Most vendors who have channel partners don't want to compete with them, but they don't want to leave sales on the table, either. For bigger ticket items, the company generally sends you directly to a channel partners; for smaller ticket items, the company will often sell the item at "list" price and let the channel partners discount off of list.
Pretty standard operating procedure here and highly unlikely to be a comment on their customer's web savvy. :)
Pretty standard operating procedure here and highly unlikely to be a comment on their customer's web savvy. :)