Tell HN: Did you know you can negotiate price on many things?

Be warned that people are reciprocal. I had a business partner who would negotiate <i>everything</i>. We found that luck would turn against us. There would suddenly be added processes and bureaucracy. Partners backed out on verbal promises. People were turning down job offers or sleeping on the job. A banner we bought didn&#x27;t include the banner stand because it wasn&#x27;t &quot;included in the price&quot;.<p>If you&#x27;re generous to others, they may be generous to you. If you&#x27;re cheap with others, they will definitely be cheap with you.

Funny story, waited in line at the grocery store while the lady in front of me was being handled by the cashier. Once all the groceries had been scanned, the cashier told the customer the total. The lady offered her about half of that. It completely confused the cashier who was not expecting someone to haggle. It went back and forth a few times and then the manager was called and I was helped in the next line over. I waited a while to see what would happen, and in the end the lady stomped out angrily and the manager had an employee restock all the stuff she had brought to the register. That was not a place where there was any price flexibility.<p>However, at the Farmer&#x27;s market, there is a <i>lot</i> of price flexibility on products.<p>It is an excellent life skill to be able to distinguish between markets where prices are fixed and markets where they are flexible.

Just be ethical about it.<p>If you are a tourist in the global south, and you negotiate down the price of some craft&#x2F;souvenir&#x2F;whatever you are buying on the side of the road, you will be able to buy an extra cup of coffee back home, but the person there might have to stand in the sun and away from their family for 4 more hours.<p>Don&#x27;t let the well-being of others all in the hands of &quot;the market&quot;.

To negotiate successfully: a) you have to know what you want b) you have to ask for what you want c) you have to be willing to walk away if you don&#x27;t get it.<p>None of that is as simple as it sounds. &quot;I want the best price&quot; is not knowing what you want, it&#x27;s requesting a 5% discount that patronizes you. Asking for what you want doesn&#x27;t mean &quot;give me X for $Y&quot;, it means building a rapport with the seller first, and usually negotiating over multiple items to get a positive-sum result. And being willing to walk away is really hard if you don&#x27;t research, build up alternate options, and are genuinely OK with throwing what may be hours, days, weeks on the negotiation in favor of your alternative.<p>If someone gives you a huge discount just because you strolled up and immediately asked for it, honestly, it&#x27;s not that you&#x27;re a good negotiator, it&#x27;s more likely that they&#x27;re a bad negotiator, and by sheer virtue of even trying, you have exposed their lack of skill. You shouldn&#x27;t consider that to be typical.

A little different story while negotiating with family-run small businesses.<p>India is on a path to digitizing everything from all the mom-pop stores to the random tea-sellers on the corner of every street to even the beggars accepting payments digitally. Yes, India does have a financial infrastructure far better than many developed countries.<p>I have been on the back-end side of one such digitization effort and have seen the data. Everything that we do, or anyone in the ecosystem does to optimize profit -- end target&#x2F;product are always those small businesses and the mom-pop stores run by the neighborhood uncle and aunties.<p>When I buy from the local stores, the small businesses, I try not to negotiate, even when I know I could have and everyone else does. I know they make a tiny more profit, and I&#x27;m happy with my decision. If your help (maid, errand boys, others)[1] bought something and might keep the change. You know they kept the difference, but you just ignore it. It is a tiny sum for you but might just be dinner or different snacks for their kids.<p>I had my experience, and I don&#x27;t want to be on the other end and be that smart-ass negotiator. My aunt helped me sell edibles during the Indian festival of Holi. In my first year (when I was 6-8 years), I was out-negotiated to reduce price and&#x2F;or add more that I lost money in the transaction. I believe I cried, and ever since, wherever I can, I try never to take advantage of someone smaller&#x2F;weaker on the other end of the negotiation.<p>1. India has a surplus of cheap labor. It is prevalent, affordable (and thus generate employment) for middle-class households to have maids around.

I&#x27;ve negotiated 40% off of mattresses at different Mattress Firm stores. Most of sales people do not want to negotiate, don&#x27;t waste time with them and move on, matress chain stores are a dime a dozen. You can even call them and say you&#x27;re looking to buy X and are calling around to find the sales person that will sell it to you at $Y.<p>Don&#x27;t ask for a &quot;deal&quot;, &quot;discount&quot;, &quot;best price&quot;, etc, ask, &quot;Can you do X at $Y?&quot;<p>Consumer Reports has a good chart you should scroll down and look at:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;cro&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;how-to-bargain&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;cro&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;how-to-...</a>

Negotiating is pretty much dead these days in most western countries where large chain retail has taken over. An ever increasing chunk of shopping happens online, where negotiation is obviously impossible. Other than that, employees at stores like Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, Target, Lowe&#x27;s and all grocery and convenience stores don&#x27;t have the authority to alter prices either. When you have ruled out like 95%+ of all retail, where exactly is this bargaining happening?

