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Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

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Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#141

Post by stubish »

duncan-donuts wrote: post #46
mozman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vendor list pricing is absurd. Real story but using made up numbers below: I spoke with a vendor last week who came in at 500k. I told them my budget was 250k, price came back at 255k.

Then your renewal comes up and you’ve already spent another million in salaries and bespoke shit to make it work for you and the sales guy hits you with 500k again because you’re in too deep.

Cisco was legendary around here (20+ years ago when I was around networking). They would win almost every tender, often with quotes below cost if that is what it took. And everyone in the know knew you would be paying much, much more over the next few years with support costs, renewals, etc. The first hit is free.

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#142

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

indymike wrote: post #102
wwkeyboard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a much more generous take than I had. I always assumed "contact us" pricing meant "tell us who you work for so we can google their funding level before suggesting a price to you".

As a reformed former VP of Sales, I can assure that this is exactly how it works, except with much better research than Google.

Could you describe some of the research?

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#143

Post by autoexec »

Thespian2 wrote: post #108
autoexec wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as: the company doesn't have set pricing but rather has a sales person/department that will charge you more than the next person for the exact same product/service if they have any reason to suspect they can get away with it after learning as much as they can about your finances and only after wasting your time on a high pressure sales pitch. If someone refuses to openly list prices they're either: - Embarr…

We may not like it, but your last point is almost the exact definition of what a "price" is. Things don't have objective "prices" as an intrinsic quality. They don't even have "reasonable" prices intrinsically. A price is no more, and no less than an agreement between buyer and seller to make a transaction happen. "how much you can be fleeced into paying" while a proactive way to phrase it, is also "What you are will…

> We may not like it, but your last point is almost the exact definition of what a "price" is. Things don't have objective "prices" as an intrinsic quality. They don't even have "reasonable" prices intrinsically. A price is no more, and no less than an agreement between buyer and seller to make a transaction happen.

The difference is that most companies aren't pricing their goods to the maximum amount they think they can get from you personally. They instead price things according to what the majority of their target market is willing to pay.

You can say that ultimately it still comes down to paying only what you're willing to spend, but I might be willing to spend $20 on something, yet also be unwilling to spend $20 on it if I know you've been charging everybody else $12 for that same product. Consumers find personalized dynamic pricing to be unfair and discriminatory and for good reason. There's a really big difference between a company who uses their advantage in pricing to screw over everybody for extra profit and one who uses their advantage to personally screw you over in order to take more from you than they could normally get away with.

Publicly disclosed prices that apply equally to everyone puts a boundary on much a company can take advantage of any one person.

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#144

Post by vitiral »

yellowapple wrote: post #132
gunapologist99 wrote: post #10

As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your customer know what value is in your software before they immediately walk away. One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-…

I mentioned this in a different HN thread today, but I'm gonna say it again anyway: if I can get a publicly-available "standard" price for launching something into outer fucking space ¹, it's absolutely ridiculous that I can't get the same for something multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Will that "standard" price be negotiated? Sure. Whatever. Just throw out some number instead of forcing the buyer and seller to…

I'm a big SpaceX fan, but I know the prices are published for the fans (they make good PR). For those looking to launch things into space calling the three existing providers is not a serious barrier to entry.

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#145

Post by wdb »

chasd00 wrote: post #94
jedberg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always at least 2 weeks late, as a rule of thumb Oh man! As consultant I hated that. They would pay 90 days late and just say "sorry, we always pay 90 days after we get the invoice". They know I don't have the resources to sue them, nor would I. And they really had no reason to hold it other than making sure they get the interest instead of me. Sure maybe it takes a few days to validate the invoice, but 90 days was…

if the contract your client signed said net-30 then wouldn't a 90 day payment incur 60 days of late fees and another invoice? i feel like you could rinse/repeat that forever. It would be like a subscription to late fees.

One of the bigger accountants firms had a 180 days thing. Madness

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#146

Post by lumost »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #10

As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your customer know what value is in your software before they immediately walk away. One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-…

It took me a long time to understand why companies price this way. The reality is that many viable SaaS businesses have fewer than 100 customers. If each customer pays you 1 million a year that's a hundred million dollar a year SaaS business commanding a valuation of 500 million dollars or more.

The problem is that this SaaS business needs to find a pricing model which net's them 1 million per customer. Charging too little means the business will starve, too much means that customers won't sign up. Sales & Contract negotiations can help arrive at the right number. Guessing the pricing model after 1-2 customers can break the business if you don't have infinite VC money.

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#148

Post by yellowapple »

site-packages1 wrote: post #134
yellowapple wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned this in a different HN thread today, but I'm gonna say it again anyway: if I can get a publicly-available "standard" price for launching something into outer fucking space ¹, it's absolutely ridiculous that I can't get the same for something multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Will that "standard" price be negotiated? Sure. Whatever. Just throw out some number instead of forcing the buyer and seller to…

I think the comment you’re responding to answers your response. Pricing isn’t opaque because they cannot determine a standard price, but because they don’t want to scare people away. I’m expecting spacex is different because we already know intuitively that launching something is expensive and we know there are only a small number of vendors with which to do so. So space launch companies probably don’t have the same…

> they don’t want to scare people away

If that price tag is big enough to "scare away" a customer, then that'll be true with or without the extra contact info collection and sales call(s) and email spam. Like I said: might as well not have the vendor and customer mutually waste each others' time with a bunch of sales ceremony that has no hope of actually producing a sale.

Re: Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

#149

Post by e-clinton »

wwkeyboard wrote: post #19
gunapologist99 wrote: post #10

As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your customer know what value is in your software before they immediately walk away. One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-…

That's a much more generous take than I had. I always assumed "contact us" pricing meant "tell us who you work for so we can google their funding level before suggesting a price to you".

Same thought here. If I see “contact us” for pricing, it means you’re gonna try and screw me over somehow. I usually avoid those even when I have a large budget.

…hell, if I have to speak to a human when I don’t think it’s necessary, then we probably won’t do business.

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