
Ask HN: “Contact us for pricing” nonsense - gesman
I am looking to purchase advanced communication device manufactured by specific vendor - but every single website has this &quot;Contact us for pricing&quot; links.<p>This certainly is an invitation to sales dance and subsequent spam.<p>I&#x27;d rather avoid that and buy from reseller&#x2F;store that is clear and opened about their pricing.<p>This &quot;contact us for pricing&quot; approach certainly doesn&#x27;t help to win business (at least mine).<p>Just wonder if this kind of policies are dictated and enforced by actual manufacturer or is that a habit of a specific industry?
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awillen
A few possible reasons for this:

\- You aren't their target audience. I come from enterprise SaaS, where we
often force people to talk to someone, and working with sales is not a problem
for the people we care about. I know that someone who has your reaction
(calling it a "sales dance" and assuming you'll be spammed) is unlikely to be
a real buyer, since real buyers are accustomed to the sales process. They also
appreciate that sales reps for this type of product can be really valuable.
Maybe you're the exception here, but it's worth losing your business to filter
out bad leads.

\- They've done the math and realized that when they get someone on the phone,
they are better able to build a long term relationship and have a
substantially greater customer LTV. They lose some customers, but the ones
they retain end up being higher enough in value to offset the loss.

\- The product can't be sold as a standalone item - it requires setup and
integration, and without understanding what you have in place already, they
can't give you a quote. Of course, this seems less likely for a hardware
solution.

\- Related to the above, it's possible that it's a complex product to set up,
and they've found that if they don't get you on the phone, you're likely to
screw up the setup and get mad at them and/or return it. Better to scare you
away up front if you're ultimately just going to take up time and end up
getting a refund.

Ultimately, the answer to this question and any like it is that if they're
competent, they do this because they've done the research and determined that
it is better for them (typically in terms of revenue generation, but really
better is defined as they see fit).

~~~
fphhotchips
I work around enterprise SaaS sales also and the other reason is that we don't
want to give our pricing strategy to our competitors.

~~~
h1d
Does it mean your pricing isn't competitive against competitors?

Otherwise, wouldn't showing the pricing just upset your competitors?

Also, can't one of your competitor ask you for a quote and figure that out as
a fake customer?

~~~
edmundsauto
Possibly, but not necessarily. You might want to lead with your value before
price, especially in an industry where it's difficult to see at first look
what the differentiators are. Alternatively, public pricing could start price
wars, leading both companies to unsustainable pricing. Or maybe you want to be
able to give strategic customers specific discounts. These aren't pricing
strategies to make sure your customers get the best price possible -- they are
designed to allow me, as the creator of some value, better control over how
that value is perceived and deployed.

For a business, you want to build relationships, not just have transactional
customers. The more custom or integrated your solution is, the more important
this is. (Also, it's the best way to make sure your customers are deriving the
most value from your product, which is a win-win.)

Yes, competitors can do that, but that additional friction means they won't
stay up to date, and you have a chance to discover what's going on.

~~~
gesman
As a customer - in this case I don't want to build "relationship" with some
random middleman reseller.

I know exactly what i want and rather avoid wasting time on upsells thrown at
me.

I understand that sales departments strongly prefer "bait and pimp" vs. "sell
and forget" strategy - but some customers and often significant ones will give
business to competitors if former is the only strategy to generate revenues.

