About a year ago I spent many hours talking with a rep who came back with the same boxes and prices we could have configured with their online system.

Last week I spent a couple hours chatting with a rep for userscripts.org's new box and he did better than the online prices.

I think the difference last year I approached with general requirements, so they spent all their time speccing out multiple systems and figuring out what was the best fit. My second experience I knew what I wanted, so I was able to ask for deals based on specific hardware choices.