Don’t Ask.
When it comes to my services, after enough times around the BS wheel, I’ve adopted a firm policy. I give you my price for my work, and you take it or leave it. It leaves the hagglers flabbergasted, really. It works doubly well because anyone who tries to haggle more than once at that point is showing their true colors as a difficult person to work with. Inevitably if they decide to go with my price after all, they’ll try and go in for a million little changes of this, that, and the other thing to try and “make up” their money. Sometimes now I simply suddenly can’t find the time to work with them any more even if they will take the price after all. The funny thing is, the worst hagglers are always on the small-ticket items that make me almost nothing to begin with.
It’s a generally insulting practice all around. They imply I’m trying to rip them off, while they actively try and rip me off. What a great interaction to have.
How is negotiating a price insulting?
I would assume everybody/everything has a “buy now” price. And there is a price for the same work on a different timetable or with less service, the price you give me when I come back tomorrow and you still haven’t sold it, the price when I promise to buy more; etc.
If you have time, expertise and the will to negotiate you can always get a bargain. This in no way implies you are ripping me of. Even the above mentioned busfare; there is probably some kind of customer loyalty program or some deal if you buy 10 rides in one go. This goes for everything.
This doesn’t mean you have to negotiate over a pack of gum. But if you are planning to buy a pack of gum every day I’d be looking into competitors and wholesale gum prices.
I would be insulting my hairdresser if I tried to haggle the price in a packed shop on Saturday afternoon, but if I called on a Monday afternoon I would expect to be able to negotiate a better price on a less popular time.
Negotiating a price isn’t just you saying “10” and me replying “5” and you saying something about cutting your own throat. It is also about all kinds of periphery conditions, time, service, return business etc.
I’m a professional (whatever that means). When I offer a service for $x, that is what I charge. If it is a very slow day, I’d rather go home and do yard work than haggle over my fees. If haggling is what you’re about, that’s fine. Just be prepared for me to turn away your business.
I’m a professional (health care). Our physician group frequently has to haggle with insurance companies which are intent on reimbursing as little as possible for our services. It is seldom a viable option to stand on principle and refuse to be “insulted”.
I’ve never gotten to the point of trying to bargain over services (preferring to get multiple bids and (typically) take the lowest one from a reputable business). But I’m not sure what’s so terrible about the idea, especially if firms are in the position of competing for your money.
I doubt many veteran bargainers are taken aback or hurt by refusal of the other party to participate in the process. They’ll just move on to other opportunities.
My mother had an expression that seems to fit here (and in the case of the op-ed writer who gave his stuff away rather than experience further angst by dealing with bargain-hunting Craigslisters): cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Note: I’d be curious to see what percentage of people who hold garage sales refuse to consider lower offers, and how that works out for them.
When situationally expected, I love to negotiate. In the US, in Wal-Mart, no. In a department store in Costa Rica, yes. The goal of negotiating, as I practice it, is that I get a good deal and the seller makes a profit. I have saved thousands on a car deal and everyone walked away happy. That’s how I define a successful negotiation.
I won’t haggle over a mortgage or other bank interest rate.
I don’t know if haggling over a mortgage interest rate was ever common or expected, but I ended up leaving my primary bank when I purchased my house because their posted rate was not at all competitive.
I had received a few quotes on mortgage rates, my bank’s rate was 2 points higher than the best rate I received. I called my bank up to let them know I was closing in a couple of days and asked them to confirm their rate. They did. So I signed with another company.
I got a call from my bank a week later letting me know I should bring the paperwork in. I let them know I signed with another financier. It was like I shot a bow through their heart. They were horrified that I hadn’t played the game with them.
Other haggling - a used car I can see the subjective aspect to placing a value on a used car. I don’t mind going back and forth a bit. But buying a new car from a dealership? I just want to know how much I’m writing the cheque for including all fees and taxes. I don’t want any of the dealership’s bells or whistles. I want the spec sheet because I’m going to do some price comparisons with other dealerships. I don’t haggle on the price of a new car and I’m going to sign with the lowest price for the same product as what’s on the spec sheet.
How about I offer you a job of 200 hours; normally I would expect delivery in 3 months.
Now I offer to delay delivery by 14 months, could I get a discount? How about if I pay in advance? What happens if you know I’ll be doing a really cool project soon that will look great on your resumé?
The situation you describe with your bank could be best descibed as one where one side (the bank) had a bad strategy, not as one where there was no negotiation.
You just changed the rules for them a bit, they only get to make one offer. I think this strategy works even better when you tell them that in advance.
Exactly. I have done a negotiating seminar and the most important lesson was: always go for the win-win, always find out how to maximize profit for both seller and client. Price is a zero sum game, but all other conditions, including how pleasant the negotiations go, can make it a win-win.
I’m too old to be concerned about my résumé, and I became distracted a quarter way through your pitch and walked off. Sorry, that’s me.
For those of you who have never been self-employed. Imagine coming into work every morning and having your employer say to you, “I know you were paid $10/hr. yesterday, but do you think you can do the same thing today for $9.50?” And the next deay you come in and your employer says, “I can still pay $9.50 for an eight-hour day, but today I need you to carry those 200-lb. boxes, even though the job description said you only had to lift 40 pounds.” And the next day you hear, “I can’t pay you what you’re asking, but name your best price and let’s see what we can do.”
