Ask HN: Why do companies like IBM, HP and Oracle avoid showing prices?
Frequently I'm interested how much a piece of software or hardware costs and the only way to know the price is by contacting a sales person. What is the reason for this?
This is discussed specifically in [1] -- while the entire essay is well worth reading, Ctrl+F "Bad Idea #2" for a discussion of why you shouldn't price your products this way.
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
Sadly, procurement departments at big corporations play the big discount game (their bonuses are tied to the discount they get): don't get surprised if they try to diqualify you if you don't give a discount.
That means we don't actually need to make it illegal; since, as the blog post linked in the grandparent notes, "it pisses the heck off of people," the free market will take care of it for us if we're patient.
That blog post mentions specific multiple instances of companies that attempt egregious segmentation getting their lunch eaten by companies that don't.
As I said, the whole article is worth reading.
Also, it forces you to reach out to the company which allows the sales people to start working their magic (applying pressure, creating a sense of immediacy, trashing the competition, etc).
As this tends to be true only when prices are high, and given that salespeople are not cheap, I generally take this to be an indicator that prices will be high, almost certainly higher than direct competitors who post their pricing prominently.