Bartering Skills

lally666young

I thought since we are all so purse concious, I thought I would like to start a new thread on how good your bartering skills. It may be something silly like pennies of an item or hundreds of pounds. Or even doing a skill swop and bartering that way. I have noticed more and more time bank and freecycle type web pages comming up.
So I thought this would kick this off, by giving you all a couple of examples. And no this isnt a sexist question, but who is better men or women???
Right here goes: One of the best deals we have is by getting a thousand pounds off our jeep. I always pretend to act not interested and walked away. This worked as the sales man waved me back. I always go towards the end of the month when making a major purchase like this, as this is how the salesman earns his money!
Two hundred pounds off our leather suite as it was the wrong shade. Infact it didnt even match the swatch! So we had two options order a new one and wait 12 weeks or take the discount so we took the later. Plus I like to think our suite is unique as noone else has a suite this colour.
So there you go.:beer::beer::beer::beer:

Linda32

I'm a coward and never ask for discounts

If you are very lucky and fortunate you might find a local group which does this sort of thing as a swap.

valk_scot

I'll always ask for discount if an item is cosmetically damaged/damaged packaging/part of a bulk buy/buying several items. It often helps if you also offer to pay by cash instead of electronically. It costs retailers to use the card machines so you should be asking for that at least as a discount. Don't ask the Saturday staff though, ask for the manager.

As for trading skills I've been doing this for years. There's quite a few non-working mums in our cul-de-sac plus several retired people so while incomes are tight we do have time and a variety of skills to swap. Babysitting and childcare are a given, as are passing along things like clothes and toys and bikes. But we also do other things...I have an allotment so have spare produce to barter in summer, two of my neighbours keep chickens, another is a demon baker and chutney maker. We have a retired electrician who specialises in small white good repairs, a retired gardener, I can sew, another lady actually likes ironing. The gardening chap helped me dig out a line of dead shrubs a few years ago for example and I drove him along to his hospital appointments the following year. We don't have any formal skills swap system but we always know there's a door to knock on if we need help and the favour comes round eventually. It all works. I thought that was just what neighbours did?

Sue14

My OH used to recondition vacuum cleaners he bought from the dump and sell them on, consequently he got quite friendly with the guy in our local spares/repairs place as he had to buy spares. As he gradually got more cleaners, some of them couldn't be repaired so he would strip them down and keep parts as spares to be used on others, and built up quite a store of his own spares, so the guy in the repair shop would sometimes call OH to see if he had a spare that he needed, and OH would give him to spares for nothing, and when OH needed a new spare from the shop he would only charge him the trade price. Another advantage to having this man as a friend, is that when we need a repair he does it much cheaper, so we save that way too.

My DS got a great discount years ago at a market stall. He'd always wanted a full length leather coat, so when he'd saved enough from his wages we went to look at them on the market. He saw one that he really liked and tried it on, and asked my opinion of whether it suited him, and then he was undecided about whether to get it or not (only because he'd seen another one, and didn't know which one to go for), the market stall holder then came over and said he would let him have it for £100 instead of £140 (obviously thinking DS was not wanting to pay the asking price), so that made up his mind and DS quickly handed over the money, and walked away very pleased. The funny thing was DS didn't have a problem with the price, as he'd thought it would be a lot more than that anyway!

Farway

Slightly OT, but I can never understand the folk who want to haggle about the price of an item in a charity shop :mad:

C'mon, it goes to charity you tightwad

lally666young

I never do this in a charity shop. Infact I often end up putting my change or what change I have into the change box. I enjoy doing it at carboot sales as many people are glad to see the back of the stuff.
I tend to use my hens eggs or my art skills to do a skillswop or to do a barter with.

krlyr

In the argument of men vs women - went car shopping last year, ending up finding the perfect car with just one snag, it was right at the top of my budget and the mileage was at the higher end of what I'd been looking for. But the car was in fantastic condition, obviously well-looked after and serviced yearly, the garage was local and they'd sort the MOT, service, etc. out. OH tried to haggle but could only get him to knock £100 off. Said I'd have to go home and think about it, we'd seen others for significantly less (but not as good condition) so had to decide whether it was worth the extra. Had a think and decided to bite the bullet so I phoned up and tried my hand at haggling - knowing it would need the cambelt changing really soon, I tried to get him to take that into account with the cost. Counteroffer was that they'd change the cambelt when they did the service, if I paid the asking price. We'd already phoned around local garages asking for quotes for it and been told it'd be £200 at the cheapest, so I said deal - basically got it done for £100 without the hassle of having to take it to another garage either. And the satisfaction of having out-haggled OH:rotfl:

Angel_Jenny

I have no bartering skills at all! Even market traders have been known to take pity on me and saw "offer me a little less - that's how it works" as I willingly pay full price.

Anselm

My bartering skills.