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Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

Yes, "charge accordingly" means different things to different customers.

My parents never advertised their tailor shop, it was all "word-of-mouth" business. After the pricing jack-up, every customer got charged what my mother felt they could pay (with a very loose regard for consistency and some allowance for negotiation).

I used to think that was sketchy. It wasn't until much later that I realized that B2B enterprise sales people do that stuff ALL THE TIME even with their onerous kpi's, forecasting and fiscal quarter expectations!

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> I used to think that was sketchy. It wasn't until much later that I realized that B2B enterprise sales people do that stuff ALL THE TIME even with their onerous kpi's, forecasting and fiscal quarter expectations!

Depending on how it's done, it still is, and enterprise salesmen doing it doesn't make it less so. As a customer, I don't necessarily seek absolute minimum price, but I want it to be a fair price that I can agree on voluntarily - that means, I don't want to be subject of a bunch of manipulative sales techniques during pricing negotiations. Moreover, individual pricing used at scale makes it impossible to compare prices, or even develop a sense of what price is fair price. I actively prefer buying from vendors who list prices publicly, so by going the individual price route, you might be losing business of me and people like me.

I also prefer vendors that list prices, but when they do, it's important to remember that the list price is only the maximum price.

     > I don't want to be subject of a bunch of manipulative sales techniques...

If the sales techniques are sufficiently manipulative, you won't actually know you're being manipulated.

There's a reason why sales people in enterprise sales can pull in MM's per year, it's a different level than, say, retail or car sales.

How do you determine whether a price is targeted/individual? Do you check in different browsers / on different devices?

I think he means prices where the webpage just says "contact us for a consultation". Here they'd probably google your company and see how much they can get away with charging you.

I mean that if a webpage just says "contact us for a consultation", I'll first try to find a company that shows their prices publicly - and if I find such, I'll stick to them. I hate "contact us for a consultation".

As for dynamic pricing on-line, AFAIK only airlines do that to significant extent so far. Once other people start, I might start opening in different browsers or not keeping cookies or whatever.

That big business does something isn't and indicator of whether it's sketchy or not. I wouldn't even say the comparison maps 1:1 anyways.

You're right but whatever it is, that's what "brings in the bacon" for a lot of businesses.

pricing is an entire industry of it's own, with conferences and such

I see it like advertising - one part of the chain of value, and ensuring that a responsible and fair transaction occurs

Production: control of how something exists

Project management: control of when something

Advertising: control of how you become aware of something

Pricing: control of how you take ownership of something

> every customer got charged what my mother felt they could pay

I suspect with advertising profiles and amazon purchase histories (and possibly amazon visa card applications requiring household income)... this wonderful "service" previously only available to the rich will be democratized for everyone!

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