Some dealers will indeed give very agressive pricing. Pelican offers almost all of these esoteric and hard-to-find parts for the 911 over the internet in an easy to find format. When we purchase parts directly from Porsche, we do not get a very good margin. So, for the stud that goes into the inside of the intermediate shaft side of the case:
we placed that in our catalog at Porsche list price (when we did the catalog. Porsche, like every other company, will adjust prices up and down all the time. I don't necessarily have the manpower to adjust our prices each month to frequent price changes. I don't even have access to this data, except through a once-a-year printed price book.
Some dealers are more aggressive on pricing than others. I will not doubt that you may be able to find these esoteric parts for less cost elsewhere from some dealer. However, as I have found too, most dealers shun the owners of older cars, the guys behind the counter don't really know what they're looking for, and you have to go to the dealer, order the part, and then pick it up some other time.
On the OEM parts that we do not purchase direct from Porsche (the mainstream parts like brakes and clutches), we can undercut Porsche's price significantly, because we're not purchasing it from the 'Porsche network.' However, some of the odd-ball specific parts can be difficult to match the pricing on...
We made a decision when we expanded our catalog to offer all of these parts. The downside is that on some of these hard-to-locate parts, it may indeed be cheaper to purchase directly from the dealer. This is because we effectively have to purchase these parts all from a 'dealer network.' We're not allowed to purchase directly from Porsche.
Also, keep in mind that different exchange rates and shipping (from Germany to the USA) also affect pricing as well. Also local tax rates affect pricing too. It can be quite complicated...
Either way, if you do find a lower price from a dealer, we will do our best to match it. Dealers in foreign countries can be tough to match. It's definitely not black and white...
Hope this helps clear it up a bit?
-Wayne