Who says I came to buy? I came to appraise myself of the TV market. If I see no TVs priced below my reservation point, I leave.

Do you like when a store or private individual operates the "bait & switch" system? Where they lure you in with the promise of an incredible deal which is not in stock, and then proceed to sell you a higher priced item.

Your attempt to haggle their price is exactly the same situation.

Anyway, Henry, I agree with most of what you've said in this thread about avoiding price competition, the value of quality and differentiation, having different options available, and being frustrated with life nittiness. But I don't understand how you equate going in to buy a TV and asking a quick, yes or no question for a discount or a free wall mount or whatever as begging assuming it's a polite request and doesn't waste anybody else's time.

Begging cannot simply be asking for something without an explicit benefit for the other person. If you go over to someone's house to watch a game, and you ask for a beer/soda from the fridge, is that begging? If your neighbor asks you to grab their mail while they're on vacation, is that begging?

Previously you alluded to other cultures where haggling is much more common as a waste of time, but that implies there is one price for everybody all the time. It's certainly in a store's profit-maximizing interest under the market system you believe generally works to price discriminate as people have different elasticities of demand and abilities to pay. It is especially relevant when goods are commoditized; such as a TV at Best Buy vs. one at Wal-Mart, and a higher price on a good is not reflective of quality or other factors. An easy way to do this is to charge a higher price for those who will come in and not think twice about it, such as yourself, and allow others who may not pay that sticker to have some wiggle room. Certainly this would be ridiculous at the grocery store or for very small purchases, but with something like a $2k TV, it has to apply.

By your stated willingness to walk away from a transaction and state that the price is too high, you are subsequently opening up the window for haggling by allowing the salesman to say, "Well, what about for cheaper?" Accordingly, why is that different than stating up front that you think the price is too high, and making a counter offer, which is much less passive aggressive and will probably yield the same result. The market system allows for both the buyer and the seller to dictate prices, and your view apparently believes that only the seller has any authority to dictate price in a transaction. It may be a good business strategy to say "take it or leave it" on price when other factors are in play, but they aren't always. Finally, if you say, "I decline the transaction b/c this is too expensive", and the salesman asks, "Well, what do you feel is a fair price, then?" do you ignore him? If you'd pay between $1 and $X for the transaction to occur, do you tell him $X? Some fraction of $X? If it is $X, what right do they have against you to always price at your reservation cost rather than their average variable cost for a commoditized good?

Additionally, what if your friend owns an electronics store, and he offers to throw in the wall mount for someone who's not going to buy the TV? Is he begging, too, for the sale? What if he holds a 20% off sale to entice people to buy? Under your system, it sounds like he's cheap, too. Why can there only be one price? Why can't rational economic actors arrive at a mutually beneficial solution in the free market; annoyances to others notwithstanding.

Say you come to buy a TV with me, and I look at them all, and say to the salesman at the end of my browsing, "Sir, I like this TV, but it's a little expensive. However, if you include a free wall mount, I will purchase it now." If this is the polite extent of my "haggling" but you still believe that I am cheap or begging somehow, then you have become the life nit you seek to avoid.

Thanks for your input in this thread. Mind to elaborate?

If it's not self evident why that's a dumb distinction, you'll never get it

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/pr...gnore&u=148376

Huh? One is making an offer that the side making the offer has no intention of fulfilling, and the other is an earnest offer, made in good faith.

You know how people are always trying to be "cool?"

Haggling and other forms of being cheap are the opposite of "cool."

The other aspect of "cool" that's important is not trying to be "cool."

Therefore, if one is naturally "cool" (the only true "cool," I suppose), one is not interested in getting bogged down on a buck here or $200 there. You simply don't care enough, because the equation is quite simply: I can barely tolerate your system, yet, I have chosen to dwell within it for reasons that may or may not even be entirely clear to me. If I must do so, I have no intention of getting even further involved and participating in the minutia of the thing. Let me just adhere as well as I can, and go along my way, please.

You will say I am an *******.

That's fine.

No matter how polite how is asking for something in exchange for nothing not a form of begging?

You have a relation with these people so they are not strangers.