Chiming in to add - Lasik!<p>I saved and saved to get mine in my early 20s, and assumed it&#x27;s just the price you pay like anywhere else.<p>About 8 years later, went to same place for my wife and between age and experience I just said &#x27;ah, sounds like too much we&#x27;ll go elsewhere&#x27; and they nearly halved the price. Wish I knew that the first time!<p>However, don&#x27;t overdo it. You&#x27;re highly unlikely to get anywhere trying to negotiate at big box or grocery stores on typical items and likely just annoy the cashier. My brother used to get driven up the wall by people wasting time doing this - noting they were usually foreign people and that may have been how things worked in their native country.

As important is to recognize that even if the price cannot be negotiated, oftentimes the service you receive can!<p>If the waiter seats you somewhere you don&#x27;t like, don&#x27;t be afraid to ask for the nicer table! At the hotel, don&#x27;t be afraid to ask if they have a nicer suite you can have instead.<p>Often employees are not able to negotiate the price, but they have flexibility in what they can offer you!

The greatest leverage is in your willingness to walk away. Being more willing to walk away than your counter-party is an enormous advantage in nearly any negotiation. (Being <i>perceived</i> as more willing to walk away is almost as good.)

Here in India, I have found that just casually asking for a discount will instantly get you a small discount in a lot cases. You just need to look not excited at the product and politely ask if there is a discount. Or at least if they can round the price to nearest hundred. Basically, this is zero effort savings.<p>For costly things, it is better to cross check with a few stores to get an idea about the local price and ask what is the best they can do. You can let them know you have checked other stores, but don’t share the details of other offers. Sometimes, checking with a store over a phone call might get you a better deal, because yours is a zero effort deal for them which they don’t want to lose to a competitor and also, they won’t be able to read you like they can in case of an in-person bargaining.<p>I usually try to avoid who doesn’t show even a tiny interest in a negotiation. It is better to give business to someone who is willing to spent some time discussing with customer.<p>Being said all these, I don’t spend too time much on this to milk out every possible discount. It is a trade off between time&#x2F;happiness vs saving money.

Negotiating is typically only possible in situations where the salesperson is receiving a commission (Guitar Center) or is in a position to directly benefit at the expense of the business (bartender hoping the discount will translate into an equally sized tip). That said, there are a lot of places that applies to and it never hurts to ask.

Heh. I have the opposite problem. I am learning that you can&#x27;t negotiate when the market is not favourable (i.e., current times). Applies to all big ticket items - cars, rent, real estate, etc. I have internal metrics for what things should be worth, and if you stick to it, as I have, you end up getting nothing.

I sell second-hand items online, so have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to negotiating.<p>The number one tip I would give is to always consider the person you are negotiating with (note: &quot;person&quot; != &quot;business&quot;) and try to reach a win-win. Make their job easy and maximise their profit&#x2F;commission.<p>For example, if someone messages us on Facebook with some links to our eBay listings and asks if we can do a better price, the answer is always yes. We&#x27;re happy because we don&#x27;t have to pay eBay&#x27;s cut of the sales (around 10% usually), the buyer is happy because they get a discount. If they&#x27;re buying multiple items, even better! We don&#x27;t have to pay for 5 separate lots of &quot;free shipping&quot;.<p>Same thing when you pay a tradesman in cash. They &quot;forget&quot; to enter your transaction into their accounting system (no tax!), you get a better deal. Not everyone would consider this ethical, of course, but it&#x27;s the same principle of tit-for-tat.

It&#x27;s a skill that needs practice to perfect. I wish somebody offered a service where a professional would bargain on your behalf. Sort of like Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm showing up to make sure people aren&#x27;t taken advantage of financially when they&#x27;re getting work done on their house&#x2F;car&#x2F;etc.

I came back in France after being used to negotiate for everything in China (even entrance to clubs). I failed miserably. There are definitely cultures where people would lose money rather than negotiate, it’s just badly seen.

I guess my problem is that, while I believe this is true, I just really really hate the process of haggling.

I had to teach myself negotiation because I am not natural at it. I finally figured out a useful hack. My magic words are “What’s your best price?”. I ask it with a friendly, confident tone, as if it were my best friend on the other side of the table. This approach has conservatively saved me tens of thousands of dollars over the years and it is very low stress.<p>By the way, guitar center doesn’t really negotiate much anymore. They tend to price guitar more realistically than they used to. 10 years ago you could pretty much rely on getting 40% off or so from the price tag, but they’ve trended away from that in the last few years.

