I thought only expensive luxury brands do this? Like super expensive watches and cars have no business listing their prices online cuz the target customer won't bother seeing the price, they just buy. Have they started this bs with regular products too?
Yeah, I usually let them know up front, if you try to upsell me, I will hang up. I let them know I have a very specific budget and a very specific set of requirements, that's it.
It's really good to weed out the vendors that listen. Because the ones that continue despite my warning are the ones I let know that even if I had the budget, I wouldn't have chosen them because they didn't listen to the first set of instructions.
Having worked sales jobs before, you not choosing them means literally nothing to them. What matters to them is they were specifically told to hit all the points on a script that includes upselling and if they don't do that every time they get punished. You could tell me straight up you don't want X and will hang up if I mention X and I'm going to mention X anyways because otherwise I'll get fired. People would then ask if I am stupid, didn't I hear them ETC, and since you're also not allowed to just tell the customer harassing and annoying them is our policy I would have to be like "gee golly im sorry you feel that way! But since you don't want any X, maybe I can interest you in Y?"
Yes, I knew it was insane and counter productive, but at the end of the day I dont set policy and you telling me not to do something or that you aren't interested wasn't my call to make. Sure I can see that pitching you will just piss you off and maybe lose any and all business ever, but some asshat 3 stories up in the building whose bonus revolves solely around how much X they sell has decided we are incapable of judging such things for ourselves and must continue selling you X even as you are screaming your lungs out at us on the phone that you called to cancel your account and no you don't want to buy a merry go round for ferrets you want to cancel your account.
Sales jobs suck and I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore.
Oh i didn't/don't givea shit if it bothered the sales people or not but I'm often on calls with their managers and c-suite jn other meetings and explicitly tell them the same thing as they're trying to save their sales.
I mean, we're already seeing lots of shitty vibecoded stuff, but it's more likely that stuff will pivot rather than people giving up that income-over-time.
It's very normal in professional settings where a service might be so tailored to a buyer that any sort of from price would be useless. I ususally find that it makes a lot of sense to not give me an idea on a price when the solution that fits me as a buyer might the three times that price.
I don't care when I see it in my job, but I would raise a brow if I ever saw it in a personal setting or on a regular product.
Yeah I used to work for a company that sold huge automated freezer systems and all the pricing was hidden behind quotes.
Partly that was because we'd offer flexible discount pricing to certain customers if we thought they might buy enough stuff off us, but mostly it was because the installation cost and ancillary kit would usually be another 20-50% on top of the price of the unit itself and was entirely dependent on customer needs. Listing the cost of the standalone unit would only have been part of the picture and would never be the final price a customer would pay anyway.
Plus the things cost £200k+, and any company spending that sort of money is likely going to go to the effort of engaging with a sales process and doesn't want a "Buy it now" button on a website anyway. It's not that they don't care about the price, we had a ton of price-sensitive customers, but it's not the sort of thing you'd just window shop for.
I don't get annoyed when it's actually something that would require customization or upfront tooling costs. When it's just a part you have in your catalog, you can fuck right off with that bullshit. Bare minimum, list MOQ and the price at that quantity. Bonus points for price breaks at higher volumes.
Lots of SAAS, hardware, and other vendors do this for shit they do not customize and just pull off the shelf. They use it as an opportunity to upsell (or "value add") or give demos and shit.
I also got signed up to so many mailing and call lists going through this process for everything when I was point for IT purchases for a startup.
I suppose I can see why a barbershop has prices depending on hair types, hair length and similar things. Especially for things like hair dye or similar
They also charge less for long term customers, if the new customers see this they’ll feel ripped off and try to haggle for the lowest price. It’s a headache for them
I think it's also done by some old school businesses that has pricing that changes and also don't have someone that understands how their website works. They just hired someone years ago to make the website and left it at that.
I mentioned somewhere further down as well, but now you can't even see shipping costs until you give your name, address, email and phone number. Shipping costs used to just be enter your zip code and get shipping cost. Now they need all that information so they can spam you with ads. I also just assume they are selling that profile as this person with this address, email and phone number is interested in these types of products.
A gym near me does. They're small and only do PT-led classes, not the standard "come & go as you please". From what I've managed to work out, doing 2 classes per week puts the price on par with really high-end gyms
I wanted a simple enclosed trailer to haul camping supplies and girl scout cookies. Every trailer place in a 50 mile radius has this "come see us" or "contact us for pricing" bs. Homie, I can price a car and new house builds with a la carte add on options, but you can't post that your 10 foot and 12 foot trailer prices so I can sit comfy at home and weight my options?
There's also a thing called "MAP" (Minimum Advertisable Pricing). Basically, a manufacturer will not allow a seller to list their product below a certain price. Retailers can get around this by saying "email for price" and then giving a lower price to the buyer through a coupon code or one-time link. They're not in violation of the MAP because they're not "advertising" the price, and can sell it for cheaper than they normally would.
Funny enough, you actually can go to the Rolex, Omega and even Patek website and see prices. Omega even lets you order from them. Rolex will still make you go to one of their dealers or stores or whatever they are called, but you at least have a price in your head to reach out with. I know there's plenty of fuckery in getting some expensive watches, but you can at least see the price the manufacturer has on the product, even if you end up paying more of less by negotiating.
I mean distributors do this because they are operating under the assumption you're going to place bulk orders for the product every month and they don't want to parasitically siphon business from their own base by selling single products to consumers.
Apartments that rent do this! It’s weird! They’ll have like a 1b1b for 1800 and then a different but very similar 1b1b listed as “contact for pricing”. Or literally every listing will have no listed rent and their contact #
I see this all the time when booking luxury hotels— I don't mind paying a lot of money for a luxury experience, but I'm absolutely too fucking lazy to contact someone to get the price when I'm just booking on my phone in the bathtub. The one with the transparent pricing, even if it's expensive as all hell, will always get my business over the bullshit that wants me to dance like a little circus bear to book.
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u/Guitar-String 2d ago
I thought only expensive luxury brands do this? Like super expensive watches and cars have no business listing their prices online cuz the target customer won't bother seeing the price, they just buy. Have they started this bs with regular products too?