[84580] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Ulevitch)
Fri Sep 16 18:46:38 2005
In-Reply-To: <3CB5335E037F5544BA279A8DB9B52C3C20026C@dc-mail.onelegal.com>
From: David Ulevitch <davidu@everydns.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:44:29 -0700
To: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Sep 16, 2005, at 2:48 PM, Matt Bazan wrote:
> Actually, not the case. CDW and Dell (and all the others) only
> publish
> their prices for the low end gear that they sell. Anything else
> requires a call to a rep and establishing a relationship.
This is not true, particularly with places like CDW or Insight, etc.
I don't buy enough from Dell but I imagine it's the same.
There are usually three prices:
1) The price on the website, if listed at all.
2) The price on the website after logging in and getting your
"special pricing" based on what company/login/who you know/etc.
3) The price you get by calling your sales rep and demanding
better/volume/blackmail pricing.
Anyways, this whole idea strikes me as a bad one for all the reasons
others have mentioned but particularly because just knowing the price
someone else has doesn't mean that you will get the price, in fact,
you might find yourself on the receiving end of "have a nice day
dealing with vendor Z" -- particularly if they already know you are
set on using them as your vendor and you'll come back to them
begging. It's a game of poker bluff all you want but then be
comfortable walking away without making a deal.
-david
