Same Company, Different Prices: Supply House Branches

Yes, a supply house can charge different prices at the same company for the same part, and it happens constantly. Your price is not stored against you as a customer. It is stored against a join of three records: your account, the part number, and the branch. Break the branch leg of that join and the system does not error out. It falls through to whatever generic rule applies at that location, and you get a different number on an otherwise identical ticket.

That is the mechanism. It is not a policy that anyone wrote down, and in most cases nobody at either branch knows it happened. But it means the suspicion contractors trade back and forth (that the yard across town quotes you worse than your home branch) is usually correct, and it is provable off invoices you already have.

Start with why branch prices diverge, then which causes are legitimate and which are records problems, how to prove which one you have, and exactly what to ask for so both branches quote you the same number.

Why branch pricing splits in the first place

Distributors are not one price file with many doors. Branches carry real operational independence, and several distinct systems have to line up for your rate to appear at a counter you do not normally use.

Your agreement may simply not be loaded there. Contractor agreements are records with effective dates, covered categories, and a scope. Epicor’s electrical distribution platform, for example, keeps contract pricing as a discrete module holding customer-specific rates, separate from counter sales. Whether that record was applied to every location of the company or just the one your rep covers is a setup decision, and it is the single most common cause of a branch gap.

Customer classification is done in buckets, and buckets can differ. Distributors price accounts into classification groups rather than pricing every customer individually, working from Trade Service sheets and in-house sheets with columns showing several gross profit percentages, plus blanket pricing, customer classification buckets and velocity classes. If the two branches have you in different buckets, or apply different gross-profit columns to the same bucket, the same catalog price produces two sell prices.

Local market and local competition are real inputs. A branch in a market with three competing houses within ten miles prices differently than a branch that is the only counter in the county. That is how the branch manager keeps the branch open, not a trick played on you specifically.

Stocking status differs, and non-stock reprices. A part that is A-velocity stock at one branch may be a special order at the other. Special and non-stock items are priced differently and, per published return policies, are frequently final sale with no return at all. Same part number, different cost basis, different risk.

Manufacturer special pricing agreements can be registered narrowly. A SPA is a deal between the manufacturer and the distributor that lowers the distributor’s cost on specific products, and the distributor claims it back afterward with supporting documentation such as invoices and proof of delivery. SPAs are static and negotiated per product and per customer, not a floating rate that follows you around. If a SPA was set up for a job served out of one branch, the other branch has no claim to file and no reason to sell at that number. Contractors comparing notes on the Mike Holt forums land in the same place: distributors do not charge everyone the same price, and SPA setup is a large part of why.

Buying group affiliation can differ by location. A large share of electrical distribution volume runs through buying and marketing groups, and rebate economics flow from that membership. When independent distributors merge or affiliate, group structures change: the AD and IMARK electrical merger created a division representing 725 independently owned U.S. electrical distributors. For an acquired or affiliated branch operating under the same sign as its new parent, the underlying cost structure may still be the old one for a while.

Acquisitions leave two ERPs behind the same logo. This is underrated. A branch bought two years ago may still run its predecessor’s system, its predecessor’s customer numbers, and its predecessor’s price file, with a shared name over the door. From the outside it is one company. Inside, your account may literally not exist at that location.

Which of those are legitimate and which are records problems

The distinction matters because it determines whether you are negotiating or filing a correction.

Cause	What it is	Your move
Agreement not loaded at the branch	Records problem	Ask your rep to load it. Usually same-day.
Wrong account or cash ticket used	Records problem	Get every buyer on the account by name.
Different customer classification bucket	Records problem, sometimes	Ask which bucket each branch has you in and why.
Non-stock or special order at one branch	Legitimate	Buy the part where it is stocked, or accept the premium.
Local competitive market	Legitimate	Negotiate, do not dispute.
SPA scoped to a job or a branch	Legitimate	Ask for the SPA to be extended, not credited.
Separate ERP after an acquisition	Structural	Ask for a corporate or national account setup.

Records problems get credited. Legitimate differences get negotiated. Sending a credit request for a legitimate difference is the fastest way to lose credibility with a rep who would otherwise help you, so sort them first.

