High Street Haggling Discussion

ThinkingOfLinking · 14 November 2008 at 6:56AM

Flickering_Ember wrote: »

Not sure about haggling in store but you can get cashback online and find discount vouchers....I did that with mine; I found a £10 code, free delivery and then went through a cashback site (although they still owe me money 6 months on - Quidco, FYI).

Assuming I get the cashback eventually, it will mean I'll have got £40 off in total.

vigman · 17 November 2008 at 2:21PM

Lizard_Lady wrote: »

My laptops on the blink and im looking in to getting a new one, i want a decent one for photos and music, and i was hoping you lot could give me a few pointers into haggling some money off and free stuff.
(my dads coming with me so he can do the bargaining while i stand there and look embarressed!) Any advice would be brilliant, on the best place to go, what to say to them... etc.
thanks xxx

If you are in education go through your school/college/university's suppliers. With proof of attendance (or even without) you can easily get a third off most kit.

Note to all: It is not an economy buying unbranded, own branded or cheapy named (eg Packard Bell) PCs/laptops. In laptops, stick to Toshiba (I've bought more than 1000 and only one has been DOA), HP, Sony, IBM. Their build and component quality is much better than the cheapies! In desktops, buy Viglen or Dell.

Vigman

wookie_2 · 17 November 2008 at 4:39PM

my lucky mum has just recieved a huge tax rebate into several £0000s and thought as the saving rates are crap she might as well treat herself to a new car. She went down to her local vauxhall dealer, chose a car with £7500 on the window. It was 1 year old very low miles. I went in to see the rep as moral support for my mum and was gob smacked. Mum said what will you do the car for cash. The rep said £6500. Mum just got up from her seat and started to walk out of the show room. Wait wait he said. What do you want to pay he said. £4500. His and my jaws hit the floor. Cut a long story short, after some phone calls she got the deal for £4500 cash, with plenty of extras, servicing and mats ect, The rep did say they have not sold a car for at least 5 days and ours, although a loss it was a sale. The main reason being the finance companys are not giving out the loans. Bless my mum for a 70yr old she did hold her ground. So its worth a haggle regardless of how huge or how small it is.

sweetstudent · 17 November 2008 at 11:22PM

Lizard_Lady wrote: »

My laptops on the blink and im looking in to getting a new one, i want a decent one for photos and music, and i was hoping you lot could give me a few pointers into haggling some money off and free stuff.
(my dads coming with me so he can do the bargaining while i stand there and look embarressed!) Any advice would be brilliant, on the best place to go, what to say to them... etc.
thanks xxx

If you go to the apple store you can save 17% and you can get apple care for3 3 years fir £49 saving £250 - which is very useful if your at uni!!!

remember apple does cost more, but you are buying a decent computer that is rock solid and will very rarely crash, break down and best of all you wont get any virus's and its not made by Microsoft!!!!!

eysha · 19 November 2008 at 11:29PM

After having read that John Lewis gives discounts in a Martin Lewis e-mail i was very pleased to hear it as i wanted a new laptop and so did my daughter so i was buying two of them. I went to my local store in Newcastle and chose our laptops then politely asked for a discount after telling the salesman about this site and the E-mail from Martin. As a salesman he wasn't allowed to make a decision of course but he got a manager to come talk to me, won't give her name but she is memorable - she was horrible, nasty mannered and so arrogant. She vertually told me i was a lier stating she gets Martin's e-mails too and had never seen such a thing. Needless to say i didn't get a discount. I have now printed out that section of the e-mail where it states that an item was bought from John Lewis, a stove for £700 with a £200 discount and free delivery, and it was bought by a member of this forum. I intend to write to the Managing Director with a complaint about that member of staff and shwo him the print out too to prove i wasn't lying. Not a good advertizment for John Lewis is it?

OwtForNowt · 19 November 2008 at 11:44PM

Did you still buy the laptops?

lucky_charm_2 · 28 November 2008 at 5:14PM

When I used to work as a sales assistant selling homewares (sometimes large electrical items) in a large high street chain I wasn't allowed to just dole out discounts- if there was something significantly wrong with the product I could ask the manager if they were willing to discount, but they usually weren't if it was just a bashed box. I would have liked to have been allowed to give customers a cheaper price, but it didn't help that some of them tried sneaky methods to get money off. It is not acceptable to pull something out of it's packaging, dump the packaging in another part of the store and then ask for a discount. Nor is it ok to take a 5 pack of something, open it, remove one of them, then say you just found it and try to haggle a price on it. It got to the stage that we'd refuse to sell items found without their packaging.

