> You say that as if it isn’t the entire reason why these interactions should be avoided at all costs. Dynamic pricing should be a crime.

Does segmentation also count as dynamic pricing?

--

    The IT guy at Podunk Lutheran College has no money: Gratis.
    The IT guy at a medium-sized real estate agency has some money: $500.
    The IT guy at a Fortune 100 company has tons of money: $50,000.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you-wanted-awesome-edition/

Not parent poster, but I think a more practical approach is to ban secret discriminatory pricing.

If everybody can see the prices that would be quoted in other circumstances, that exerts a strong moderating force against abuse.

It won't help you if there's a monopoly, but I consider that a separate problem needing separate solutions.

The entire lab supply industry is disgusting in this respect. The funding (and recent grants) that a given professor or research lab has is generally publicly available information that vendors will buy in easily digestible formats from brokers and companies that scrape the websites of major granting agencies.

All of their products, however realistically commoditized, will require a drawn out engagement with a rep who knows how much money you’ve received recently and even has an outline what research you plan to do over the next few years since even the detailed applications often get published alongside funding allocations.

The exact same piece of equipment, consumables required to use it, and service agreements might be anywhere from X to 10X depending on what they (as a result of asymmetrically available knowledge) know you need and how much you could theoretically spend.

A group of research universities should start a non-profit co-op to produce this for them.

Getting just the university of California should be enough critical mass.

Depends on the product. Some products just have a single supplier for the whole world over, because they are extremely specialized.

It's not uncommon though for eg departments to have common equipment that they negotiate together.

While I can certainly think of ways in which ordinary segmentation can be stretched beyond the limits of what’s reasonable, the example you give is categorically different.

In your example, you’re paying extra for additional capabilities. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a nonlinear increase in cost with the number of seats. Two companies buy 500 seats and pay the same price.

What I object to is some sales bro deciding I should pay 5x more for those same licenses because of who I am, what I look like, where I’m from, etc. It’s absolutely repulsive. Why can’t you simply provide a fair service at a fair price and stop playing these fuck-fuck games? You’re making a profit on this sale either way. Stop trying to steal my profit margin.

Instead of trying to scam me by abusing information asymmetry, why not use your sales talents to upsell me on additional or custom services, once you’ve demonstrated value? Honest and reliable vendors generally get continued (and increasing) business.

Conversely, these Broadcom/private-equity/mafia tactics generally have me running for the exits ASAP. Spite is one hell of a motivator.

Certain purchases (like health insurance in my country) should be a conversation, because the options are fiendishly complex and the attributes people typically use for comparison are wrong. The consequences are lifelong.

Every time I go to a presentation about the health care options I have, it ends up just being the representative reading off a slide with the actual information. All the information I need is in print. I have never received a single piece of valuable information that wasn’t easier to get just reading the docs myself.

We might live in a different country and serve a different demographic.

My guy saved a lot of people from making dumb mistakes. Then again he's good at his job, and if he was not I would wipe his business. Aligning incentives was very important for me. Most brokers are just bad.

I thought thees things were complex on purpose to make it hard for people to easily understand and compare so you have to speak to a sales person who can do the upselling

Nope. I built a calculator for that last year and ooooh boy. Now I pipe half the requests to a human because of all the possible mistakes a person can make. It's crazy complicated.

Finding that human is also hard because of the perverse incentives to sell more lucrative products.

That's my point, you need to be a specialist to understand it, but the specialists are incentivised to upsell you.

A simpler product would be better for consumers, but won't happen because there are industries (and a lot of lobbying) built up around keeping the money train rolling.

Not really. Some things are just complex.

But not a conversation to a sales rep who will just push whatever gives them the largest commission.

Pricing tiers are a form of dynamic pricing. Service free tiers basically couldn't exist without dynamic pricing, as they are subsidized by the paying tiers.