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Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

The last time I ordered servers for my employer, I was incredibly annoyed by Dell's website because it doesn't show prices on key pieces of hardware to business customers. The result is that you can't really plan anything until you start taking calls from extremely annoying Dell salespeople who eventually send you an offer with prices in it - an offer that may of may not contain the products you actually wanted. The worst part is that you just know you're getting totally ripped off (otherwise they'd have prices on their site) and that after this stuff finally arrives at your door the same obnoxious customer service reps keep calling you to sell you more stuff. So that was the first and last time I bought something from Dell. What an ordeal.

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> The worst part is that you just know you're getting totally ripped off (otherwise they'd have prices on their site)

Then offer to pay less. Sales people are annoying, but they can work to your advantage if you play ball.

No. I just want to order stuff at a transparent and reasonable price. How hard is that? I want a simple online shop with a few products to choose from. Click and order, done. I don't want to negotiate. I don't want to be on the lookout, constantly defending myself and my company from service reps who are trying to shaft us. I just want to buy stuff, not jump through hoops and be harassed.

There is no justification in having those sales people around. They have absolutely zero technical information that I need, they're just sitting on the price. I know that my interaction with them and their skill in ripping me off is paying their salary - but I want them gone. Send them home, they are completely unnecessary legacy cruft. They are costing companies like Dell real money in lost sales. A few days ago I was talking to a sysadmin friend of mine, he feels the same way. I know I'm not alone in this.

While we're talking about Dell and parasitic cruft, they should reconsider their mandatory commercial operating systems policy as well. It's nearly impossible to buy many of their servers without an OS already on them.

This is certainly the right move for google, facebook, etc, and maybe even for startups who for some reason want to avoid the cloud and run their own couple of one-off servers. For the rest of us in the great middle, direct from manufacturers like HP and Dell is the best option.

I have not had the same experience as you with Dell; we have an established "medium business" account and get pricing online that generally reflects our base discount. We can sometimes get more off by dealing with those salespeople (especially if it's near a quarter end), but in general we get a fair and predictable price, visible on the web site. Servers show up (sometimes later then I'd like) configured as ordered, and just need put into a rack and powered on.

Our "server specialist" certainly isn't the most technical guy in the world, but he knows the hardware line in and out, knows what works, and what other people are using for similar projects.

I regularly buy servers with no OS (if I'm reusing an old MS license), or with Redhat (my standard OS) at a price competitive with others.

If I understand you correctly, you're implying that an industrial-grade server company like Dell necessarily has to work like this. But I assert that they don't. I believe there is a niche in the market just waiting for a modern, transparent, fast new startup that gives you these products at a transparent price, with minimal fuss, no tricks required. Configure a blade rack online, order it, next week it's in your office. It works like that for consumer stuff, let's bring that kind of convenience to businesses.

No, I'm suggesting that in my experience Dell operates more like what you're proposing then what you're originally describing. I get (generally) transparent pricing, flexibility, and the servers show up at my datacenter next week as ordered.

I'm done defending Dell though; and don't think I'm arguing there is no room for improvement. At the very least, one's experience with Dell seems to vary wildly depending on account reps and established agreements and processes. There is no reason our experiences should be so different.

> No. I just want to order stuff at a transparent and reasonable price. How hard is that?

Very hard, because the other side of the transaction wants to sell stuff at a non-transparent and very high price.

This may be true of Dell, but not all businesses are run that way. It's a choice, the result of what kind of customer experience you want to sell.

No price, no sale. If they're not making the price public, they're trying to segregate the market and they're doing it in a nasty way. There's nothing stopping them from listing base prices and providing discounts for volume orders. If I want to have a "relationship" with some sales guy, I know how to place a phone call.

Oh, BTW, you can get all your server needs on NewEgg by just clicking on the buy button. They even carry my favorite brand, Super Micro.

This is exactly why I went with Pogo Linux instead of Dell or a variety of other vendors when my employer was looking at storage appliances. Total transparency on pricing and hardware right on their website, and no persistent calls from d-bag sales guys. Some of the sales reps I talked to made it feel like I was in a used car lot. I had to start screening my calls after a while.

It felt a little risky spending so much money with a smaller company, but so far so good. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when of the $(five-figure) boxes was severely damaged in shipping, but they handled it beautifully and painlessly.

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