The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection wagged his finger at the American company. In another case, he imposed a fine of PLN 6 million
The rules for the sale of IT solutions, computers and other Dell products may have infringed competition – said the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. This time he just wagged his finger, but on another matter his patience with the company had run out.
Dell is an American company based in Texas that develops, sells, repairs and supports computers and related products and services. The American technology giant opened its first sales office in Poland in 1992. In 2007, Dell began building a factory in Łódź, which will supply customers of the American company from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The production plant in Łódź produces, among others: desktop computers, servers and IT infrastructure elements.
Dell may have harmed competition
Now the company will explain itself to the president of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. In his opinion, the sales principles of Dell’s IT solutions, computers and other products could have infringed competition.
The sales system based on registration of transactions by authorized sellers raised doubts. If one of them reported a potential transaction with a given institutional or business customer in its internal registration system, then – under the suspected arrangement – Dell could prevent the other trading partners from providing competitive price offers to the same customer, even at the customer’s express request.
This practice could constitute unauthorized market division by assigning specific sellers to a given transaction. As a result, enterprises and institutions could be deprived of the opportunity to purchase Dell equipment at more attractive price or technological conditions.
In the issued decision, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection obliged Dell to change its sales model.
– We understand the characteristics of Dell’s distribution system, but sales must always respect competition rules. In the issued decision, I obliged the company to eliminate practices that involved assigning transactions to specific sellers. Thanks to this, enterprises and institutions purchasing or ordering Dell products will have the opportunity to compare many offers and choose the most advantageous one – said Tomasz Chróstny, President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.
PLN 6 million fine for Dell for avoiding answering questions
In another case, the instruction and commitment to change practices did not end there. The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection found that the company misled him by answering questions about entrepreneurs who applied to Dell for an offer for the same customer. Despite sending as many as three requests in this regard, the company presented the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection with false and misleading information three times regarding the entrepreneurs to whom Dell did not provide price offers and the reasons for not presenting these offers.
Providing false or misleading information to the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection constitutes a serious impediment to the effective implementation of competition protection tasks. As a result, he imposed a fine on the company in the amount of PLN 6 million (equivalent to EUR 1.38 million). According to the legal status in force at the time of initiation of the proceedings, the maximum penalty could be the equivalent of EUR 50 million.
The issued decisions are not final. They may be appealed to the court.