------
xt00
For buying a piece of hardware — especially one that doesn’t require some
complex sw to go with it — doing the “contact us” thing definitely turns a lot
of people off. When I see that I think they will start off by pumping me for
information about my company and basically trying to figure out if I can
afford a high price, then they ask me what my application is and if I’m aware
of any other solution than theirs. Then they give me the price and if I say no
thanks I proceed to get spammed by them for 6 months about whether I want to
buy the product or not..

~~~
sgillen
Care to name and shame? Or are you talking about many different experiences.

I’ve never really had this problem but my sample size is small.

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hash872
If you feel like talking to someone over there wouldn't add any value, simply
hire a freelancer with decent English on Upwork to act as your
'representative' and take the call with their sales rep to find out the price.
I've absolutely done that before to avoid talking with low-level account
executives who don't add any value but just want to 'build a relationship' and
upsell you etc.

If you're a senior person in your workplace, I suppose you could make a junior
employee do the call, with strict instructions not to give out your name or
contact info to the sales rep. A bit mean but also a perk of seniority

~~~
qhwudbebd
Wonder if you could go really low-end and successfully use Amazon Turk for
this?

~~~
lowdose
Or train an AI from the kennel and name her the real Duplex.

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jhart99
If you really want to know the price of such a device, it is likely that
someone in the US federal government has bought it before. If you know the
name or even better have a part number, search for it in combination with GSA
or DLA. I have managed to get pricing for all sorts of instruments that way.

~~~
xt00
Very interesting.. classic useful response from the HN community! Any chance
you could point me to an example so I can use this technique in the future?

~~~
jhart99
I've used it for various biomedical equipment before like PCR machines and a
Mass Spec. Here is a list I found while trying to find out the approximate
cost of an AKTA
FPLC([https://inventory.data.gov/dataset/2d2da689-5342-4024-b9e1-f...](https://inventory.data.gov/dataset/2d2da689-5342-4024-b9e1-fb6bc9ec79eb/resource/64873a3a-432f-46f4-96e5-4fd0189f71ac/download/ebuyawardsfy2016.xlsx)).
The pricing may swing wildly from what you might pay based on various factors,
but at least you have a starting price.

As an example, how about a ballpark figure for everything that AT&T has for
internet connectivity. Search things like "AT&T OC3 GSAadvantage" with and
without PDF and I got
this([https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F0249J/0TQT0R.3OCL...](https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F0249J/0TQT0R.3OCL2C_GS-35F-0249J_ATTPRICELISTCONTGS35F0249J.PDF))

If the government buys it and it isn't secret or a one off item or service,
there is pricing for it on the web. For some, the price won't be useful. If
you looked up contracts for something like tech support, it might not be
possible to find out what exactly they were asking for. But if it is something
you can put a part number on or a service that is somewhat commodity, you
should have a good chance of getting some sort of pricing.

------
verdverm
I often prefer the self service model, but other times I like talking to
sales. Some of them are good (just happened yesterday) where they take time to
understand your company and goals. He suggested their cheapest plan. You can
often get deals. I know of a cloud hosting company that cuts outrageous deals
if you talk to sales. Another gave a potential customer 80k in credit to leave
AWS.

Most sales people aren't very good and there is a bad stigma that perpetuates

~~~
rlpb
If I believe that outrageous deals are available, then I can't help but think
that whatever I do, this company will end up outrageously ripping me off if I
do business with them. After all, why else is an outrageous deal possible?

~~~
verdverm
Because their sticker price is 2x the competitors and they are willing to take
a loss to get people on the platform. They are not winning in the cloud wars.

~~~
scarface74
Would you trust such a company over AWS or Azure?

~~~
verdverm
Nope, I use GCP first

~~~
scarface74
I don’t have anything against GCP on a technical level - I don’t know enough
to. But their enterprise support is abysmal and that whole “No one ever got
fired for buying AWS/Azure”.

~~~
quickthrower2
But they might get fired buying from IBM

~~~
scarface74
I’m not sure. I think IBM will be selling systems compatible with the
mainframes of the 70s until the heat death of the universe.

~~~
verdverm
I can sell you some IBM if you'd like, official reseller.

Working on the GCP equivalent if you prefer :]

~~~
gesman
IBM better get their act together to make your (reseller) life easier.

I used to work with IBM big data analytical tool and honestly you should get a
medal for closing sales on this garbage.

