Pricing transparency

If you follow the comments that kind readers add to my posts you may have seen a plea from a Mr. Fogarty for greater transparency in pricing. This is something I heartily endorse.

Frankly, it’s a pain in the butt to have to keep calling and emailing to get prices for vision system components. Once a salesman has you on the phone he’s usually very reluctant to just tell you what you need to know and let you go. Nine times out of ten he’ll want to hear all about your application – which may require setting up a Confidentiality Agreement – before he’ll quote a price, and that makes your life as a prospective purchaser much more complicated.

That’s one of things I like about buying from NI: the prices are set out on the website. (Admittedly I’m no fan of the actual prices which I think tend to be rather exorbitant, but that’s another matter all together.) I’d also like to offer a little kudos to Basler in this vein: if you follow yesterday’s link to the 2Mp Basler aviator camera you’ll see that they actually disclose the price (€1,790, if you’re interested.)

Transparency in pricing: why not?