After reading Miguel’s article The Bad PR List at Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org, it got me thinking about the vendors in the education community and some of my pet peeves. My biggest complaint with education vendors is the lack of pricing transparency. If I’m going to take the time to visit your website and examine your product, the least you can do is put some pricing information on your website. For example, if I’m looking at using a student response system with wireless products such as Wifi Palms and iPod Touches, I could visit PollAnywhere.com, click on Pricing, and then K12 and know exactly how much the product will cost me. Now I still need to research other solutions, so let’s visit Turningpoint.com. Cool, right in the middle of the front page they have the product I want to learn about. Let’s see how much this costs…. ummm… Nothing. I can contact sales, but that’s about it.
Vendors, if you don’t list prices, I view that as your solution must be too expensive for my school district. I’m pressed enough for time, I don’t want to jump through hoops to see if your product is something that we can use.
I agree! I do not like companies that make you apply for a “grant” through their company. They make you feel like you are getting a bargain for filling out a form. I have been purchasing a lot from CDWG. I can log into the site and see the discounts, read reviews, find accessories, etc. There is a rep I can call and if he doesn’t know the answer, he finds someone that does. When I find a vendor like that, I give them most of my business.
If I may, let me offer a vendor perspective on this one. We put pricing on our website for a while before discovering that competitors were taking advantage of it to try to place bids that were just under ours.
That having been said, I want to be able to communicate effectively with prospective clients in a manner that is as unobtrusive to them as is possible. I have been considering reposting prices for some things, but I’m frankly on the fence.
But couldn’t your competitors just call and get your pricing anyway, posing as a potential client? I don’t have a business mind, I don’t have a salesperson mind, I just know what I want and when I want it.
I like to have some idea on how much a product is going to cost before I want to waste time and energy calling a sales person. SMARTboard has gotten better at this, they no longer offer their education pricing under the disguise of a “grant”, and hopefully with the competition, interactive whiteboards will finally come down to a sane level. (And btw, Polyvision, I don’t know how you sleep at night with where you price your Eno boards.