RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry

["Matt Bazan" <Mbazan () onelegal com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On 
> Behalf Of Sean Figgins
>
> Most of the vendors I know of like to wine and dine the VPs.  
> If a NDA gets violated, the vendor will not be forced to stop 
> dealing with the company, just get the employee that violated 
> the NDA to be fired.
> Companies are getting very, very picky about this kind of 
> information getting out.  And, if your company is publically 
> traded, I am sure that some consultant will claim this is a 
> violation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

I can see your points here.  But, I think there still is value to the
medium and small companies that are not bound by these types of
agreements.

 
> > > 6) Such a list is likely actually cause companies to have 
> to pay more.
> > Not sure about the logic here...
>
> Logic goes like this:  Company is seeing that it's prices are 
> getting out.
> Company stopps giving the good discounts to anyone, as they 
> will have to give them to everyone otherwise...

Not sure I buy that line of reasoning.  Hasn't happened in the myriad of
other consumer product lines that have open pricing.  In fact, just the
opposite happens.  Open pricing drives pricing down - not up.  This is
exactly the type of culture these hardware companies want.  When you
have closed pricing - in any industry - the buyer is always at the
disadvantage.  It's time to open this up.

> If you are already doing business with a company, and just 
> want to have some incremental additional devices or services, 
> then you probably don't have to talk to a sales guy much to 
> get a quote from him.
>
> If you are shopping for the best price, and don't care about 
> support costs, or technical specs, then go shop at CDW, or 
> dell.com.  Their prices are published.

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.

  Matt