While searching for some info on the web, HighBeam Research-hosted results were coming up with a fair degree of frequency. However, I couldn't access through to the articles they indexed because I had not subscribed to their service.

Fair enough. As was my question: How much does it cost to subscribe?

Exercise for the reader: go to the HighBeam Research web site and come back and tell me how much their service costs.

There is a link to "Take a FREE trial!". There are pages such as "What are the different membership options?" and "I have a billing question". There is a "Become a Member" page that links to their Terms and Conditions.

The Terms & Conditions page does inform you that this is an auto-renewing contract, that you will be bound by the payment terms, based on current rates specified in the enrollment screens, etc., that the price you pay is the price stipulated at the time you enroll. But without signing up for a free trial that automatically kicks over into a paid subscription, I don't see anywhere that tells you what the fee is.

I called HighBeam by phone, and when I asked the representative to point me to the URL with their pricing, he said he'd have to check. Two minutes later, he came back with the pricing information. When I again asked for the URL with their pricing, he came back two minutes later to tell me they don't have that on their web site, because "it depends."

This seems wrong to me, and I'm surprised that someone like Christopher Locke, co-author of the cluetrain manifesto, is associated with HighBeam. Isn't cluetrain all about communicating "in language that is natural, open, honest, direct..."?

 [Update 9/17/08 - Comments include a response from Highbeam as well as others.  This blog post is the top google result for "highbeam pricing" - wouldn't you think that should be highbeam.com instead? Looking again at their site, not only do they not give you the pricing, they don't even tell you their pricing model unless you start giving them info. Incredible!]