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 in Salem,” 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.”

When The DQ Week tried to get in touch with HP, there was hardly any response
from them.