------
theartfuldodger
I ask this question a lot from new clients coming in for marketing or
ecommerce rebuilds who have this style pricing.

I get three answers

1\. Not allowed ( manufacturer/vendor regs)

2\. High Touch sales, "anyone who was over worried about price isn't likely a
buyer/good match" real buyers know the price range and we need to
customize/vet the buyer

3\. Highly customizable product that they cant or won't invest into making
possible to pre-price online, probably wont get added to a cart and shipped or
sold without a buyer wanting to actually talk to someone)

( for example, a 150k Caterpillar with various attachment options)

~~~
jessriedel
> Highly customizable product that they cant or won't invest into making
> possible to pre-price online, probably wont get added to a cart and shipped
> or sold without a buyer wanting to actually talk to someone)

This isn't a good reasons not to have a guide to the pricing though (e.g., the
base price plus the rough prices of popular options). That can be super useful
for determining if this is possibly something the buyer might want to buy, and
saves them a ton of time calling salesmen.

The other two reasons are reasonable.

~~~
notahacker
If you're selling ~$150k worth of customizable hardware and services to
improve people's business processes, I'm not sure there are many genuine
buyers out there that haven't got a few minutes to discuss which of the many,
many options might be relevant to their needs rather than rely on probably
unrepresentative "base price" and "popular" options on a website. If there are
executives that evaluate ~$150k range business process improvements based on
published sticker prices to save time on calling salespeople, their company
really, really ought to be taking decision making power away from them.

------
ROFISH
I had the same issue a few months ago; I wanted to get some advanced
networking equipment and it was all "call for pricing". It was clear that the
reason why was to determine if I was actually knowledgeable enough to handle
advanced equipment as it's considerably more complicated than a home router.

The sales process did take much longer than buying something off of Amazon,
which was very annoying. But I did get it relatively quickly and it did work
for my purposes, so there's that.

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PopeDotNinja
When a product is super complex, fixed pricing might not make sense. I
wouldn't ask a general contractor "how much would it cost to remodel my
kitchen?" before they have seen my home (especially because I don't because a
kitchen!)

~~~
gesman
It's more like: "how much does it cost for that specific model of a washing
machine?".

You shouldn't be forced to "call for pricing".

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Even if you know what washing machine you want, that might not be the one you
want to buy. An experienced salesperson will ask what you need, why you need
it, and help you understand your options. They aren't there to take orders and
be micromanaged.

If you want to walk in with the attitude that you know what is best, I
recommend writing down what you need and why you need it in advance, so you
can communicate you know what your needs are without insisting on a solution.
The recommended thing may or may not be what you thought you wanted. If you
can't write down your needs clearly and concisely, buying what you thought you
wanted is likely to turn into an expensive waste of time for all parties.

Source: was good salesperson in a former life

------
ebrewste
In a former job where I was in applications engineering, the cost of getting
the customer up to speed (from a support point of view) was many times the
product price. In a couple hundred sales cycles, there was only one we would
have made money on in qty 1.

And value based pricing...

------
koonsolo
I'm wondering about this too, since I recently am looking for a payment
processor that also handles VAT. Most of them don't have the pricing, and one
of them even called me up after I asked for prices. This is a total waste of
time on my side.

I also have the feeling that they are ripping me off if I don't negotiate,
because why else wouldn't you be upfront with your pricing?

Nice to see that Atlassian became really successful with their upfront
pricing.

------
gotorazor
You can try buying used if that works for you. You will get a way better
pricing and they will either be sold to you on a set price or auction price.

If that isn’t your cup of tea, call the salesperson. And tell them you need
this now as a replacement part. If your hardware cycle is 3 years down the
road, they will wait 3 years to find you again to try to sell you $100k+ in
gear.

------
ronsor
I personally love it because then I know I can't afford it

------
bwb
We had a strict policy that we didn't do business with companies that hide
their pricing. For anything.

