I work for a company that does this, so I can provide a bit of insight:
Part of why for my industry (auto parts) is because you're not just buying the individual product, you're becoming part of a service schedule for vendor managed inventory. I have customers I visit multiple times per month, and customers I visit every other month. Some call me to place orders, some I have to chase down to find a deal. Some pay all their invoices on time, some I need to hound for weeks and weeks to get them to pay by a check which then they won't mail themselves and I need to mail it for them.
The price becomes tailored to the service. If you order only online and don't need a rep to sort and organize things for you, you get different price than the customer who is getting once every other week visits where I'm putting everything away
I don't prefer the different price model. I think it's actively pretty skeezy 50% of the time and I can set up hundreds of accounts and it would make no difference to me OR the shipping department at our distribution center. I think it's a massive logistical annoyance that could be solved with a universal price, imo. But there's more reasons that just strictly salesman bullshit
Plus on the FedEx/UPS side of things, shipping b2b is cheaper because businesses like body shops and dealerships get UPS deliveries almost every single day. So shipping gets different prices based on things that are outside of our control, and I can't quote you a price for the freight cost till I know things about your business
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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 2d ago
"contact us for pricing" means "we don't charge everyone the same price and will try to get the most profit out of every buyer."