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No. The reason you have to talk to a sales person is so they can size you up and figure out how much they can charge. It's called price discrimination.

by elchief 10y ago

danieltillett 10y ago
Not always. We charge everyone exactly the same price (no discounting ever for anyone), yet we have to sell through sales staff because most customers don’t know what they want. The sales people have to work out what the customer really wants (very rarely is it what they first say) and then guide them towards the right product.
wott 10y ago
Exactly. When there is no price list, I do not even bother to go further, I switch to another product/company. Else I know I am gonna get screwed. First, the price will be set as my face fits (there is even an expression for that in my language, I am unsure how it translates to English which does not seem to have the equivalent saying); that means depending how the salesman judges me, he will set a price according to the maximum of what he imagines I am ready to pay. If I call from another company, I may get a different offer for the same product. If I word my request differently, he may infer I am the sucker of the day. Then he will expect me to bargain. Fuck that. That means his second or final offer still provides him the reasonable benefit he needs. Which also means that he only provides lubricant now and he was ready to fuck me dry with the same plastic smile in the first place if I did not bargain. How can I trust someone like that? How can I trust I got a fair price? What if I hear someone else got a different price? Will I be pissed at the seller or... very pissed at the seller? Oh, and meanwhile, he has wasted my time, and he has wasted his own time talking and talking, or exchanging several mails across several days. I have had salesmen coming to my office, and then during the meeting calling their company each time I asked something to get a different price than the official one. What is the point of this cinema? I know the guy on the phone is just reading a price list, he's not making complex financial calculations for stuff in the range of $100. Why doesn't the first guy have it? He knows he's not going to use the official price anyway. If they get kicks from that, that's fine, find themselves a game or a sport that does the same. Because now they are costing their company money, and that money has to be taken from the price I pay, so I necessarily pay more than if they had just put a price list. Price list that they do have ready, because they're not pulling the prices they tell me out of their asses. But they keep it 'secret', as keeping it secret is the only justification of their job existence. I just want a price list, that includes the proper benefit to have their company live fine, that's all. I can read the varying "prices per quantity" columns as the salesman does, thank you. EDIT: and I forgot the case when the price is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude higher than what we can afford. I want to know it immediately, before I spend any minute considering the product, which may be all bells an whistles, but since I cannot afford anyway, it doesn't matter. So it makes me adjust my expectations.

No. The reason you have to talk to a sales person is so they can size you up and figure out how much they can charge. It's called price discrimination.

by elchief 10y ago

No. The reason you have to talk to a sales person is so they can size you up and figure out how much they can charge. It's called price discrimination.

danieltillett 10y ago

Not always. We charge everyone exactly the same price (no discounting ever for anyone), yet we have to sell through sales staff because most customers don’t know what they want. The sales people have to work out what the customer really wants (very rarely is it what they first say) and then guide them towards the right product.

wott 10y ago

Exactly. When there is no price list, I do not even bother to go further, I switch to another product/company. Else I know I am gonna get screwed. First, the price will be set as my face fits (there is even an expression for that in my language, I am unsure how it translates to English which does not seem to have the equivalent saying); that means depending how the salesman judges me, he will set a price according to the maximum of what he imagines I am ready to pay. If I call from another company, I may get a different offer for the same product. If I word my request differently, he may infer I am the sucker of the day. Then he will expect me to bargain. Fuck that. That means his second or final offer still provides him the reasonable benefit he needs. Which also means that he only provides lubricant now and he was ready to fuck me dry with the same plastic smile in the first place if I did not bargain. How can I trust someone like that? How can I trust I got a fair price? What if I hear someone else got a different price? Will I be pissed at the seller or... very pissed at the seller? Oh, and meanwhile, he has wasted my time, and he has wasted his own time talking and talking, or exchanging several mails across several days. I have had salesmen coming to my office, and then during the meeting calling their company each time I asked something to get a different price than the official one. What is the point of this cinema? I know the guy on the phone is just reading a price list, he's not making complex financial calculations for stuff in the range of $100. Why doesn't the first guy have it? He knows he's not going to use the official price anyway. If they get kicks from that, that's fine, find themselves a game or a sport that does the same. Because now they are costing their company money, and that money has to be taken from the price I pay, so I necessarily pay more than if they had just put a price list. Price list that they do have ready, because they're not pulling the prices they tell me out of their asses. But they keep it 'secret', as keeping it secret is the only justification of their job existence. I just want a price list, that includes the proper benefit to have their company live fine, that's all. I can read the varying "prices per quantity" columns as the salesman does, thank you. EDIT: and I forgot the case when the price is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude higher than what we can afford. I want to know it immediately, before I spend any minute considering the product, which may be all bells an whistles, but since I cannot afford anyway, it doesn't matter. So it makes me adjust my expectations.