How To Bargain, Haggle & Negotiate

Bargaining, haggling and negotiating are very interesting skills, and key to the frugal shopper’s aim of getting the best value for his/her budget. (Although I’m not for a second suggesting that getting something on sale or for a ‘good deal’ is an excuse to buy). When these skills have been mastered, you can expect to reasonably frequently get a discount on many items, seeing you come in under budget, or just get a better quality of product or service for your money than you may otherwise have expected.

Why Most People Won’t Try

I’ve talked about this with many people over the years, and it’s become clear that a lot of people won’t even ask for a discount in any way, shape or form for two major reasons: 

1. They think it sounds like they can’t afford it and they don’t want to seem ‘cheap’. Let me tell you a little secret that only people who’ve worked in retail for a while will know. The people that treat sales assistants like rubbish and act like they own the store are the ones who whip out their regular credit card to pay for their purchases and often have the transaction declined due to “insufficient funds”. Conversely, the people who are lovely to you, but ask for a discount on every little thing are the ones who pay with a black Amex. Solution: Get over it. 
2. They don’t want to insult the person they’re asking by effectively devaluing the product or service they provide. You know what? Any smart business is going to build a discount factor into their pricing. Moreover, asking for a discount shows you’re interested and gives the salesperson a chance to close the sale. Think of it like this: if you were a salesperson and you were selling someone something and they walked away without purchasing it because the price was 10% more than they wanted to pay, wouldn’t you have at least wanted the opportunity to meet their needs? Solution: Understand that it’s not insulting. 

Where Can I Bargain, Haggle & Negotiate?

I honestly don’t believe this is an activity to be pulled off anywhere and everywhere. Others will disagree with me, but there’s a time and place for such things. So, where can you ask for a discount and resonably expect success? 

• With any relatively large volume purchase. I use the term ‘relatively’ intentionally though. Did you know you can successfully walk away with a bag of free stuff when updating your kitchenware at David Jones or get a discount on your latest clothing haul from Cue? The trick here is to group purchases. Rather than buying things on an ad-hoc basis, make yourself appear to be a valued client by grouping purchases. So if you’re renovating your house, rather than buying paint as you need it for each room, get organised and buy enough to do the whole house at once. The key though, is to understand what ‘large volume’ means though – large for you might not be large to the business.
• When dealing with trade or service people.
• Any store that is closing down or moving.
• Smaller stores that have more control over their pricing (or more to the point, the person behind the counter has access to the person setting the prices – it’s them or their boss).
• Any time an item you’re interested in is damaged.

Where is it a bad idea (ie. you’re unlikely to be successful) to ask for a discount?

• Milk bars.
• Chain stores (except in the event of the relatively big-ticket or large-volume purchase listed above).
• Department stores (see above exception).
• Any business that specifically states it does not compete on price.
• Supermarkets (see last item on the above list for exception).
• Petrol stations. 
• Movie theatres.

How Do I Do It?

Before you get ahead of yourself, make sure you know what you’d be willing to accept instead of a % or $ discount. For example, free shipping, an extended warranty or some sort of product upgrade? Your tactic for getting a discount or free stuff depends very much on the situation, and I’ve boiled it down to four main ways here.

1. The item is damaged. It’s this easy: “This item has <insert fault>. Can you give me a discount?”.
2. Smaller stores that control pricing themselves or are the importer/manufacturer of the item. There are two ways to do this. One is to find out the price and then make a counter offer – eg. “Will you take $x?”. The other is much more subtle and it might be the state of the economy, but I’ve found this works better than ever lately. It’s simple! Just ask the price, then don’t say anything. Not a single word. Just look at the item. Not at the floor, not at other things, not at the person, just look at the item. Nine times out of ten, the salesperson will counter offer themselves. In the last month alone I’ve got a 15% discount on a piece of furniture and an additional 33% off an already discounted pair of shoes using this technique.
3. Market stalls / trade and service people / any big ticket items. Find out what price the salesperson is proposing, then just ask “is that the best you can do?”.
4. Large volume purchases. The average number of items purchased per person at a cosmetic counter is 1.6. If you buy four items, you’re a very interesting customer straight away. The trick here is to indicate you’re only interested in a couple of items, but would be willing to spend more if the conditions were right. So, when you’ve picked out two items, simply ask “can you give me a discount if I purchase four items?” or the more subtle “do you have any promotions on at the moment?”. Even if they can’t give you a discount, you’ll often get samples or freebies thrown in. 

If you’re really serious about getting a discount, you have to be prepared to do one big thing. Walk away. This is particularly true when the economy is thriving. If the salesperson or business think you’re willing to forgo the purchase they’ll be that much more likely to give you what you want (within reason).

I’d love to hear any tips or tricks you have for bargaining, haggling and negotiating – just email or tweet me!

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