I was traveling near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon Park. It was late in the evening (around 9PM or so IIRC). Wanted to crash for the night. Found a nice hotel in that cluster of hotels just outside the park. Walked up to the desk, asked for the manager. He comes up. I explain the situation to him: I&#x27;ve been traveling all day, all I need is a warm shower and a bed, and I&#x27;ll be off in the morning.<p>He looks at me, writes a figure on a small sheet of paper and slides it over. I look at it, nod and slide it back, thanking him. It was almost half off their advertised rate.<p>Bonus: he asked me to park in the &quot;employee of the month&quot; parking spot, since that employee wasn&#x27;t going to be working that night.

I mean isn&#x27;t this the whole point of professional &#x27;Buyers&#x27; at large companies who are negotiating with supplliers?<p>Everything is negotiable it&#x27;s just that:<p>A) Most mortals do not have the leverage to open up a negotiating position (not important enough)<p>B) Most sellers at a front desk may not have the authority to meet you half way in a negotiation.

I was at an office supply store trying to buy a chair and an employee told me they didn&#x27;t have any more of the model I wanted. I pointed to the chair I had just been trying out and he said it was a floor model, but they didn&#x27;t have any in stock. I asked if I could buy the floor model, and he said yes, but the floor models were more expensive. I said, if anything, the floor models should be less expensive because they were used, he agreed and gave me a discount on the floor model.<p>Negotiating for price still feels very weird to me in most circumstances though.

Note that this is very culture dependent.<p>In many African countries, it is expected that you spend 10 minutes bargaining for everything: food, cab fares, etc., and it’s a thing locals do a lot.<p>In the US, there is a lot of negotiating too. And also a lot of “small bribery”. Things like slipping a 20 dollar bill to someone to get ahead in a line is extremely common.<p>In Europe it is much less common. Some things like furniture or cars are often negotiated, but the negotiation margins are much much narrower than in the US (I once got a carpet from ABC carpets in NY at 30% of its tag price).

Being a bad haggler, I typically just always say Yes to the first price I&#x27;m asked to pay.<p>I wonder how this changes across different countries. I know in India, there&#x27;s a lot of flexibility in negotiation&#x2F;haggling prices.<p>But living in Germany, I always get the impression that things are fixed price and I typically don&#x27;t bother negotiating. Unless it&#x27;s the rare street market&#x2F;Weihnachtsmarkt where they&#x27;re willing to negotiate (and even there they usually don&#x27;t).<p>I&#x27;m curious to know other countries experience if people can chime in.

I often feel bad asking for a discount. I know that my 10% discount is often halving their profit for the item.<p>I prefer shops where they have already offered stock at their best price and refuse to price it lower. One less thing to worry about.

Ha. You can certainly try. For my part I’ve not negotiated as much as I fought irrational [1] or dark pattern charges [2]. Win some, lose some.<p>Just a few examples:<p>1) salvage fee. As a youth I had very cheap car. The side panel was seamless with the top of the cab. A driver who pulled out too far into the street just backed up into me and damaged my 1&#x2F;4 panel. Repair exceeded the “value” of the vehicle. Insurance says they will pay me up to the value of the car, minus salvage fee. Oh. What’s that? It’s the value _they_ would get for junking the car. Why are you entitled to this? Because when we pay the value of the car, we own it. Uh. No you don’t, because I didn’t sell it to you. Round-and-round. I’m one for two on that fight.<p>2) Square (the online credit card payment peeps) have a dark pattern. A button on the site will, without confirmation, instantly charge you some additional three percent of your receivables to deposit it instantly in your bank account. The button looks exactly like a bunch of other buttons you need to click. Off shore call center will not budge on this one.

The third Rule of Acquisition states: Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.

Just don&#x27;t take to bartering with people who are selling to make ends meet. Save it for the luxury hotels, big airlines, exclusive shops, who are already making bank.

<i>Don’t</i> negotiate on price, you have no leverage.<p>Instead negotiate on value. If you’re going to pay such a higher price, find out what else you can get that is valuable to you but of little value to them. For instance instead of 40% off on rooms, I’ve gotten free upgrades to better rooms, with late 3pm checkouts.

