If you are going to buy a Dell, there isn't any particular reason for NOT buying it directly from Dell...well, except for requiring a local service department, and maybe not trusting the shippers.
BUT what you get from Dell is perhaps more important. Let me tell you a tale:
I am now retired but I used to work in the Information Technology (IT) department at a large institution which had about 2500 employees. Some of those employees--about 100--would visit our customers at their own homes so these employees required laptops. One time our IT department placed an order for 50 new Dell laptops priced at about $2400 each so around $120 K altogether.
Someone in our Supply department took a look at our order and decided he must do something about such an expensive order. He took a look at the Dell Computers website and found that they offered REALLY CHEAP laptops for a mere 600 bucks apiece. He replaced our order for those $2400 laptops with $600 ones, "saving" our company around $90 K. I think he even got an award for this savings.
Here's the problem: what that guy in Supply did NOT know was that there were reasons why we ordered those more expensive laptops. Our visiting personnel might visit 3-6 customers per trip off-site, so that meant that they would be opening and closing their laptops on average 4 times a day or 20 times during an average work week. Part of what we were buying was build quality in those laptops which might require about 2 years of use before they got replaced.
There is (was? I haven't checked recently) a line in the ad copy for these cheaper Dell laptops which specifically stated that THEIR HINGES WERE NOT GUARANTEED. I can sort of see the point: these laptops were not bought by the average consumer for the purpose of being a laptop. By far most of these machines WILL sit opened on a someone's desk for years, practically never being closed (heh, my own MacBook Pro as one example, having given up much traveling).
We in the IT department were very surprised by these cheap Dell laptops. I had the experience of opening the first one from this order and it was evident to me that these new laptops were not of the build quality we were used to. But we dutifully set them up with their required software then gave them to our outgoing personnel.
One of them did not last a week (broken hinge and screen).
We got complaints about all of them, but our personnel did their best to compensate for their bad hinges, propping up these laptops against something so they could read their screens.
I think the last one came back to us within 3 months. Some of them were in pitiful conditions, like one had the keyboard panel that was loose from its base (all screws were stripped) and was practically unusable. Perhaps that user just tossed the laptop into their car after a last day of frustration.
Before they were all returned, we had to place an emergency order to replace this batch of laptops costing us an extra 20%, so around 145% for this go-around altogether. From then on we did include explicit instructions that the models could not be substituted by cheaper ones.
My story is from about 20 years ago so don't use my prices as any guide since prices fluctuate. Just keep my story in mind with the lesson that usually there are reasons why some computers are dirt-cheap. Sometimes I will just chuckle when someone complains about Apple prices being so much more. With more time I will ask the complainer why Dell or whatever computer maker offers and SELLS more expensive models.
