[jurjenh]

How often do sysadmins actually make the call on what gets bought? For a purchasing dept, they'd probably stop at step 2, get the over-priced product and everyone's happy.

The re-seller is obviously the under-performing part of your exchange, it should be their business to know what they are selling. Most likely it shows the current state of the market - not very many buyers ask these technical questions, hence the experience is not there for the reseller. If you'd want to feel better about it, at least the reseller you've dealt with now has some more knowledge of one of the products they are selling.