I don&#x27;t like doing so. I don&#x27;t want to have to be fake-friendly with people just to get the &#x27;best&#x27; price on something, and leave feeling like I could probably have paid less if I&#x27;d just negotiated harder.<p>It&#x27;s too much mental effort and I don&#x27;t find there&#x27;s any mental reward to the process. It doesn&#x27;t feel like I got &quot;a deal&quot; it feels like the business or individual I negotiated with is probably trying to rip me off, and probably succeeded.<p>I&#x27;ll get the best price by businesses competing with each other for my custom. Or I won&#x27;t. Either way &#x27;haggling&#x27; is alien to me and I prefer the world to be more straightforward.

I&#x27;m really really bad at this.<p>in fact I&#x27;m so bad at this that it extends to the inability to see prices on items.<p>If I walk into a shop and notice that it doesn&#x27;t have prices on items I&#x27;ll walk out. I do NOT want to be talked into buying something.

that costs time and mental energy it&#x27;s not always worth.

Yesterday, Comcast tried to start charging me 2.5x for my Internet service... I called to cancel the service and all of a sudden, they were able to give me the old price...

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #141: Only a fool pays retail.<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;memory-alpha.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rules_of_Acquisition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;memory-alpha.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rules_of_Acquisition</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;memory-beta.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;memory-beta.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisi...</a>

I&#x27;m not usually too fussy on phones. When an old phone fell out of my motorbike pocket and smashed the screen I walked into a mobile phone shop and picked up a fairly basic android phone which happened to be about the right price point.<p>However, when our first child was born it quickly became apparent the camera wasn&#x27;t good enough (especially with one set of her grandparents being long distance).<p>So I went into the shop and told them I wanted one of 3 phones which had the best cameras at the time. The per month price was £42 a month so quite a big step up from what I was paying. However, they also wanted to charge £100 to end the contract early. After a bit of back and forth they reduced this by about £20. I refused the deal and walked next door to a coffee shop.<p>I sat down with a coffee and called the customer services for my mobile phone provider. Told the woman why I needed a new phone but that I didn&#x27;t want to pay the contract fee. Five minutes later the fee disappeared and inexplicably the price for the contract also dropped by £10 a month. The new phone was shipped overnight.

Herb Cohen - You Can Negotiate Anything (1980) thaught me this. Got that book from a street salesman in China. One of the few English paperbacks he had. It was old and great.<p>Few memories that seem relevant:<p>- The advice is to negotiate by building a relationship or mutual understanding. The opposite party should feel good about granting you the sales and not begrudge your style or demands. He had chapters about how to socialize what is essentially a trade. Chat them up, show them why you would like the product, etc. Some of that feels old fashioned.<p>- You can&#x27;t one-time negatiate something through display of power. That&#x27;s a negotiation style for repeat negotiations where you balance your display of power with a loss of future bargaining power.<p>- Can&#x27;t negotiate when the other party has no skin in the game. Be it the owner of the store, or someone selling on a concept of commission: they can oversee the financial consequences of your willingness to strike a deal. Can&#x27;t negotiate with hourly wagers in large firms.. Unless (relationship) they like you and are allowed to decide on prices.

I work as an independent consultant. Few months ago, just starting, one prospective client (through their CFO&#x2F;COO suggested is shaved 33% of my quoted daily rate. I offered a $50 discount instead on the daily rate because i had heard the CEO on a podcast and I was interested to learn more about their company. We verbally agreed on a daily rate and a weekly 1 day commitment. At week 5 client tells me they&#x27;ll pay only 2 of the almost 4 days I had done already cause &quot;they thought the report after the 2 first days was all what was due&quot; BS :(.<p>1. I should have seen it coming - entitled dude took on himself to get the 33% discount he thought he deserved. 2. It sucked. I spent some time since writing some agreement template and will slowly roll them out with new clients.

Immigrant parents teach you this pretty early on lol :).

The only things I negotiate on are salary, car price, and home loans. For the latter two, I obtain a dozen or so quotes by email, then go round-robin with every other option asking if they can beat the best quote so far. Repeat until no one goes any lower.<p>I would have negotiated my job offer in a similar way but got a good offer sooner than I expected and didn’t have any other offers in the pipeline. The recruiter was refreshingly honest about it too, “I’m not going to lie and tell you we can’t go higher, but you would need a counteroffer”.<p>For anything other than massively expensive purchases or job offers, negotiating doesn’t really seem worth the time and tends to give off vibes as a difficult customer or a cheapskate (at least in the U.S.)

Despite the fact that negotiations are a core part of Chinese business practices, in the tea industry nobody worth their salt would ever ask for a lower price. The seller will always give you a lower price if you ask, but then also give you a lower grade product without telling you. The best you can do is get the right product at the right price.<p>Negotiations have their place, but you also have to consider if this is the right place. In my small business I will give a small discount if somebody asks, but they get themselves added to the &quot;don&#x27;t bother helping them&quot; category of customer.

