In a chain store, please recognize that the cashier might have some ability to give a discount, but for the most part, the cashier is going to have to get a manager to give that discount to you. At a flea market, or a boutique where the cashier is also the owner, you’ll have a better chance at negotiating a discount. At the grocery store, you’re probably going to have to find a manager, and you’re just wasting the time of the cashier.
I think it is reasonable provided the multiple-item price isn’t some sort of case-lot. In that case it is reasonable to have one price for full cases, and another price for partial cases. Obviously this wouldn’t apply to the CD’s unless they were offering them pre-bundled. Since it was mix and match, then 10 or more would seem the reasonable assumption.
I used to buy used DVDs from Blockbuster.
They often had them at $10 or 3 for $25.
If you bought 5 of them the price would be $45 ($25 + $10 +$10). It was the defualt that the system would ring them up as.
It did not ring them up as $25 + $8.33 + $8.33.
So while I agree your request was reasonable (it was a flea market) I don’t think it’s the default of how they should be sold. It’s an incentive to round up in multiples of 10, not just buy 10 or more.
I wouldn’t expect to get anywhere at a grocery store. When items don’t scan I usually say “It must be free!”, but they just get someone to find the price. But the grocery store isn’t going to give me a four more bottles of soda at a discount when they offer ‘Buy 10’ deal. It’s built into the register and the clerk can’t do anything. Make enough noise and a manager may give you a break, or maybe not.
Nemo, I don’t think there’s a basis to insist that a volume discount be offered for anything other than the volume specified, but it’s not unreasonable to ask, and usually bad business for the seller not to agree with the customer on those terms. But the sign was clear, it had a price for 10 items, not 14. The decision lies with the seller.
I’ll relate a little story I read long ago about a banana vendor who put up a sign “Bananas 10¢, 2 for 25¢”. When asked why he did that, the vendor said it was because every day people would come along and explain to him it was a dumb idea and he should charge less than 20¢ for two bananas to get people to buy more. Then they would demonstrate that he wouldn’t get any more money by charging more than 20¢ for two bananas by buying one banana for a dime, then turning around and buying another banana for 10¢ more. Only he knew those guys would only have bought one banana without the sign, but they ended up buying two bananas to prove how smart they were.
There is no right and wrong when it comes to haggling. Of COURSE he would seem reluctant to extend the bargain, that’s how haggling works! As Frank Reynolds would say, that’s part of the grift. 
And shortly after that he died impoverished, in large part because tricking customers into buying bananas two at a time is much less profitable in the long run than selling them by the bunch.
Absolutely a reasonable request, but I wouldn’t expect it to be the default. Ten DVDs for $15 does work out to $1.50 per, but that’s not the offer they’re making — their pricing is that one DVD costs two bucks, and ten DVDs cost fifteen. You bought one “ten DVDs” and four "one DVD"s, which comes to $23.
septimus, if Domino’s offered one large pizza for $13 or two for $20, and you ordered three, would you expect your total to be $30 or $33? Again, nothing wrong whatsoever with asking for the deal, but I question the assumption that that’s how these offers normally work.
ETA: To the inevitable person about to point out that a pizza place has a different pricing model than a flea market, that’s true, in that prices at the flea market are more negotiable, hence the reasonability of the OP’s request. Doesn’t change the mechanics of unit pricing.
Actually no. That man eventually became the Chairman of General Motors. Or so I heard, I think, maybe.
I guess I should just be glad he didn’t decide that my group of fourteen dvd’s were actually two groups of seven dvd’s and neither was entitled to the ten dvd discount price.
I suspect you were simply dealing with an unmotivated employee. “The price is $15 for ten or $2 each for less than ten.” Them’s the rules.
Which is silly, since the request is perfectly reasonable.