IBM has long run its operations under a regime of creative tension where a 9370 salesman prefers to see DEC win the business than lose out to the AS/400, while losing out to the RT is grounds for hara kiri, and now that Sears Roebuck & Co is ascloseasthis with IBM on the Prodigy Systems Inc viewdata services, the giant Chicago retailer is getting into Blue ways with a vengeance, leaving some very unhappy stockbrokers at Sears’ Dean Witter Reynolds unit: the Wall Street Journal reports that a buy order for 1,000 GE shares trading at $50 will set the investor back $609 with a Dean Witter broker, which could be discounted by as much as 50% if the broker was bringing the firm lots of business, and $191 is about what a cheap’n’cheerful discount broker would charge – but if the investor does his own trade on the Prodigy system will pay only $150 commission, so that with the monthly rental for Prodigy and the local phone calls, the entire Prodigy system is cheaper than using the Dean Witter broker – and while the firm officially takes a lofty attitude to the embarrassing situation, individual brokers are certain clients are having a long chat with them and then buying the shares they recommended on Prodigy.
