It's not that they won't do it--they said that there is no discount for doing it on a Dimension.
Here's what I ended up doing...I started placing my order on the phone by giving him the component codes from the website (he said he couldn't grab what was in my basket). The guy I talked to was really nice and he told me he'd "throw in" a double memory upgrade for me for free in addition to the free Palm, free shipping, $200 discount, and my $75 coupon. This took my memory from 128 to 256 for free. I guess I could have payed a little extra for 256 mb and gotten 512, but at that point I was looking for a rock bottem price and expecting a $130 credit for Office XP.
But as we we wrapping up, the price he gave me wasn't too far off from the wesbite price I had _without_ the $130 XP discount. I asked him about it, and he said there was no discount given for not taking XP. I wasn't sure what to do, but he'd thrown in the free memory and he was surprised when I gave him my $75 coupon code--he said that Dell was going to lose $130 on the machine they were selling me.
I ended up buying it anyway, and then called back to talk to someone else about the XP credit. I talked to a couple of different people, and all said the same thing--no credit for doing this. One of them did say that this was an option on Optiplexes, but that for Dimensions there was no credit for not taking Office XP. Oh yeah--I think someone also said that there was a credit for Home purchases, but not Small Busines. ??
So I got my machine for right around $750 (tax included) with the following specs:
1.7 ghz
20 gb ultra hd
64 mb card with tv out
SB LIVE! Value Digital Sound Card
256 mb ram
48x cd-rom
Floppy drive
Windows ME
Office XP (oh yeah--I told the first guy just to add this back if it there was no credit for removing it)
no speakers, modem, nic card, etc...
GetReal, I think you got lucky with a clueless CSR...
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You have to place your order over the phone as I stated earlier. You can email your cart to the rep once you get them on the phone to speed things up. Tell the rep that you do not want any bundled MS software with your MS OS selection. We always remove the MS bundles from new computers that we purchase from Dell because we have corp licensing. OEMs like Dell cannot force you to purchase bundled MS software with a MS OS purchase despite what the sales reps say. Ask for a supervisor and tell them you have corp licensing. Of course, if you are not a legit business then that is another story.. >>