I have used Viking Direct for my business stationery for many years ..on occasions I thought that items were rather expensive, but I never bothered to check elsewhere until now. On Monday I went to order some board backed envelopes and some parcel tape and was rather surprised when the total came to £97.18 (choosing the cheapest options). I quickly found a competitor company and the price for the same items came to £31.32. Less than a third the price! I had to add some more items to my order to reach £50 for free delivery - pens, staples etc etc. and all were less than half Viking's price. All delivered today for free. I don't suppose the stationery buyers in most companies are too concerned about the prices, but it seems wrong to me that there are such large price differences and it annoys me to think that this is going unnoticed.
Heres some advice. I used to work for these guys some years ago, in fact, in 2009 i won salesman of the year. They are run by Office Depot as you probably know. Viking (Used to be Viking Direct) was at one point mostly mail order and call centre, account managers that looked after accounts, set all the prices are had a responsibility to ensure the customers stayed with them. Then, end of 2009 (or 2010, cant remember) POP. Things changed. Viking direct had somewhere around 150 internal account manager who were made redundant. Those on the Office Depot side survived, as did Viking Schools account managers. The idea was that online was more important that telesales now and costs just didnt add up.
What this meant for customers was that there were no longer favours in the pricing structures. Previously we would be told to sell "ten shredders" this week and receive an extra £200 at the end of the month. We were given a cost price and told to make as much as possible. If it was in the catalogue for £30, it could be sold for as little as £15, but the more profit you made the more cash in your pay come the 31st.
How to still get the prices? The way to do is to get yourself an account manager again. There are still a handful at Viking, but more so Office Depot. The product is the same, comes out of the same warehouse in Leicester and OD boxes are often stamped with Viking.
IF you are spending enough then OD will give you an account manager, who you can haggle with till you get what you want. They will match almost any price, because they still benefit from making the sale irrelevant of if they make £1 or £10 and the account manager on well under £20k year is not prepared to lose ANY sale that could earn them comms.
Source: - Four years employed by, Salesman of the year 2009 for them, Still a big fan and would even consider going back one day.
Note - Cant be bothered to proof read the above, apologies for any mistakes.
