You're still paying market price, just not the published one. Negotiating b2b deals is a little like ordering from the secret menu at in&out. Doing tons of that lately and it's quite the mechanical endeavor. The only really annoying part of it is deals move only as quickly as the sales drones want it to. I have to sit through their "sales process" even if I know exactly what I want, I know what I can spend and ultimately the deal will be done on my terms. It's funny to think that some guy got high fived to death for selling me a contract for about 35% the original quote.

He’s being high-fived because you could have got it for 10% of the original quote.

> It's actually against our finance rules to pay for any recurring service charge without a negotiated contract.

Your company probably also employs a professional shark whose job it is to squeeze the blood out of every stone he is pointed towards. With even a modest number of sizeable contracts, such a person would pay for themselves very easily.

At my old company we were paying millions for contracts and software we didn't use or really didn't mean. One of the analysts volunteered to be the "undertaker" and renegotiate. After a year of screaming at people on the phone (I sat next to him), he managed to save us around a million dollars, which was around a 60% savings. He pocketed maybe 30% of the money saved that year. Not bad for a year of being a dick.

Yup I know one of them, we have a couple sales sharks that do it when they're not busy attacking potential customers

Technically speaking, you might enter into a contract with the power company. The 'negotiation' probably goes like this: Power Company: "You'll pay public rates on the same terms as literally every other customer" Your Company: "Deal!"

Power companies give significant discounts to large customers.