BUY.COM refuses to sell to resellers.

I work for a company which has been informed that we are not allowed to purchase from BUY.COM because we are a reseller, even though BUY.COM is affiliated with and supplied by Ingram Micro, which is our primary supplier. BUY.COM offers lower prices to end users than Ingram offers us. Does anyone know if this is legal or not?

I feel fairly certain that it isn't. And if it is, it SHOULDN'T be. BUY.COM has admitted in various statements to the press that they intentionally sell at a LOSS in order to get hits for their pages, which then allows them to sell advertising on those pages at premiums based on the number of hits they get. (It has even been suggested that BUY.COM runs FALSE specials when they have no intention of actually selling any of the item in the special at the price advertised, which would DEFINITELY be illegal if true, but that isn't what I'm here to talk about. For more info on that matter, and what is being done about it, see http://www.innercite.com/~carolyn/complaint/complaint.shtml .)

The fact that BUY.COM sells at a loss allows them to undercut the prices of regular retail stores by a nice little margin. Their affiliation with Ingram Micro allows the two of them together to put regular retail stores in a death grip. These stores have no choice but to buy from Ingram or from one of Ingram's much smaller competitors who charge the same as Ingram because Ingram is large enough to effectively set pricing for the industry. And by disallowing resellers at BUY.COM, they have effectively set up a loop to kill competition from customers that they have an agreement to supply! These things may constitute unfair trade practices under law. They certainly look like they do from where I sit.

If anyone out there has had any experiences they feel are relevant to what I have said, or legal counsel to offer in this matter, please e-mail me at [email protected] . I would like to see what we can do to rectify this situation!