Re: What's the problem?
Not fraudulent as no one (and least of all their accountants) looking to buy a company would go purely on Gross Margin.
If you did this on every transaction then someone would be questioning your Accounting Policies, but they would already be looking at Net Income, Gross to Net margin and Marketing Expense ratios.
For loss leaders then you would expect something like this, but not across all hardware transactions. HP as noted above will have done similar deal sweeteners for key or strategic accounts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
