24 March 2008
by Paul Kunert
The additional pricing support resellers have received from Dell has been stopped as the vendor seeks to encourage trade customers to sign up to the Partner Direct channel scheme.
Resellers that had bought from Dell that have not yet applied to become a certified partner have noted the standard 20 per cent discount off list prices remains, but the extra five per cent for special bids in longer available.
"Dell is refusing to give us the same level of discount on large bids but it is offering to give us bigger discounts if we sign up as a partner," said Stuart Hayward, commercial director at WStore.
Another reseller had faced the same response from the vendor when he tried to secure special bid pricing but said it only supplied Dell to specific customers and may try to switch sell to another vendor.
"This is a real pain because we do not want to sign up to the partner programme because we have trust issues with Dell and are not comfortable passing across customers details," he said.
A spokeswoman at Dell UK confirmed it had reviewed its pricing mechanisms but refused to comment at this stage on the success or otherwise of reseller recruitment activities.
"We are currently restructuring our pricing to make it clearer for partners," she said.
Dell said its UK channel account team should be in place this month (Microscope 3 March) and Sue Smith has joined the vendor.
