QVC's Dubious Dell Deal

According to PCWorld.com, if you just bought one of the much hyped Dell Inspiron Mini 10 notebooks from QVC, you got a "raw deal."

QVC started selling the Mini 10 about a week ago for $559, claiming that the retail value was $688.

However, if you checkout Dell's website, the a Mini 10 with the exact same configuration (1.6GHz Intel Atom processor Z530) plus shipping is only $487--$72 less than the QVC price and a whopping $201 less than what QVC claims is the retail price.

QVC's President and CEO, Mike George (AKA King George) came from Dell and has built up what appears to be a mutually beneficial relationship between the Q and Dell--much to the dismay of loyal viewers tired of being inundated with all the hour-long Dell shows. Why wouldn't he get the best price for his customers?

Was QVC or Dell preying on naïve shoppers?

QVC Online Scam

According to Computer World, a scammer took QVC for $412,000 in merchandise.

And it wasn't even hard to do!

Apparently there was a lag in the online ordering system that allowed customers to place and then immediately cancel an online order and still receive the merchandise--without getting charged for it.

A North Carolina woman not only took advantage of this little loophole in the system, but then she turned around and sold the merchandise on eBay.

She was only caught when her customers thought that it was strange that she was mailing the items in QVC packaging and reported her.

Since the products were legally hers (I don't understand how they were legally hers), she wasn't prosecuted for selling the goods, but to wire fraud.

Instead of harassing their loyal customers with the dreaded "letter" (too many returns), maybe the Q should focus on the real bad guys.