Why do mothers purchase a breast pump from the internet? With the new policy from Medela we wonder why?

Why is Medela implementing this policy?

Why are people buying from internet?

How has this affected everyone involved - Medela, Retailers and Customers.

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Medela changes internet sales policy
It looks as if the most dramatic change to purchasing a Medela breast pump since the emergence of the Internet is about to occure.

In order to maintain Medela’s premium brand image, effective January 1, 2005, Medela has unilaterally adopted the policy that it will not conduct business with anyone who resells or lists a price for Pump In Style® Original models #57040 and #57042 on the Internet. Effective February 1, 2005, this Policy will include all Pump In Style Models.

What does this mean to the person looking to purchase a Medela breast pump online?

It could mean one of three things -

1) Medela enforces price controls and brings the internet retail prices up to the same level as brick and mortar stores. This means that a pump that you can currently purchase for $250 will likely cost $320... or more.

2) Medela stops selling to all but a handful of internet retailers. These retailers will of course fall in line with Medela and charge the customer whatever Medela wants. The prices could be what they are now, but I doubt it. Likely, they will be somewhere between where they are now and what retail stores cost... at least for the sake of all new mothers looking to purchase a Medela - I hope so.

3) Online retailers continue to purchase pumps directly from Authorized Medela dealers and resell them online - or these retailers simply sell the pump and the Authorized dealer ships them. Either way, if this happens there will be lots of problems for Medela and customers. Medela may decide not to honor warranty issues (they seem to have problems with new pumps lately) if a pump is purchased from a dealer that they decided has broken their policy. Of course, who knows if it is legal to denying warranty on products that are sold through authorized dealers (a web site could just be a sales agent).

These issues will be played out over the next few months. I have personally spoken with Medela about a web site that is very prominent all through the internet in selling their products. I was told by a customer service rep that the site I was speaking of was not an authorized dealer and that they could not figure out how there were getting products. This was over a year and a half ago and that site is still selling many hundreds of pumps each month.

For now, Ameda still allows their dealers to price according to what the market supports... but will it be that way forever?