~~~
edmundsauto
Have you evaluated whether you were cutting off your nose to spite your face?
In a commodity market, this makes sense. But if you're eliminating potentially
valuable and unique solutions to your problems because of a principle about up
front pricing, you might be hurting your own business. After all, the whole
concept of buying something like this is that it adds more value than it
costs...

It's a suboptimal process to limit options because you personally are
affronted by having to talk with someone on the phone.

~~~
qhwudbebd
Doing things on principle is inevitably less economically efficient, otherwise
it would be indistinguishable from making an optimal selection regardless of
principle? I don’t think that implies you should discard all principles.

I’ve done the same thing with a £60k piece of farm machinery recently. I took
the time to write to the more opaque dealers, apologising for not considering
them but noting that their pricing wasn’t transparent, and therefore they lost
the business regardless of the price they would have quoted.

If more of us don’t do this, we’ll be stuck with sleazy salesmen and the “how
much can we extract from this gullible customer” model indefinitely.

~~~
Brian_K_White
Thank you.

This is not only taking the long view, but really a form of public service.

A million other selfish thoughtless people have it as good as they do, only
because some number of less-thoughtless people stood on principle once in a
while and simply demanded better rather than taking the 100% path of least
resistance 100% of the time.

~~~
edmundsauto
An alternative narrative is that standing on principle (for things like this)
is at best orthogonal to the reasons I (us) have it as good as we do.

Just because the stories about people standing on principle are sticky doesn't
mean they cause good outcomes. (Also, there's the other side of the coin,
where people who stand on principles cause great harm, intentionally or
otherwise.)

------
arkitaip
Manufacturers typically dictate reseller pricing and marketing to serve the
needs of their brand ("you can't sell below x as that makes our product seem
cheap") so dictating a sales tactic isn't unimaginable. Especially if the
tactic is designed to sell services and what not the manufacturer offers via
the resellers.

My other guess is that the resellers have figured out that while they cannot
fleece you on the price of the device - they all sell the same, identical
hardware after all - they can charge you extra for services, support insurance
and extra options as long as those prices aren't readily available for
comparison.

~~~
gesman
To me the clear winner of business would be the site that has available
pricing for base + options. Literally they can make an easy $2-$4k sale just
by adding [Buy now] button, considering that the rest of the pack are playing
tough sh.. to get with the prospects.

I also found one site that has "add to card to reveal pricing" \- which is
perfectly fine with me. The problem with that specific site is that they only
carrying outdated models.

PS: this is hardware device, not SaaS or service.

~~~
solarkraft
"add to card to reveal pricing" is just bad UX, without any gain (assuming
there is one from the sales dance) to anyone.

~~~
fphhotchips
It's an end run around contract clauses that tell them they can't advertise
pricing until there's a qualified lead (or similar).

------
notlukesky
Very common for legacy enterprise software products repackaged as SaaS. I hate
it for the friction it creates. Self-service with transparent pricing is the
way to go for me and preferably coupled with payment convenience.

------
csa
Some thoughts after reading your various responses in this thread:

1\. You seem to be looking for commodity pricing -- that is, you just want the
product/service, and you do not want any others services related to it.

2\. Most (all?) of the vendors are unwilling to provide open commodity-level
pricing. This makes me think that one of two things (perhaps both) are in
play. One is that the margin on commodity-level pricing just isn't worth the
time. If that's the case, good luck finding a vendor -- maybe go straight to
the manufacturer.

3\. The other (more likely imho) is that the device requires something else to
reach its full potential/value, and that something else is variably priced
(e.g., set up, follow up, maintenance, etc.). If that's the case, make the
call and either buy their expertise or demonstrate that you do not need their
expertise. You can get to a near-commodity price fairly quickly if you
actually know your stuff.