I’m self-employed and feel ya. The clients that are pushing back from day one on price will usually be the same ones that try to get you to add in this or that for free. After all, it’s just a little thing. Then another little thing, and another, and you get the point. It gets to the point where we have a hard time doing any little extra for free just because we want to because it often leads to exploitative behavior. We love the clients that willingly give bonuses and raise their own prices because they show appreciation instead of just seeing what else they can get from us. It is nice to be valued. We have reached a point in our business where we don’t need or deal with those customers anymore. There are plenty of good customers that show that they care about us as well. Such a relationship fosters an amazing work environment.
Haggling is useful for price discovery. Selling used stuff on craigslist is often a case where it’s not clear what the stuff is worth. The seller asks for what they hope they can get, and the buyer offers what its worth to him.
In this case, I think the author of that article just priced his stuff too high. He determined that it was a fair price because “if he had wanted them, he would have paid that price”, which is one of the sillier misunderstandings of market pricing I’ve seen. If you price something to move on craigslist, it’ll move. It turns out that furniture will often only fetch 10% or less of its new price on craigslist, simply because the market for it is small and selective. When you go to a showroom and can pick out exactly the piece that you want, you’re willing to pay a premium. When you’re shopping someone else’s leftovers, you’re probably not willing to.
The only negotiating move I’m dead-set against is the “I only brought $X” with me, where they’re a bit short of your advertised price. Sorry, buddy. Next time, try negotiating in good faith.
I have found, though, that when traveling in countries where haggling is the norm, it can wear you down. You either get to feel like you’re being taken advantage of at every turn, or you get to spend an extra 10 minutes buying everything.
There are some kinds of haggling that I have no problem with (price discovery in the increasingly rare situations where there’s no defined market, cultural haggling that is more a matter of ritual, and some of the other good examples people have given in this thread).
Haggling as an attempt to exploit information asymmetry, in the typical car-dealership example or otherwise? That’s pretty shitty, really annoying, and honestly I could go as far as “morally deficient” if you wanted to try to talk me into it. There’s already a “win-win” for new cars, and anyone who’s keyed into the process can figure that out with five minutes on the internet. No need to “negotiate” except to do some on-the-spot market segmentation and win even more against people who don’t know that. Not to mention once we start adding all the “I need to talk to my manager” BS.
In related news, I am even now still sad that Saturn auto dealerships are no longer a thing.
It’s just the way business is done for person-to-person used goods, like on Craigslist or Auto Trader, or for that matter, real estate. “sticker price” is for consumer goods where you move a ton of stuff at volume. Low volume, one-of-a-kind stuff that isn’t very liquid/hard to price “fairly” will always have people wondering, am I asking for/paying too little/too much? And how else would you know without offering less/asking for more?
When I sell stuff on CL or eBay or whatnot, I always list for slightly higher than I would “really” take, and tell people offering under that amount that I will get back to them if I don’t get my asking price within N days, but will sell immediately for asking price to the first person who offers it. Half the time, if they’re really interested, they’ll come back with my listed price or offer something close to it, and we can strike a deal. Otherwise… I wait!
What amuses me aren’t the people who offer ridiculous lowball offers, like $80 for an unlocked, working but used 16GB iPhone 5 when I listed it for $200. Those people disappear after a simple reply of “no”, or even no reply. It’s the ones who reply to the listing with “give me your best price”. Um, I’m open to bargaining, but your strategy is to have me bargain against myself? That’s not how it works, buddy. You can offer less, but you make that move, not me.
Them that asks-gets! Negotiation is an essential in every aspect of life.
I’m kinda neutral about it. I sold a bunch of furniture on Craigslist last year when I moved into my new apartment building. I set the prices a bit higher than I was expecting, so I could knock off $10-20, but I didn’t set them outrageously over what I figured someone would pay. I had one person pay full price, one person I had to go down a bit further than I wanted to, but he lived in my same building so it was a quick sale, and then rest I ended up knocking the expected 10-20%
Buying cars from a salesman is annoying, thankfully I haven’t had to do that in years. They’re experts, and they know exactly what the lowest price is that they’ll accept.
Interesting that haggling gets so many people bent out of shape.
It’s not something I get excited about but I do it in certain cases.
Buying anything second hand is up for a haggle. I usually will have an idea of how much I want something and how much I’m prepared to pay and what the relative value of the item I want is. Reverse if I’m selling something.
When ever I go to get an electrical appliance, I’ll find what i want. If the price is reasonable I’ll always ask the salesperson what they can do it for. I usually get 10% off with next to no haggling which works for me and for them.
Go to a local trash and treasure market most of the stuff doesn’t have prices on it so you ask and if you want it, you haggle.
If I’m selling something i look at how much I want to get against how much I think i can get and pitch for the higher price. Then the haggle becomes how much will I accept for it.
I don’t normally haggle, but just the other day I got a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones from a Bargain in a Box store for half what it was marked. But in this case I knew that:
It was the only one in the store.
It was unlike anything else they sold.
It had been sitting there since the store opened 5 weeks ago.
So I said “Would you take $50 for it?” and the manager agreed.