On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 10/10/2012 9:41 PM, John Levine wrote: > > > directs two people who are at an IETF meeting to refrain from one having > > > a sales discussion with the other in private. > > > > Um, could you identify which item under 2 or 3 would describe a > > sales discussion? > > > Saleguy: "Buy my product. I'll sell it to you for US$xxx." > > Potential customer: "OK, but only if you guarantee me that that's your > best price to any customer for the next 6 moths." > > Salesguy: "OK." > > By way of offering a single example, I'm only choosing the first bullet of #2. > Getting this sort of "price fixing" guarantee isn't actually all that unusual > for critical sales contracts. What would be unusual would be to not have an escape clause that allowed the sales guy to offer a lower price to someone else if he also refunded the different to the customer. And it isn't an anti-trust violation ... an anti trust violation is where two competators agree to maintain pricing and not compete, at least on price.