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Comment by MrTonyD | Hacker News Reader

Or just don't buy Dell. Why should I have to examine every supplier's fine print to figure out whether I need to go through a reseller?

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The idea is you use a reseller for all your products, they manage the relationship with the manufacturer or publisher and work to get you the best price/service. If you have doubts about using a "middle man" keep them honest with a 2nd or 3rd quote, sometimes direct every now and then. But working with one rep for all your products can be a huge boon to doing business in savings of money and time.

Disclaimer: I work for a VAR

Which VAR do your work for or which would you recommend?

I wouldn't know who to work with to buy Dell, aside from typing "dell.com" and buying it. I thought that was their whole business model -- direct sales, no inventory, JIT shipping and the like.

A company I used to work for bought a huge (for the time) NAS full of drives... when one of the drives failed they (IBM) wouldn't send a replacement, as it was "discontinued"... if it weren't for the VAR, they never would have gotten the drive replaced... something like the following (3-way call).

    IBM: "Well, we're IBM and you're $300k annual spending wouldn't be a huge loss"
    VAR: "Well, this is Bill from VAR, and we do over $40M in purchases a year, and this will be very enlightening in future purchase recommendations."
    IBM: "Uhhh... hold on for a moment please..."

Which leads to the question, how is Dell's business model different from anyone else's?

Their whole reason for existence was to cut out VARs and sell direct to the customer.

Not a VAR of Dell, I assume.

We tried getting a second quote, and the VAR said: "Dell tells us you are already speaking to another VAR about this equipment, so they won't supply us a quote."

Note, for big purchases you can't actually comparison shop VARs due to something called deal registration. Basically the reseller tells the vendor about the deal, and is protected by the vendor not letting anyone quote a lower price.

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