4 ms·

This. With years of experience from dealing with "ask for quote" businesses, this strategy is by now an immediate k.o. criteria for me when considering anythin

This. With years of experience from dealing with "ask for quote" businesses, this strategy is by now an immediate k.o. criteria for me when considering anything. I may return for your offer only after spending considerable time of not finding any more transparent business (quite rare, but possible for very customized products like renting glass fiber for an office). In practice this never happens and I've been a much happier customer ever since - with my business life cleaned up from 95% of dealing with crappy sales reps.

cookiecaper 11y ago
The other side being that, depending on the good, if you have a salesperson, you can often, ironically, get a better price overall. Recent case in the point: I was in the market for a Herman Miller Embody. I would've ordered it online at retail for ~$1500, but I wanted it ASAP so I went to a local HM dealer to see if they kept any in stock (they didn't). While there, the sales person got me a more-upgraded version of the Embody for less than $1000 by invoking dealership and small business discounts. Effectively, I made $500/hr during that trip to the HM dealership. The downside of this experience was that, contrary to my original intention, it took about 5 weeks for the chair to arrive. :\ It would've shipped faster if I had paid full retail from the HM store online. Of course, it's going to depend on the good, but considering that salespeople usually have a strong incentive structure to get your sale to go through them instead of an online retailer or to a competing business, they really will pull out all the stops to keep you around.