Mail from a competitor | Hacker News Reader

Mail from a competitor

2 pointss_denchev5 comments

I am co-founder (as a side job) of a small company (3 months old). Today we received an interesting email which basically says "do not price under XX € or your business won`t succeed " and "Let's just make XXX a not easy task, and not cheap one to." where XXX is one of our main services which is not unique and there are many players in it. What is the best way to deal with such a mails ? 1. Just ignore it. 2. Send a polite email just to confirm that you received the mail and never think about it again. 3. Engage a conversation about how the prices are formed and so on . 4. Something else ...

Thanks .

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Not sure but in the USA I think that is called price fixing and may be illegal. I would send him a polite note indicating your company has done it's homework on pricing models and product features and will continue to follow your customer centric road map.

Keep in mind, he may be setting you up to turn you in to the authorities and give you a bad name or shutter your company which in some ways would be brilliant on his part.

So he's basically asking for you two to set up a pricing cartel? Check first whether that's even legal in your country. I'd also ignore the mail, and if you're feeling particularly evil, do exactly what he asks you not to do :)

If it's illegal, I'd report it to the police / regulatory authority.

It is possible that he's offering some hard-won wisdom. Hard to know without engaging him in a conversation.

A couple decades ago I gad a girlfriend who made tie-dye t-shirts and I'd often accompany her to shows and festivals. At one festival she left me to mind her booth. I didn't want to do it and I certainly didn't want to do any work in the hot sun.

So I changed her sign from $15 to $35 and sat in the shade.

But my scam backfired and I moved far more shirts at more than double the price than we ever did at the lower price.

What does that have to do with OP's question? Dunno. But maybe the competitor is actually trying to be helpful rather than being evil.

For what it's worth I work at a large multi-national company and have gone through antitrust training a couple of times. Even if the competitor is being "helpful", any discussion among competitors of pricing in the market violates antitrust law. Also, even if the results of the discussion would ultimately benefit consumers (such as "let's lower our price to x to move units"), this is still illegal. Bottom line, never engage in ANY discussions with competitors over price no matter what.

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