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?
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?