How to prove you have a branch gap

You need two invoices and about twenty minutes. The evidence has to be tight, because “I think the other yard charges more” is not something anyone can act on.

Pick one SKU you buy at both locations. A high-frequency, stocked, non-substituted part, ideally one of the small line items where increases usually hide. A specific EMT connector or a specific device is better than wire, because wire prices per foot and moves with copper.
Pull two invoices dated within the same two weeks, one from each branch, for that exact part number.
Normalize the unit of measure. Per each versus per bag of 100 is a genuine and frequent difference, and it looks exactly like a price gap until you read the UOM column.
Confirm both tickets carry your account number, not a cash or house account. A cash ticket explains the entire gap by itself.
Check the document type. Will-call ticket versus delivered order can produce two different transaction paths and two different defaults.
Look for a pricing reference on the line. Many distributor invoices print a contract, agreement or quote reference when one was applied. A line with no reference where the other invoice has one is a line that fell through the lookup.
Check whether the part number is identical. A substituted manufacturer is a different record with a different price and no SPA behind it.

If, after all seven, you still have two prices for the same part, same UOM, same account, same period, on your account at both branches, you have a real branch gap and you have it in writing.

An illustrative comparison

The figures below are illustrative and are not quoted from any distributor’s price file. They show the shape of a typical gap, not its size at your supplier.

	Branch A (home)	Branch B (across town)
Part number	Identical	Identical
Unit of measure	Bag of 100	Bag of 100
Account on ticket	Your account	Your account
Contract reference on line	Present	Absent
Unit price per bag	$39.68	$49.60
Difference	baseline	+25%

The tell in that table is the reference column, not the price column. A missing agreement reference next to a present one is the difference between a records problem you can have fixed in a phone call and a pricing decision you would have to negotiate. Our contract price vs counter price post walks through how that lookup falls through, and column and multiplier pricing covers how the discount structure sits on top of it.

What to ask for, in the order that works

Ask boring, specific questions. Reps answer these all day and they are not adversarial.

Ask for your pricing agreement in writing. Effective dates, the categories it covers, the discount or multiplier on each category, and, critically, which branches it is loaded at. That last item is the one nobody thinks to ask for and it is where the gap lives.

Ask which categories are not covered. The uncovered list is your leak list. Fittings and accessories are frequently outside an agreement written around wire and lighting, since agreements commonly run on category-specific discounts off list.

Ask for it to be loaded at every branch you actually use. Name them. Not “all locations”, which is a request nobody can action, but the three specific branch numbers your trucks stop at.

Ask whether your regular parts sit on any SPA, and whether it holds at both branches. Also ask whether it survives a substitution. It usually does not.

Ask about a corporate or national account if you buy across more than two or three locations of the same company. That is the structural fix for the acquisition case, and it is a different conversation than branch-level pricing.

Then send the specific line. Invoice number, line number, part number, price charged, and the price and date from the other branch. Two sentences. Fresh lines get corrected; lines from last quarter get an explanation. The credit request template has the wording, and the negotiation guide covers turning a documented pattern into a better rate rather than a one-time credit.

Prevention, so the gap does not reopen

Branch gaps reopen quietly, usually after a rep change or a system migration. Three habits keep them closed:

Get every buyer on the account by name. An apprentice who is not on the account produces a ticket the system cannot attach, and that ticket prices generically no matter which branch it was written at. This is the single most common version of the problem in small shops.
Re-check one benchmark SKU at each branch quarterly. One part, four times a year, per location. That is the whole surveillance program, and it catches an agreement that lapsed before it costs you a quarter of material.
Keep your own price history. Your invoices are the only record of what you used to pay that is not controlled by the other side of the transaction. That is also what turns your next rate conversation from an opinion into a document. If yours are paper in the truck, scanning them is a solved problem.

One last thing worth saying plainly. Branch autonomy is not a scheme. A branch manager who can price to a local market and stock to local demand is why the counter has what you need at 6:45 in the morning. Two prices at one company is mostly an artifact of that autonomy plus a records system that was never designed to be audited from the outside. The fix is a written agreement, loaded everywhere you buy, plus a price trail you keep yourself. If the gap turns out to be drift rather than a branch problem, material price creep covers that pattern instead.