Ask HN: “Contact us for pricing” nonsense
A few possible reasons for this:<p>- You aren&#x27;t their target audience. I come from enterprise SaaS, where we often force people to talk to someone, and working with sales is not a problem for the people we care about. I know that someone who has your reaction (calling it a &quot;sales dance&quot; and assuming you&#x27;ll be spammed) is unlikely to be a real buyer, since real buyers are accustomed to the sales process. They also appreciate that sales reps for this type of product can be really valuable. Maybe you&#x27;re the exception here, but it&#x27;s worth losing your business to filter out bad leads.<p>- They&#x27;ve done the math and realized that when they get someone on the phone, they are better able to build a long term relationship and have a substantially greater customer LTV. They lose some customers, but the ones they retain end up being higher enough in value to offset the loss.<p>- The product can&#x27;t be sold as a standalone item - it requires setup and integration, and without understanding what you have in place already, they can&#x27;t give you a quote. Of course, this seems less likely for a hardware solution.<p>- Related to the above, it&#x27;s possible that it&#x27;s a complex product to set up, and they&#x27;ve found that if they don&#x27;t get you on the phone, you&#x27;re likely to screw up the setup and get mad at them and&#x2F;or return it. Better to scare you away up front if you&#x27;re ultimately just going to take up time and end up getting a refund.<p>Ultimately, the answer to this question and any like it is that if they&#x27;re competent, they do this because they&#x27;ve done the research and determined that it is better for them (typically in terms of revenue generation, but really better is defined as they see fit).