Do you haggle when shopping?

[eunhye]

This is hilarious and perfect. I don't haggle in big retail chains, and I fucking hate it when people do it to me. I work in an area of town with a large middle eastern/east indian/asian population and my god, the difference between them and white people is nuts. I hate to racially stereotype, but it's night and day.

well, i am asian and i don't take offense to that but let me say that haggling saves money. and if you can haggle, you're called a cheap skate. at the end of the day, it's all about saving money.

here's a nice quote

Income and Poverty
$57,518
Median household income for Asians in 2004, the highest among all race groups.

[Utile]

Edit: Also not haggling when buying a car is stupid, and Home Depot will almost always give you a 10% discount if you just ask for it.

That is too true. A friend of mine does Set Design for a production company and she always gets hooked up at Home Depot.

As far as haggling anywhere else, there is nothing wrong with it if its somewhere appropriate. Most chain stores just aren't set up for haggling. All using specialzed POS (point of sale) systems, many require a manager approval for any price change and some can even cap out and stop you from changin prices any further. Also, a price change is considered a "bad thing" to most any cashiers ring up records and can have an eventual negative impact on their raise or can even lead to someone getting fired if done too often.

Usually you know its ok to haggle if prices are hand written on the products or its a cash only business.

This is hilarious and perfect. I don't haggle in big retail chains, and I fucking hate it when people do it to me. I work in an area of town with a large middle eastern/east indian/asian population and my god, the difference between them and white people is nuts. I hate to racially stereotype, but it's night and day.

This is one of those things that isn't really a racial steriotype, more of a cultural one. Alot of 1st/2nd generation Americans are like this as most of the world haggles. Its not anything I think most would take offence to. But it can be annoying as alot of Americans were never brought up to haggle.

The reverse happens all the time, Americans visiting other countries are always "paying too much" for things cause they have simply just never haggled for anything other then maybe a house/car.

[OzzofAsura]

Would you go to a supermarket and say, "i'll give ya 89pence for that loaf of bread", thats marked up £1.09.

No, because they'd throw me out for crazy-talk! XD

Haggling is for places not set in stone, by someone far above the person you're purchasing from. Flea Markets, etc.

[Hercule]

no, never ask

[Quixon]

I will only haggle when on vacation abroad, or when I bought my house and car.

When I was in Mexico those damn guys walking up and down the beach were raping people's wallets. I bought one of those big mexican blankets for $10, I saw one dude pay $30 for the same thing a day earlier lol.

My house and car I paid cash for, so I got a really good deal on both of those. Long story on where I got the money....sold rights to a patent I had to Harley Davidson, in conjunction with a small settlement I got from a car accident years ago.

[fren.]

This is hilarious and perfect. I don't haggle in big retail chains, and I fucking hate it when people do it to me. I work in an area of town with a large middle eastern/east indian/asian population and my god, the difference between them and white people is nuts. I hate to racially stereotype, but it's night and day.

I work in a 95% Haitian/Jamaican community (I see about one white person every week or so) and I'm pretty sure they're taught from childhood to haggle. Haitian women are the worst customers I've ever dealt with and I doubt anyone will come close.

They're mostly middle aged ladies who go apeshit over .99-$1, they'll even lie and make up a price and claim that's what my employee told them.

[guartz]

I'm just curious,

do you Canadians pronounce Canada as Ka-na-da?

[archibaldcrane]

I got my new car, sticker price of $15,800 for $12,300 via haggling.

When I bought my first TV, DVD Player, VCR and surround sound all together at Circuit City I haggled for $150 off the total.

When I got my car stereo installed with CD player, speakers, and subwoofer, I haggled for about $200 off the total.

When I bought my Bass guitar I got them to throw in a $60 leather strap for free.

I think that's about the extent of it. Generally speaking, if there's salesperson commission involved, you should haggle, otherwise no.

[Dmitry]

When I was in Mexico, my aunt would haggle starting at 50% of the price and work from there. I'm too shy and couldn't keep a straight face if I tried to just because of how abnormal it is compared to shopping in chain stores.

Did get the one guy to sell me two dress for the price of one. lol

[Senoska]

Read the first half of the page so not sure if it has been mentioned, but fuck yes I do.

At best buy / etc they are given a limit which they can knock down an item. Best buy is the BEST place to haggle because their service is fucking horrible. I fart around for an hour act like I'm pissed and go get the manager and they knock off huge amounts of money. I saved $150 on my monitor (which was a 3ed of the price..) because of this. I was acting like I was angry that no one was helping me, had cash IN MY HAND, and said I wanted a screen. When he told me the price I turned to walk out and hes like "wait wait, how about $150 off, the same as the the model next to it[ a 19' screen ]) Current screen = 25 inches and pure awesome. He threw in free hdmi cables and a wall mount on top of that.

Post ramble: You're fucking retarded not to haggle, they want your sale.

