Price difference miffs dealers in Salem

The difference in prices of IT products and cross-region billing has provoked IT dealers in Salem, Tamil Nadu. Being the season when institutional orders are flowing in, lots of dealers are quoting competitive prices to bag the orders. However, a few vendors quote special prices to partners who take up those orders. “Three dealers in Salem had given a quote for an institutional order in the town with a vendor cleared price of Rs 26,000 plus tax per PC. However, a dealer from Erode bagged the order by quoting a very low price of Rs 22,500. This has provoked partners on a large scale,” informed S Prakash, President, Salem IT association.

Salem association has sent a formal letter to the Erode association asking for an explanation and has marked a copy to Confed-ITA. “This issue of cross-region billing and price difference has existed for a while. However, we ought to find some solution for this immediately to prevent such incidents from happening in future,” Prakash said.

It may be noted that even in the recent meeting with vendors in Madurai, Confed-ITA urged vendors to prevent cross-region billing and maintain a standard price.

On the steps they intend to take regarding this issue Prakash said, “Right now we want to know how this incident happened and whether the Erode dealer bagged the order by operating in loss or whether there was a difference in price across every region. Only after getting the response from the Erode association we can move forward.”

S Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITA said that he has asked both Salem and Erode associations to sort the matter out between themselves. “We have asked both the parties to talk and resolve the issue. We will extend our help wherever it is necessary to both of them,” Karthikeyan informed.

When contacted, C Balakrishnan, President, Erode IT Association said, “We are awaiting the vendors response to the problem. We can’t blame the dealers, as they operate only on the vendors’ cleared prices. Vendors play games by clearing different prices to different dealers and make the dealers responsible for their actions. We don’t have any problem with the Salem association and we would respond to them after we get things cleared from the vendor.”

Giving a clarification on the issue, Sameer Mathur, Head—Solution Partners Organization, HP India said, “The specifications of every deal—product configurations, service level agreements, warranty period and product basket (in terms on printers, servers, desktops, other third-party items, software) are different and are based on customer requirements. How different partners quote prices for each of the product lines is their prerogative. We at HP have a single national price list and go by the Rules of Engagement with respect to our interface with channel partners for every opportunity and large deals.”

He added that HP ensures that the pricing for product offerings, warranty etc offered by partners is the same across all regions in the country in consistence with HP’s pricing policy and with respect to competitive prices prevailing in the market.