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Ask HN: Could someone fix "call for price?"

4 points by mchannon ↗ HN
One particular pain point that I run into when costing out a new project is the persistent habit of various vendors to withhold their pricing until you contact them.

This tends to be prevalent when shopping for things that are B2B; I don't know if there's something weird about government contract pricing that keeps them from disclosing their prices.

In some isolated instances, large businesses will actually require you to apply for credit in order to even get a price. Imagine trying to buy something on amazon or eBay that required you to wait 2 weeks to complete the transaction, with no guarantee of success.

I don't know if some sort of "wall of shame" or other shaming system, or external price quote posting system (the XKQ-200B cost $9949.00 on 3/23/11) would help discourage the practice.

10 comments

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sp332
You're supposed to negotiate those, silly.
mchannon
I could negotiate from an actual price much more easily.

It's just rich that people think that piling more work and delay on their customers, particularly in this day and age, is somehow a smart business practice.

tocomment
I think that's a great idea. You should make it anonymous like a wiki leaks for prices. Otherwise people would be hesitant to share since it's probably in the contracts that they can't disclose the price.
chc
Since the specifics of each client's deal are presumably different, you wouldn't have a very many bits of anonymity even if you included no other data with your "leak."
rmATinnovafy
Its a negotiation tactic. A good one. Have the prospect call for the item and then start closing from the start. You can fix this if you can fix selling.
mchannon
It's not a good negotiation tactic, because it's the very opposite of closing from the start. Imagine a Taco Bell with no prices posted on their menu board (if they even have a menu board), drive-through only, minimum 30 minute conversation (most of which involves silence) to place an order, and the resulting long line of cars.

If business X makes a widget that costs more, does less, takes longer to deliver, and has lower quality than business Y, I guarantee you business X will outperform business Y if business X discloses their prices ahead of time and Y doesn't. X will also waste significantly less time selling to people who aren't going to buy.

michael_michael
That's a weak analogy. There's a huge difference between buying a taco and buying, say, a piece of heavy equipment or an enterprise software package. Tacos cost little. They have no long-term commitment involved. I won't need follow-up support for a taco, and a taco's advantages or disadvantages compared to other potential pieces of food are relatively apparent.

Also, I would like to know what sources you have backing up your guarantee.

mchannon
I don't see the distinction. Tacos cost more per pound than bulldozers, and cost more to produce per additional unit than enterprise software (assuming off-the-shelf and not custom-built).

A taco has just as large a long-term commitment as any durable good. The taco stand has to deal with more, in fact: if the shell is cracked or they forgot the meat, they have to deal with after-the-sale support. If I come down with e.coli and am hospitalized for two weeks they have an additional degree of commitment and exposure to deal with.

The problem I'm describing isn't with custom-built, built-to-spec goods (like some software), but rather commodity durable goods and materials. Whether I design my widget to be made out of stainless or titanium often depends on pricing, and determining that pricing carries unnecessary overhead which serves neither customer nor manufacturer. The opportunity cost of opening the dialog with the titanium company's salesperson becomes nontrivial, because now I have to wait a few days for them to call me back to tell me it costs more than my alternative. Salespeople should be taking down orders, driving traffic, cajoling hot leads, and negotiating discounts, not performing the work of a javascript in a significantly less capable manner.

Until someone does a double-blind study with identical products, my guarantee is based on anecdotal evidence (and as Bender once said, "I can guarantee you anything you want"). I think it would be fun to experiment with an app store listing with "call for price" as its cost. Would it really be so hard to predict a difference in sales?

damoncali
There is nothing to fix. Different customers pay different prices. There is no way around that.
rogerbinns
I worked with a company once who sold their product to one customer for $25k and another for $2m. The difference was the value the customers would get out of the exact same software.

There are some rules for US government pricing. Effectively you have to give the government the lowest pricing you give anyone else. The usual workaround is to create two differing versions of your product with one for government only use and one not.

In general when pricing is not disclosed it means it will be negotiated which means a person on their end is involved which means it won't be cheap.