and talk to a rep, you might be able to get 10% off and/or free delivery.

monkeypants

Give it a try. They don't normally have much wriggle room on the cheaper models, but the more expensive ones can be discounted.

kah22

Thanks for the encouragement.

Originally I had been thinking of either an Acer or Dell 15.6 inch monitor and then began to think of the 17 inch monitor as the machine won't be going on to many trips, and it is a good replacement for a desktop. (I dislike desktops and all the associated wires :mad: )

I was looking at two machines the Acer 7740 and the Dell 1764-N00076406 the price was pretty much the same about £590, each with the larger 17 inch monitor. (my upper price limit was £600) the main difference seemed to be that the Acer had a 500GB HD and its processor was i3, while the Dell's processor was i5 but only had a 350GB HD, I not sure but I think the Dell had only 3mb RAM, the Acer had 4mb.

Then as luck would have it I was doing a little research and came across the DELL Inspiron 1764 which Dell were retailing at £729 and the same model DELL Inspiron 1764 which PC World were selling at £599.97, just within my price range .

I thought £129 was one hell of a difference so I contacted PC World, asked if there was any difference in the two models and received the following reply: 'The specifications of the 1764 are exactly the same as Dell, there is no difference at all. Stock is available for home delivery within 3/4 days.'

The only drawback with the 1764 is that it only has two memory slots and if you wanted to upgrade to either 6gb it would mean replacing one of the 2gbs with a 4gb making 6gb total or remove both of the 2gbs and replace with 2 x 4gb which would give you the maximum of 8gb.

That aside it seems to be the best value on offer and the one I think I'll go for

Again many thanks for your input and I hope this thread has helped others thinking of buying.

Kevin