The problem is not the cost. It's complexity. From a buyer perspective literally fighting with the procurement team is a nightmare.
And usually the need is coming from someone below C-level. So you have to: convince your manager and his manager
convince procurement team
it has to be in a budget (and usually it's much easier to convince to pay for the dinner)
than you have a procurement team
than you need to go through vendor review process (or at least chase execution)
This is reality in all big companies that this rule applies to. It's at least a quarter project.
Once I tried to buy a $5k/yr software license. The Sidekiq founder told me (after two months of back and forth) that he's done and I have to pay by CC (which I didn't had as miserable team lead).
