Travis is well aware that there’s a credit crunch on. That’s why he was surprised when, according to a mailing he received, Dell decided to increase his credit line. Not by a little, either. They increased it from $2,500 to $310,000. Wha? How does that happen? He’s just a regular consumer. Does anyone who isn’t an IT professional need a $310,000 Dell credit line?
He wrote:
So I was flipping through the new offers from Dell to see if anything would suit the fancy of my fiance and, lo and behold, my $2,500 credit limit through them has apparently become $310,000!
I’ve double checked my account through Dell’s website and I still have a $2,500 limit. But that’s a hell of a “whoops.”
Travis later pointed out that this isn’t just a hilarious typo to mock on the Internets—he wonders whether anyone else received the same mailing and said “Woo-hoo! Shopping spree!” Not that they’d get very far.
So, the questions remain: How many people got this letter? Have any other Consumerist readers received one, with a similarly insane (and inaccurate) amount? Also, where on earth did the number $310,000 come from?
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Hm. What’s 30% interest on $310,000? *hee*
I would imagine that it’s a misplaced decimal point. They probably meant to say $3,100. At least, that’s how I make sense of it in my head.
@thnkwhatyouthnk: Id think so too if they didn’t write it *with* a decimal point
@coren: Umm, I’m pretty sure that still makes it a misplaced decimal point. I’m just going to chalk up your comment to it being past midnight…
@thnkwhatyouthnk: That would be a misplaced comma as well.
@thnkwhatyouthnk: My friend just got offered an insane amount from dell too. It was like 302,???.72.
@YeaYuh: Ok, I can’t explain that one with a misplaced decimal =P
I’d be on board for that. When people see my available credit is that high, damn right they wanna give me money at good rates for that dream house
Sweet! I can finally build that datacenter I’ve been wanting!
@Donathius: Lucky for you, Dell’s business support is supposed to be tons better than their consumer support.
@thnkwhatyouthnk: Dell’s business support is some of the best I have gotten to work with as far as servers go. I have NEVER had trouble getting parts replace and my company manages over 200 dell servers currently, and I have dealt with hundreds more in the past.
@xtc46 – thinksmarter on twitter: Yeap. Dell Business is awesome.
LAN party, my house, all invited, computers provided. BYOB.
A couple months ago I actually did have my Dell Preferred Account limit raised from $2500 to $4000. I’ve used it for two computer purchases, both of them with a 12-moths no interest offer. Both were budgeted and paid off in 10 months.
Jeez, I could pay off my mortgage with that! It would be blisteringly stupid, but I could do it.
@ArcanaJ: Wouldn’t you pay much higher interest rate on the borrowed money? Like, instead of a 6.25% rate, you’d pay 19% or higher?
@MooseOfReason: Cause if you default on the credit card, you don’t lose your house.
@MooseOfReason: Yes, hence the reason I said it would be a blisteringly stupid thing to do.
Crap I just threw away a Dell mailer today at work. Maybe Travis is in Mexico and the dollar sign was accidental…pesos would make more sense.
@golddog: “310 000 Mexican pesos = 23 176.22 U.S. dollars”, according to Google.
@MooseOfReason: Yen maybe? Actually that 23K isn’t that far off from the line I got from Dell. But that was 8 years ago and was buying servers.
@golddog: Doubtful, I’ve done some consulting jobs for the company that handles Dell’s customer support, and they are located in Panama. Well, non-business support, They should be handling corporate and business in some US based call centers if nothing has changed in the last 2-3 years.
They used to be in Mexico, Guadalajara if I remember correctly.
Maybe you should call them on it so they ‘fix the glitch’
That’s got to be a fat-finger error.
$310,000 from $2,500 is crazy.
$3,100.00? Not so much.
I’m picturing a pointy-haired boss involved in this somehow …
I guess they believed him when he checked “Yes” on the free subscription survey under “Are you responsible for IT purchasing decisions?” and then “Over 10,000″ on the company headcount…
The error they’ve made is quite straightforward. I’m guessing they intended to increase it to $3100.00 but the decimal place was somehow omitted. It’s the most plausible explanation for this amusing mistake.
Maybe someone forgot the decimal point and it was supposed to be 3100.00?
We’ve seen this before. Many accounting programs assume that the last two digits are cents and the decimal point is optional. I refused to let my quickbooks use this feature because if you get used to it you do it without thinking in other programs.