We’re in the 21st century yet it still ceases to amaze us how often we have to ask companies for a price.

"Well there’s this to be taken account of and no two applications or customers are the same, blah, blah, blah"

Veteran salesman will come up with all sorts of reasons for not publishing a price list.

What’s often known as market pricing is usually nothing more than an attempt to extract the most money from each customer possible. Some customers may be experienced negotiators and get a fantastic deal, others may be more reticent and end up paying more than they should. Call us naive but surely this can’t be fair.

Of course we’re in business to make money. But it’s not just about making money. We want our customers to get a good deal, know that they’re getting a good deal, know that they’re paying the same as anybody else and maybe even come back for repeat business in the future.

We don’t publish inflated list prices only to discount 30% to customers looking for a "good deal".

As such we have a fixed price policy. The prices we publish are our best possible prices. They represent the lowest possible price that we can sell that product at and for it to be fair to our customers, our suppliers, our staff and our shareholders. Of course occasionally we may run special offers, but they are just that; special offers, and the fact that our prices are already extremely competitive mean that such offers are rather rare.

I know that some people may well by cynical about our approach and wonder whether we’re really genuine about this. In fact we deliberated for some time within our company as to whether this was going to work before deciding on this policy. Our answer to that would be:

"Please take a look at our offering and our prices and then compare it to our competitors. If you think we compare favourably then we very much look forward to doing business with you. If not then we wish you well with your deal of the century but do please consider us in the future."

Of course if a customer draws to our attention that our price may not be as competitive as it once was (after all technology is advancing at quite a pace and neither us, nor our competitors are standing still) then we will happily look at our prices and re-adjust as appropriate. In which case everyone, not just that customer, will ultimately benefit.