Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, iphone help, ipod help, AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP help, Mp3 players, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Do tech companies offer perks to shareholders?

I'm not talking about employees, I'm more curious about whether it'd be worth buying a few shares of tech companies to gain access to special shareholder discounts. Do companies do that sort of thing, or am I in the twilight zone?

Dave's Answer:

Actually, some tech companies do offer special deals to shareholders, though most seem to think that the privilege of owning stock is sufficient reward for being a stockholder.

One company that I recently noticed offers some deals for shareholders is IBM. In its most recent annual report, IBM has include a separate pamphlet that boldly asks What kind of company gives an extra 512MB memory to IBM shareholders?

It then details some pretty nice offers:

ThinkPad T60 for $1299 rather than the "web price" of $1879
ThinkPad Z60m for $799 rather than the web price of $849
ThinkPad X41 Tablet for $1999 rather than $2299
ThinkCentreA52 Tower for $599 rather than $649

There are also some peripherals at a terrific discount too.

If you're a shareholder (and I'm guessing they check, but, hey, it's easy to buy a share of IBM, right?) then you can call their store at 1-800-520-7304 and mention offer #536686 or pop over to the online shareholder store to see what kind of deals are available.

Note that these offers are only available until 4/25/06.

In terms of other tech companies? Well, I have stock in quite a few but this is the first time I've seen anything truly cool for shareholders and it kind of makes me wonder if IBM is a bit desperate to boost sales of its Lenovo line of computers.

Anyone else know of good shareholder perks?

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Business and Management (Article 6456)
Tagged: ibm, lenovo, shareholder benefits
Previous: How does PRLEADS help me gain visibility in the media?
Next: How do I know what Sony PSP firmware version I have?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Rather amazingly, there are no comments on this article yet.

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!