On Sat, February 18, 2006 15:48, Randall Cayford wrote:
> At 11:56 AM -0800 2/18/06, Jon Forrest wrote:
>>
>>My point is that there should be a clear, consistent, and considerable
>>advantage when buying from TSW. There clearly isn't.
>>
>
> That presupposes that there is something clear and consistent about
> Dell pricing at all. I rarely get the same price twice and never if
> there are more than a couple of days between checks. I treat checking
> Dell pricing as a guess only, a rough estimate of what the actual
> cost will be once we do a purchase order.
In addition, not only are Dell prices subject to frequent change,
day-by-day, but the company may at the same time offer different prices
on the same item, depending on which online Dell "storefront" one
visits.
"Differential pricing" by customer channel - or even on a per-customer
basis - occurs more frequently than one might suspect on Internet
e-commerce sites, as noted in this article:
Anita Ramasastry
"Web sites change prices based on customers' habits"
CNN.com, June 24, 2005
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/24/ramasastry.website.prices/
This article notes, in part:
>Another report indicated that Dell Computer has offered the
>same model laptop at different prices to different customers:
>small businesses, health care companies, and state and local
>businesses were offered different deals [at the same time].
Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group
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Received on Sat Feb 18 18:37:26 2006
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