HP Flies Under Hard Deck?

VARBusiness

Our question: Does the catalog fly in the face of HP's Hard Deck, wherein the company is only supposed to sell direct to its top 900 named accounts? Kevin Gilroy, VP and general manager of HP's North American channels, says no, noting it's an effective demand-generation tool for HP's SMB partners. "It's really a convenience buy, and the [direct pricing is not predatory at all," he says, adding that protocol is to ask callers up front about existIng reseller relationships.

But someone must have forgotten to tell our phone rep because when we asked if we should go through a reseller to buy products for a business with fewer than 10 employees, he told us that buying direct is OK, regardless of the company's size.