In many places outside the US haggling is the norm. People expect it so the initial price is way higher than what the person will accept. You through the same process everytime. You offer half and you work your way up until you meet or walk away. Overtime it is just a waste of time and energy. One offs is not too bad but if you have to do it for everything, it sux. I would hate for it to become the norm. I won&#x27;t do it. I don&#x27;t want to encourage it. Our current system is not perfect but haggling for everything is worse.

I hate the practice of haggling because it is based on an asymmetry in the knowledge of the sellers and buyers. Instead, I&#x27;d prefer that all past sales be visible in a publicly accessible database, so that you could just see how much other people have been paying for stuff. Selling at a different price than the one that is recorded should then be a grave offense, a form of fraud.

Even going to her cousin’s birthday is negotiable.

In India almost 20 years ago I learned I can negotiate everything down from the tourist price to rich Indian price to not so rich Indian price to get change on my banknotes price. It does take a lot of time though so I didn’t keep doing it. Also the last price point is ridiculous as a foreigner since you cannot do anything with the change.

I needed to order some parts from an online store, and I missed their sale. So I figured I would email them and ask for a discount.<p>Turns out if I bought a minimum amount they were willing to give me a significant discount - much better than the sale pirce, and the minimum amount wasn&#x27;t that much.<p>I may start doing this a lot - just email and ask for a coupon.

Sure. You can. I find using Craigslist and slickdeals to be better though, honestly.<p>Instead of trying to negotiate fruitlessly 100x (I have enough experience to know this doesn’t work well anymore and is a time waster) I just wait for the deal to happen for me.<p>So far - it’s worked great and people around me are impressed. As they say, hurry up and wait.

On topic of saving money, did you know there are countless VC backed startups either selling&#x2F;delivering grocery or meal packs with significant discounts for first few orders. If you just sign up to each, get a few orders and cancel, you&#x27;ll end up saving multiple $100 before you go through all of them.

I think I put haggling in the same category as tipping. As in I absolutely hate having to participate. Just mark up the food 20% and remove tipping, same with haggling, just give me a fair price and let&#x27;s move on. Haggling seem so stressful and a complete waste of everyone&#x27;s time.

Small one but I negotiated at Safeway (chain grocery store in parts of the US) recently, for an item without a price tag. Ended up getting it for a dollar, half of the original offer of $2. Later found out the real price was like $6 which would have been a bit of a ripoff.

Anybody managed to negotiate price of rent before choosing the place? What is the strategy there?

I was unfortunately raised to be ashamed to haggle. It is such a limiting trait but it is deeply engrained in my upbringing so I find it painful to engage in these sorts of negotiations, up to and including for salary. Any tips on how to get more comfy with this?

Holy crap! I had no idea, my eyes are open.<p>I&#x27;ve always assumed prices at retail shops are fixed, because, for the brief (and horrible) period of time _I_ worked retail, prices are set by corporate...<p>Any suggestions? Advice? Links? Primers?<p>I&#x27;ve negotiated my whole life for salary and consulting rate, but never negotiated anything else.<p>Additionally, for anyone reading this that doesn&#x27;t know it, you CAN negotiate AirBNB rates, and often do it in a way where you AND the host are happier. I didn&#x27;t know this until being with someone who runs several top-tier AirBNB houses.<p>Some AirBNB hosts would be happier letting you stay for a few days &quot;officially&quot; (to make sure you&#x27;re not crazy or a jerk), and then extend the reservation in cash. Or book the reservation for a long duration, then shorten it once you check in.<p>It varies from location to location but we sometimes offered guests a 15% off discount if paid in cash, frequently it worked out that we got the same amount.

In countries with a haggle culture every retail price is the most high fuck you and the horse you ride on price and people will thibk you are incredibly stupid if you accept it, unless you&#x27;re rich.

It frustrates my partner to no end. I always ask for a discount. Worst case you end up paying the amount you expect, best case you open up a window to negotiations of a discount. It never hurts to ask.

Is this country-specific to some extent? I can’t quite picture negotiating a sticker price on most goods or services in the UK.<p>Could be a lack of imagination on my side ofc.

I usually haggle on large purchases like home appliances or furniture. You can easily get a small discount, or free delivery.

Just because you can do something doesn&#x27;t mean that you should do something.

If that doesn’t work, ask for the cash discount.

As an American I would consider this very rude

Negotiate the other way and see what happens.

Is this &quot;Im Rich&quot; humblebrag?