[cdgreg]

Not sure how many people are aware of this, but at lesser chains such as statewide electronic stores where salesmen are on commission, they often get special incentives to sell certain TVs/electronics. One of my friends worked at a local electronics chain and when a customer would ask him what he could do for them, he'd purposely sell them the piece of equipment he'd get the biggest kick back from. Basically he'd be like oh, I really recommend this Sony model, I can even knock off 75$, meanwhile he's getting not only the store commission, but also a kick back from sony for clearing out that certain model. Atleast in that store, it was all in their computer system how low they can go on each model.

I'll sure as shit haggle on large purchases, car and houses are duh, but more importantly things like TVs, entertainment centers, etc. So many stores now a days are going under they are glad to get rid of the red tag shit in their clearance section that is already 50% off. No I'm not going to haggle on my groceries or clothing from Express, but I'm sure going to try to get some free service packages thrown in or money knocked off when buying electronics.

I'm pretty much as white as I can get, if that means I stereotypically have to pay sticker price for everything screw that, I'd rather be labeled a haggler or cheapskate and have $100 more to spend on my next purchase than have some 19 year old salesman not talk shit about me when I leave. I do understand "the game" though, I was a sales associate in shithole Kmart as well as a major chain Media Play. I understand the lowly teenage associate who is making the big bucks of 6$ an hour can't do anything other than call his asshole of a boss over, but the boss sure can.

I do my best to kill them with kindness too, to haggle you don't need to be a jackass, if you're told no who cares, it was worth a try.

[Arachna]

I only bother to haggle on a big purchase, like a car or a TV for example, offering to pay with cash certainly helps.

[Astarael]

People are often surprised to hear that "How much for cash?" doesn't work anymore, since it costs more to deposit cash than it does by plastic now.

I do think its more of an American thing though.

I got asked "how much for cash?" at least 5-6 times per day in a 6 hour shift working in currys(a large electrical goods store in the UK) selling the TV's, and had to explain exactly what you said up there, usually resulting in the customer staring at me like a moron and not understanding. Generally the people asking that question aren't the brightest individuals.

On another note, always ask haggle in big retail electrical stores. Having worked in one for a few years, I was always consistently knocking anywhere between 5-30% off shelf prices on TV's when people went my way on the warranty or extras. Management will rarely turn down selling a TV they make 40% profit on shelf price for only 20% profit instead.

[kawaiiuzume]

People are often surprised to hear that "How much for cash?" doesn't work anymore, since it costs more to deposit cash than it does by plastic now.

I do think its more of an American thing though.

See i always thought it wasn't because cash was easier to deal with. I thought it was because it doesn't leave a paper trail. you could keep a bit of the cash for yourself and say you let the price of the item go for a bit less than you actually let it go for however sketchy that actually sounds. At least that's how it was always explained to me.

[izembo]

nope, it was because of the hassles of processing credit cards and the micro transaction fees

[Nystul]

credit cards cost money to use, but the consumer doesn't pay the fee, the store does. Thats one of the reasons why a lot of places used to not accept american express- they had high fees.

There are a number of independent gas stations in my area (not your typical shell/exxon/etc) that offer significantly lower prices for cash, usually 10-20c less per gallon.

[Devek]

Black people will come in our retail store and try to haggle for a single blank CD.. we don't even sell a single blank CD. We serve business customers.. if you don't want 100 we don't care.

[Jaybar]

The best is when customers read the wrong price tag on a hook (like with a product above) and complain to the cashiers, the managers, and then I have to point out their stupidity for them. Most of the time we don't go that far, but sometimes it's absurd (A 32.99 item and customer says they saw it for 9.99 type things).

[guartz]

Black people will come in our retail store and try to haggle for a single blank CD.. we don't even sell a single blank CD. We serve business customers.. if you don't want 100 we don't care.

You sell single blank cds? How much?

[Senoska]

The best is when customers read the wrong price tag on a hook (like with a product above) and complain to the cashiers, the managers, and then I have to point out their stupidity for them. Most of the time we don't go that far, but sometimes it's absurd (A 32.99 item and customer says they saw it for 9.99 type things).

Circuit city in Novi MI was fucking annoying. They intentionally mislabeled items. That pissed me off SO MUCH ARGH! I bought probably 5 head sets from there because they kept breaking. I would go and grab the $30 one every time and it would ring up for $50. I'd go back and get the tag from the shelf I picked it up from and shes like "Oh, this was an eariler model." and then expects me to pay full price. I'd say its a good way of getting people to pay more than what they want because I'm already at the cash register and don't want to have to deal with it again so I always bought the shit.

They did this with EVERYTHING though. Tablets, PC mice, keyboards, head sets, even things like external HDs and monitors. No bullshit, it drove me nuts. I started driving about 35 minutes away to a best buy, not that they are better, their service sucks.

TL : DR : Half the time its your fault, label your shit right.