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.