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A couple comments... Buying a computer is a bit like buying an airline ticket --- most vendors intentionally obfuscate their pricing structure. When you take a flight, the person sitting next to you might have paid twice what you paid, half what you paid or even gotten the ticket for free. Same with buying a computer. I find the Dell/MSU contract to be a huge time saver. AFAIK, _any_ quote that you can get Dell to generate you can purchase without having to go to bid on. You can buy a $5 cable or $250,000 of servers this way (note that I haven't tried the single $5 cable personally). There are a surprising number of items from a wide variety of manufactures available from Dell (got to get them to sell Apple ;-) Even items that aren't listed in a search of dell.com can be purchased --- we've had Dell add new items from a vendor. (We also asked them to add a new vendor, but the vendor and Dell couldn't work that out.) Much of the stuff that you might buy from cdw.com if available from Dell. We've done multiple purchases of non-Dell equipment (racks, UPS, PDUs, cables) this way that were large enough to normally require a bid. We are careful to make sure that we still get good pricing and aren't paying more by not doing an RFQ. Volume is usually a big deal with driving better pricing. For the project we buy most of our hardware for, we have a tailored price matrix from Dell. This is a huge convenience as we know pretty well that for those items, we can't get them for less elsewhere. This pricing is driven by the size of the project (only a small slice of which is at MSU). Anyways, when I go to the MSU computer store Dell portal to buy a desktop computer, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the deals. It seems to me that the CStore and Dell could work out a short list of Dell computers that had better pricing. At least from that list, you'd know that the pricing wouldn't be lower on the small business site or by using some code on the home site. This could really save time in purchasing --- it would be nice to know that if a config fit what you needed that the price was right. Note that I don't blame the CStore for the pricing situation, the vendor sets the prices. I only see the pricing for the purchases I do. The CStore sees the pricing on all the purchases made by MSU... I've been very happy with how purchases from Dell have gone using the CStore. Cheers, Tom On 2/4/10 2:31 PM, Ron wrote: > Thanks for everyone's input on Dell's pricing structure and price matching. > Cliff had the procedure correct in his post, except that the Computer Store > CAN place your order once our Dell inside rep (Brian Ullestad) provides you > with a matching quote. You simply use the new quote from Brian Ullestad to > place your order through our store. Dell has a long standing policy with > MSU to match prices found at Dell.com, but keep in mind that some of the > prices you see at Dell.com have a minimum order quantity of five units and > sometimes free shipping is not included. Also be aware that feature > upgrades within a configuration are not necessarily priced the same at the > various Dell portals, so make sure you are comparing the final configuration > price and not the base model price. > > Dell.com changes product pricing specials at their various portals on a > daily basis; Home, Small Business, Public Sector, Enterprise; making it > nearly impossible for MSU's Dell portal to publish the same "special of the > day" pricing on a regular basis. Thus our solution up to this point has > been, and continues to be, to offer price matching for any Dell published > price. Once you have your price match from the MSU Computer Store we are > able to streamline your administrative ordering, billing and delivery needs > while keeping your p-card monthly balance available for other uses. > > Please let me know if anyone has additional questions or input. > > Best regards, > > Ron Rivard, Manager > MSU Computer Store > > > -----Original Message----- > From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On > Behalf Of Clifford Beckett > Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 9:27 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [MSUNAG] How to purchase Dell systems using Dell Small Business > pricing > > Hi Oscar, > I have fought this battle before. The solution is to first get > the quote from Dell small business then call or email our MSU DELL sales > rep. I think this is currently [log in to unmask] He will > create a new quote for the same system at the same price through the > educational sales department. Then place this order through your normal > purchasing channels (departmental financal secretary calls Dell and > places the order referencing the quote using an MSU purchase card). If > you try to use the original Dell small business quote, Dell will charge > sales tax on the order. You cannot place the order through the MSU > computer center with their current system. > Cliff >