4\. You seem to think that the "song and dance" is a waste of time. As a
provider, I want satisfied customers. I want to add value to their experience
purchasing through me. There exist cases where certain unsophisticated
customers think that all they need is a product or service, and they do not
realize that the real value add is in something else (e.g., the proficiency
with which the product is used, onboarding, etc.). There are a lot of products
and services for which this holds true. I have declined to do business with
people because I knew they would use the product/service I was selling them in
an inefficient manner _and then blame me_ for it not working.

5\. My general thought about customers like you who are not even willing to
pick up the phone is that I do not want you as a customer. If you can qualify
yourself as needing absolutely zero support, I am happy to sell you a product
or service at a lean margin, and I have a sales process that accommodates
that. If you do not trust me to qualify you as a customer, then feel free find
someone else to do business with.

6\. Beware of becoming a pathological customer. You may find that somehow your
options are much narrower than others around you. Good business people engage
in mutually beneficial relationships -- show that you can add value to the
relationship (money is just one factor).

------
pryelluw
It may certainly be dictated by the manufacturer. Some products simply require
someone properly trained to make sure people are buying correctly. This might
not be your case.

Now, a contact us approach sounds like a huge waste of time for you. You know
what you want. You can describe it exactly. Know what? Most people don't. They
need and appreciate the help.

A contact us approach is basically the sales process adjusted to the market
needs.

It is a habit of many industries because purchasing is a complex process most
people dont get. Throw in the complexity of a corporation and you have a
recipe for disaster.

------
anomaloustho
I have personal experience working on both the software and marketing site for
the software product like this.

In particular, we had a very high-touch sales process that started with cold-
calling or references. The marketing website was more likely to act as an aid
to a cold call than as Google traffic.

Second, it was a more abstract product with a custom implementation that had
to pull data from whatever pre-existing software they were using.

Also, it was a very young product that was constantly evolving with ad-hoc
deals and pricing. Some would buy the software package outright with full
integration, demanding high-touch support and training. Others were willing to
go with our “development partner” package, with a 50% discount off any custom
implementation - but we also retained the ability to decline those
customizations if they didn’t fit with our vision.

Also, the product was so abstract, it was very rare that its potential would
be understood without a conversation.

Finally, often the person “tasked” with buying the software was not actually
the holder of the purse strings. They usually needed a boss or other
stakeholder to sign off and write the check. So it wasn’t really advantageous
to discuss the price and sticker-shock that the lower level employee might
experience, vs the business owner who was more used to making those types of
purchases. Really, we needed to turn the person who was doing the inquiry into
an advocate for our product within their organization. If they could advocate
the value of our product to the check writer in an effective manner, it
reduced the friction for us to come in and tell the check writer the price of
the solution. Then we let them make the judgement call.

Another part of this is that since the sales process was very high touch, and
since we were so small. There was a serious opportunity cost to incur if our
sales guy was wasting his time creating materials for a particular customer
who wasn’t going to buy. So we would quickly qualify the customer by getting
them to pay a non-trivial amount of money to RESEARCH the implementation. If
they paid that qualifying cost, we would ask for information on all of the
software systems they had in place, along with database schema information.
Then we would pour over it to determine what we could do with that data, if it
would be a successful implementation, and if there was any data missing that
we’d need to collect. Either from a UI or through a bulk dump from some
obscure archive. That was definitely not worth the opportunity cost of a
barely interested customer.

Overall, I think we were trying to be honest and fair. Not trying to price
gouge or anything, but it was a very complicated product, and it was a
complicated sale.

Now being a technically minded business owner, I have been on the other end of
this and found it to be extremely annoying. But it is not too often that
whatever product I am looking at is being researched directly by a business
owner with check-writing ability, and one who is also coming from a technical
background. So while it annoys me, I get why the company/product is choosing
to do that.

------
techslave
one thing everyone so far is missing: often the product being sold is vapor
ware

~~~
ncmncm
Sometimes, anyway. The company wants to gauge interest before committing to
development. Availability: 6 months' lead time. Still interested?

