Inspired by the Best Buy Negotiation thread in General Questions.
A long time ago, I was in Marshall Fields (now Macy’s) with a co-worker on lunch and I saw a sweater I wanted.
But it had a broken button on it. Almost 3/4 was missing. I said, “Aw what a shame, I wanted to buy that. Too bad they don’t have another.” My co-worker Janet, said “No, that’s great, now we can get a discount.”
So she takes it to the clerk and says “My friend wants to buy this but the button is ruined and you don’t have another one. If we take it “as is,” what kind of a discount can you give us.”
The clerk looked at it and gave me 15% off. Which was a great deal, considering it was only a button.
I didn’t even realize till then you could do that. My co-worker said she does it all the time.
So I was wondering, have any of you ever “negotiated” deals at stores similar to the situation I described above? If so, which stores?
And finally how to they prevent people from breaking buttons to get a discount?
I’ve done this a couple of times with success. And a couple of times where I’ve been told that they can’t do it - “store policy”. So I guess it depends.
I would guess that most times a clerk can’t make that decision, but a manager might. But the bottom line is that the store can return the item to the manufacturer as “damaged goods” and get a replacement, so it may depend on the type of damage and the hassle of returning the item and, of course, the store’s individual policy.
My store from years back prevented people from damaging product for a discount by having a no discount for damage product policy. I was cheaper to repair the product and sell it, to get the manufacturer credit for defective, or take a loss and destroy it. Sell it to them cheap and they would just bring it back for an exchange later for replacement. There are to many dishonest people out there to be liberal with your policies.
I found a sweater once that didn’t have a price tag on it, and asked the salesperson how much it cost. There weren’t any others like it, but she found some sweaters by the same manufacturer, and they were very expensive. I told her thanks, but that was out of my budget. She dropped the price quite a bit – maybe even to less than half. I hadn’t even been trying for a discount.
I’ve done it before, but I haven’t even had to ask - I bought a dress that had a small rip on the seam, and it was the last one in my size. I showed the cashier, and he gave me 15% off without me even having to ask. It was a tiny rip that took me about 5 minutes to fix myself.
I negotiate, but not often at large department stores. The few times I do are in situations like yours where the last of a product is not exactly what I want. When I bought my blender, the last one they had was the wrong color, so I got a 10% discount. I used my blender for maybe three weeks after I got it, then decided I no longer wanted to be goddess of tiki. Another toy I bought that I don’t use anymore. Hey, good thing I got 10% off.
When I worked at a clothing store, if we found something that had damage on it, we’d mark it down. Sometimes the manager would negotiate on the price, too, if someone wanted something that was not moving. However, we did catch a couple of people damaging items and then wanting discounts on them. We marked the items down, and banned those people from the store.
When I bought my sofa it was marked down and they were trying to get rid of it. I hesitated a moment and looked dubious and the saleslady knocked some more off the price. That was not a deliberate negotiating ploy, I actually was hesitant.
The butcher block dining table (Cost Plus) I did not negotiate down, it was already discounted because of some practically invisible flaw.
Then once I was at a small Indian grocery with a co-worker who was buying a case of green mangoes. She shifted from English into rapid-fire Hindi and after a bunch of back and forth the price was lower.
I like to go into the back rooms of furniture stores to look for floor sample furniture. It’s usually discounted because it’s dinged or out of stock or something, and I can usually get them to knock off some more by pointing out the cost of refinishing, etc.
The same furniture chain which does this also keeps a pile of framed prints in a back room, all of which are dinged up to some extent. I buy them at an extreme haggled-down discount, then take them home and fix the dings with a colored furniture marker pen.
I also haggle for home design goods like vases and craftwork and such.
This humiliates my husband, who is the opposite and wants to impress the salesperson with his disregard of how much money he’s spending. I leave him home when I shop.
I do catering jobs and frequently negotiate with the butcher where I order my chicken and keilbasa. I always go to the same place, but usually can get a discount by mentioning so-and-so’s sale price down the street. He’ll knock it down a dime or so below that in order to keep a multi-case order. I can usually get free delivery, too. Bonus.
If a displayed product is out of stock (e.g. TV) and they don’t plan on getting more (discontinued) you can usually always get a discount on the display model.
This was always our policy but I remember one disgruntled customer who couldn’t get it through his thick skull as to why I wouldn’t sell him the display model at a discount when we were receiving more in the following week.
“I want this TV.”
“We are currently out of stock. We will have more next week.”
“Can I buy the display?”
“If you absolutley can’t wait.”
“Good. And I get a discount right? Cause you guys always give a discount on display models.”
“Well, no. We typically sell displays at a discount when they are discontinued. They have no box. They’ve been used.”
“Well this has no box and has been used.”
“So if I sell you this one at a discount I’m going to have to open up another when we get them back in stock as a display and eventually discount that one. Why would I want to do that?”
“Err… well… that’s your problem!”
I’m not much of a haggler, but I do remember this exchange from a bookshop when I was a poor student type.
“Can I have this book for a dollar off? It’s got a damaged cover, see?”
“But we have plenty of other copies of that one. Why would you want the one with the damaged cover?”
“So I can get a dollar off!”
I once negotiated 10% off a book with a damaged cover. I’m the kind of customer who figures it doesn’t hurt to ask, so in a way I’m a pain in the ass, but I’m always polite and willing to take no for an answer.
Back in 2001, I got a pretty big discount off a video camera at The Good Guys (now out of business) by showing them a printout of an online retailer that had a lower price.
I’ve done it (I was in Cairo – you have to, it’s their culture), but I hated every moment of it. The very concept of “I’m going to lie to you about how much this is worth so that you can in turn lie to me about how much you are willing to pay” simply makes me see nothing but the worst in humanity.
A friend of mine is a car salesman, and he does it everywhere. No need for a defect in the product. His thinking is that people do it to him when he’s selling cars, so he’ll do it to everyone else.
He’ll walk into a clothing store, and say, “How much for these two pairs of pants?” The clerk will say, “Well, they are $40 apiece, so that will be $80.” He’ll say, “I’ll give you $70,” and the clerk says ok.
I think he goes a little overboard getting discounts, but he actually enjoys doing it.
Speaking of the other thread, I honestly couldn’t even get a salesman at Best Buy. They know jack-all about their systems and keep trying to sell you a warranty which offers damn near nothing (I have bought two in my entire life, both on products I knew have a reputation for hardware). I eventually gave up on them entirely: if you’re not gonna even try to sell me something, I’m not gonna bother buying it from you.
You can’t be too serious about this: it’s just part of the game.
When I buy computer hardware or furniture (pretty much anything over 400 euros or so). If I’m buying lots of stuff, I ask for a discount based on that, if I’m buying one or two expensive things, I’ll ask for a discount just for buying them - some big furniture chains aren’t really willing to work with this unless you’re spending over a couple 1000 euros, but in my experience, it’s relatively easy to talk down the price in your local computer store - assuming they know what they’re selling and you’re willing to shop there.
