that is ridiculous. all they are doing is calling you up to verify you are from where you say you are, and doing a quick lookup. At the time of purchase.
Well, when IE 6 and Vista first came about a couple of years ago, I could not find code-signing certificates listed anywhere except comodo.com and verisign.com. They are being offered in more places now, but also for a lot more money. It's $500 for 3 years from comodo.com--that's only a savings of about twenty dollars a year. I believe multi-year savings used to be much more substantial before. Yet more reasons to create web applications.
After that, it is just the certificate file.