Warning: Extreme Rant
One of my pet peeves about companies today is how they try to angle you into calling them to get pricing when you want to simply know how much something costs. In my line of work, I frequently have to research products and services to find the best fit for a company. Frequently when browsing sites or catalogs I find products that look interesting for use I am confronted with the phrase “Call for pricing”. This is crap, there is no reason why a company cannot give you a Suggested Retail Price, or even their average price or high price. Something to go by in order allow someone like myself that is in the process of creating a budget or a plan, but has no interest in purchasing in the near term.
Supposing you call these companies you get hit with a barrage of questions, starting with your Name, Phone Number, and Email address so that they can add you to the call sheet. This allows them to call you weekly to “follow up with you” AKA nag you into buying.
One company that I have experienced this first hand with is CDW. They produce mini-catalogs that they mail out to people. Some of the items in the catalog have prices and others tell you to call for pricing. When I see this I simply run some searches on Google to find the price or I call my actual vendor form most things IT-related, Insight.
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