Head in hands moment - do customers exist to service companies ?

I'd always thought, referring to the title of this post that a business exists for two reasons. To provide a service or product or support to its clients and in so doing create wealth/profit for the owner of the business.

This seems to me a fairly standard tenet of Western Capitalism and whether we like it or not this capitalism is the effective reason d'être for the existence of most businesses.

I had an odd experience this week. A company with whom I do business sent me the following response to a pricing request to them :

Thanks for the information, as this is a full market review driven on price we will decline this quote.

I hope you can appreciate we need tangible reasoning why a group hope to move and an indication of their interest or suitability to our product.

Unfortunately we do not store information on our competitors products.

This was in response to a pro forma quote/tender request sent out to around ten or eleven providers in this market that I thought might be appropriate for my client - this quotation/tender process is standardized across the insurance market and to give you some idea I have on my desk this afternoon two such tenders to send out for SME clients and one for an individual client and four or five reports to write over the weekend on the basis of tenders already submitted with prices received back. In other words this process is the nuts and bolts of the service I provide to clients.

To provide some context, the case under discussion is worth approximately £ 130,000 of annual premium to the insurer that secures the business (it is in no way a 'small case').

Let me address the e-mail line by line :

Thanks for the information, as this is a full market review driven on price we will decline this quote.

Well I'm an independent intermediary who offers whole of market advice and surely it is best for clients to review as many options as possible to find the right product and support for them. I understand this insurer might believe it offers the best product in the market place but if they're not going to allow me to show their price and product to the client then we'll never know will we ? As I mentioned below, a decision to move insurer is always going to include price as a factor - after all who is going to buy the same thing for more money ?

I hope you can appreciate we need tangible reasoning why a group hope to move and an indication of their interest or suitability to our product.

I might refer my honourable colleague to my previous answer - if you don't show me what you have how can the client show interest in their product. Companies move insurer on the basis of product, price and service - so there are three tangible reasons why the client might move to them and I indicated in the tender request the client was looking at a balance between quality of cover and cost as the basis for their decision. 

Unfortunately we do not store information on our competitors products.

The market this product sits in is both specialist and technical and interestingly all the insurers who did quote offered a full comparison of the plan versus the incumbent insurer.

What struck me most was the assumption that my client existed solely to humbly approach this business and justify why they should allow my client to move to them especially given that they are not going to offer any assistance in terms of competitive pricing or indeed service.

All I can say is welcome to business in the 19th Century