What are your Haggling Strategies?

Tester46

Darragh29 wrote: »

A lot of people have an issue with this when they come into a repair bill up over 300 Euro and refuse to pay on the basis that they were not given the price beforehand or they understood the price to be a lot less, based on their last service, etc.

I can never understand why people haggle in garages, it's extremely frustrating when people start doing this and you know they wouldn't try it anywhere else. I'd love to see the same people getting paid on a Friday and their boss haggling with them regarding what they would be paid for the week that they worked.

Just not the same thing. Your pay for the week is at a pre-agreed rate.

Say you go to your GP expecting to pay €50 for a consultation. He discovers you have tonsilitis. He doesn't knock you out, bring you to the hospital, perform surgery and then hit you with a bill for €1,000. He looks at you, tells you what is wrong and then you decide if you want to go to hospital.

Unfortunately, a lot of mechanics will discover problems (sometimes real ones, sometimes not), fix them using parts and labour and then present the angry car owner with a huge bill at the end. Why can't mechanics pick up the telephone and get permission before they incur cost that they then expect to be paid for? When I say I want my car serviced, I don't say "here's a blank cheque - go book that dream holiday in the Carribbean you've always dreamed of". Thankfully, my current mechanic is good, reasonably priced and honest. A rare combination in my experience, but they do exist.

Darragh29

Tester46 wrote: »

Just not the same thing. Your pay for the week is at a pre-agreed rate.

Say you go to your GP expecting to pay €50 for a consultation. He discovers you have tonsilitis. He doesn't knock you out, bring you to the hospital, perform surgery and then hit you with a bill for €1,000. He looks at you, tells you what is wrong and then you decide if you want to go to hospital.

Unfortunately, a lot of mechanics will discover problems (sometimes real ones, sometimes not), fix them using parts and labour and then present the angry car owner with a huge bill at the end. Why can't mechanics pick up the telephone and get permission before they incur cost that they then expect to be paid for? When I say I want my car serviced, I don't say "here's a blank cheque - go book that dream holiday in the Carribbean you've always dreamed of". Thankfully, my current mechanic is good, reasonably priced and honest. A rare combination in my experience, but they do exist.

Well when I ran my iindy garage, nothing was done EVER unless it was priced and the price was agreed with the customer, euro & cent. Still I'd have people looking to haggle and trying every trick in the book to pay less. I could never get my head around this... I couldn't imagine the same people going into their local and haggling with the barman for a pint or doing in a restaurant for a meal. It makes people look absolutely pathethic I think.

mags16

Insurance companies are great to haggle with. Though you have to be prepared to make a few phone calls. My car insurance renewal came in at €380. I was thinking of naming my boyfriend on the policy who is a provisional driver with very little driving experience. After an amount of haggling and ringing other insurance companies, my original company came down to €300 with the boyfriend named. Their first price is never their final offer. I really enjoyed the process. The important thing is to be pleasant with the rep, don't lose your temper. But be firm.

Mobile phone companies will also haggle with you. You might not get a reduction in the price of your price plan but you will get more minutes and texts for your buck. Though Santa just got me an iphone and I wonder is there room to wriggle in their price plans?

veryangryman

mags16 wrote: »

Insurance companies are great to haggle with. Though you have to be prepared to make a few phone calls. My car insurance renewal came in at €380. I was thinking of naming my boyfriend on the policy who is a provisional driver with very little driving experience. After an amount of haggling and ringing other insurance companies, my original company came down to €300 with the boyfriend named. Their first price is never their final offer. I really enjoyed the process. The important thing is to be pleasant with the rep, don't lose your temper. But be firm.

Mobile phone companies will also haggle with you. You might not get a reduction in the price of your price plan but you will get more minutes and texts for your buck. Though Santa just got me an iphone and I wonder is there room to wriggle in their price plans?

Hardly works for prepay?

cormie

Prepay insurance?

rubadub

cormie wrote: »

Prepay insurance?

Prepay phone.

With mechanics you could ask for a rough guess, and then say if you think it is going to be over 100, give me a ring, and do not replace or fix anything without consulting me. That way you do not come back to "thats your problem right there, no fluffy dice or dvd players in the back, so I stuck em in, €2000 please".

Lollipops23

Tester46 wrote: »

But if someone came in spending €1,000 on ten items, are you seriously saying the owner of the shop wouldn't give a discount rather than see €1,000 in sales walk out the door?

If they have that attitude, I'd be updating my CV if I were you - the shop won't be there for much longer...

it's been there since the 1840s,it survived the civil war and it's surviving this recession....think it might be ok for a while yet;)

hionestly, nobody spends E1000 on clothes there,it ain't designer. and if they want to spend that much that's their prob.

Nody

I also think it is important to keep in mind that it is usually easier to get more stuff for the same price then reduce the price of the item.

kerplunk86

I totally agree that it's best to try and get the most for your money. But some people take it a bit too far and end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Take tonight for example.. I work for a large electronics retailer, currently we have a camera on offer for 99euro. We had about three of the cameras in stock this evening. A man comes in and was looking at the camera etc and decides he'll take one, but refuses to pay more than 80euro for it "out of principle". I tell him the price is the price and that's it, and I refuse to change the price for him, so he walks out saying he'll get it cheaper in another store.

During the evening, I sell the last of our stock, just before the store closes the man walks in saying he'll take the camera and gets pretty mad with me when I tell him "I sold them already".

So if you are gonna haggle - make sure you can walk away from the deal and not be upset if you don't get the discount you want!

But on the flipside of this - some items in large electronics store are way over-priced, for example "High Quality HDMI Cables", I have gotten in quite a bit of trouble with management for refusing to sell these cables.

Tester46

Lollipops23 wrote: »

hionestly, nobody spends E1000 on clothes there,it ain't designer. and if they want to spend that much that's their prob.

You think it's a problem if someone wants to spend money in your shop? That's the attitude that will shut your shop down - there are plenty of other shops (that haven't been there since the 1840s and aren't so arrogant) who will attract customers instead.

Tester46

Nody wrote: »

I also think it is important to keep in mind that it is usually easier to get more stuff for the same price then reduce the price of the item.

Yeah, that probably makes sense alright - it seems to be easier to get some extra stuff for your €100 than to reduce the €100 to €90.