Haggling is fine but it's worth remembering that the shop assistants may not be treated very well by the management, are often working for low wages and frequently will not have the authority to help you. I would have gotten into trouble if I had fetched a manager to ask if we could haggle the price on something. I think as a customer the key is to always be polite and if the assistant says that it's just not possible, either take their word for it or ask someone else- don't keep pushing!

Mind you, I'm not necessarily advocating that particular store's methods, considering it just went into administration!

liamsquire · 5 December 2008 at 12:55AM

When I first purchased a large price item, sofa at £1500 I didn't know much about haggling - I think I could have saved a fair bit on that now. The next major item, (TV) I bought online at Dixons and saved approx £200 from the instore price at Currys as well as got a wall bracket at £60 (£199 at Currys) and also got Quidco cashback as well as a £50 off voucher. So all in all, quite a good saving from the instore price. Curry's could not offer me anywhere near that price.

Next up was a new bed. It was £600 for the frame although I did a bit of research and found out that furniture retailers can charge a typical markup of around 500%. So I used a line something like, "I've just moved into a new house with my girlfriend and I would love this bed but she'll not let me pay that much for the bed, but I would rather get the one we want now than buying a cheap one and then re-buying somewhere else in the future costing us more money overall." I asked to get the bed frame for £400 (a £200 or 33% reduction), saying I reckon she wouldn't mind so much as we could use that money for, say, for example, a new fridge/washing machine, etc. They eventually offered me the bed for £475, so managed to save £125 for a few minutes research and some haggling!

It's definately worth a go and once you realise that it can be done and retailers can often have big margins to play with, especially on big ticket items, it really is worth the hassle.

I've also managed to get a router and two USB dongles at half price as well as free delivery from Curry's when buying a fridge and washing machine. I needed the router and dongles and asked them to throw them in for free with the washing machine and fridge. They offered half price which was something at least!

Good luck!

andyhargreaves · 2 January 2009 at 9:04PM

vyle wrote: »

I work in the audio/tv section of John Lewis, and am quite surprised to have read how some people have managed to haggle deals out of us, because at my store, we have a very strict 'the price is exactly as marked' policy.

The reason for this, is, as some people have pointed out, that in electrical, we have TINY profit margins. As JL has the never knowingly undersold policy, we're already matching the lowest high street price, and even after purchase, if the customer finds it cheaper within 28 days, we'll refund the difference.

This has led to us selling TVs that should be £699 for as little as £445.

The bizarre thing is, customers are sometimes happier to go to a rival shop that's charging £750 for the same TV and get the psychological victory of haggling off £30 and getting free delivery thrown in and a free HDMI cable than getting nowhere haggling, but saving £300.

Because of this, we don't haggle at all. Even on ex display/discontinued/clearance lines, there is a set % we drop and no more, and that's already been taken off the original price.

I can understand why people want to haggle, but sometimes they haggle beyond reason and simply won't take no for an answer. I'd LIKE to be able to give some discount to make my job a lot easier, but to do so would cost me my job.

I had a great experience with the Never Knowingly Undersold policy today. i suspect this was slightly outside the rules (so I wont name names or stores), but I bought this, and as I was queuing I checked online and found this. I casually mentioned it to the very friendly cashier, who willingly reduced the price at the till to £50! I was most pleased, and have told everyone who will listen today!!

Andy

n3phi1im · 4 March 2009 at 2:44PM

Now thats's opening up a can of worms...

I've lost count of the number of post's on various forums concerning Sky TV cancellation discounts. The number of folks who complain that they have to pay full price when others are willing to bluff and haggle.

On a related note though, SkyTV have a secret deal going at the moment. If you phone up and threaten to cancel, they MAY offer you a £3 for 1 package for 3 months deal. Let the flames begin...

High Street Haggling Discussion

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