But if a store does this and you know they do it then you would just go to cheaper store. Why come to where it is more and get the price reduced when the price is already reduced somewhere else?

No because it is his place.

They can but the person haggling is cheap. If they are fine with being cheap then haggle all you want. I just have a very negative view of cheap people so will not wish to associate with someone like that.

I would think you are cheap. You are asking for a free wall mount and basically trying to use the loss of a sale as a way to coerce the store into giving you a discount.

It's not the same situation at all. First, I never offered to buy the TV at their price, whereas they offered something then reneged. Second, in a bait and switch, I've wasted time driving out to their store, whereas if I ask a salesman for a lower price, all they have to do is say "No we can't offer that item at that price."

Exactly.

There is some people that seem to believe that the seller/store/chain is the ultimate authority for prices and that defying them is going to cause the doom of civilization.

Just ridiculous.

Okay, here's another example.

Is getting a FTP account with rakeback cheap? Basically the companies who provide rakeback went to FTP and were like "hey, we'll get you more sales if you let us take some of your profit." This basically allows FTP to charge absurd rake to people who are too lazy/ignorant to get an account with rakeback, while still being able to get sales with people who aren't so naive. It's practically equivalent to having a middleman do the haggling for you.

Car dealers and other people who sell expensive items price them at a price that allows them a huge profit margin knowing that most people will just buy the thing at sticker price, without hurting their sales because people who will buy it at a lower price will come in and haggle. So, they're getting the best of both worlds: almost as many sales as they'd get at the lower price while getting many of those sales at the higher price.

Right, haggling allows for more efficient price discrimination, which is why Henry et al are wrong when they claim that there are no benefits to the seller.

This thread is about the haggler taking the position of continuing the game to obtain that lower price. Now they're wasting not only the seller's time, but also the time of any other patrons at the location who earnestly want to conduct business.

If a haggler could ask for a discount, then act like a reasonable person and get out of the way if their offer is rejected, these issues wouldn't never be. Instead they generally hang around in the hope that the seller will take pity on their lowball offer.

The bait & switcher never really offered then reneged, they just sold out before you got there. The haggler employs the same insincere offer, theirs is that impossibly low number they know for a fact isn't doable. That's why I used that example, it becomes fair game for both sides and generally is a PITA for other buyers.

No. Rakeback is an offer made to anyone. You didn't e-mail FTP and ask for it.

So you can only beg from strangers? What if I know the guy selling TVs?

What if every store as a profit-maximizing business does this?



He's still doing the same thing.


If I turn to you and shrug, and say, "Well, I think the TV is worth $1900, and the sticker says $2,000, so I'm not going to buy it today," and we leave, do you still think I'm cheap? If you do, you're out of your mind. So why on earth do you think asking for a free $100 wall mount in order to give the store the opportunity to complete the transaction makes someone cheap?

If you're going to multiquote my post, please also respond to the part about you declining a transaction based on price, indicating it, and the salesperson pressing you futher.

Your smiley indicates that you already don't believe this statement. As for hagglers being insincere, it depends. If you want to discriminate between bull**** lowball hagglers and more legitimate haggling, fine. But to say that every time anyone haggles it's an absurdly low price that is equivalent to bait and switching isn't accurate.

I don't see how making a slightly lowball offer to a salesman is being insincere. Lets say they price their cars at 30,000. Their profit margins are probably at least 20%. If I offer something like 24,500, there's a pretty slim chance that they're going to take it, but it tells them that I a) am not willing to pay their equally ridiculous asking price and b) am actually making a reasonable offer, so if they lower their price to something more reasonable I am likely to take it.

There's a difference between offering a ridiculous lowball price like 10,000 which is just completely ******ed and a waste of time, and offering a price that tells them I know what the **** is up and am not paying the price they sell to idiots at.

Thanks for addressing the meat of my argument. And LOL if you think people don't email FTP and ask for rakeback on preexisting non-rakeback accounts for which rakeback isn't offered on. I guess you should go and call them all cheap in the rakeback forums.

You are at a restaurant and the bill comes in (say two people) and one says "I got it" and the other says "No I'll get it" and the first says "No really its fine" and the other insists on paying or splitting and the first again says "No I got it" and the second finally acquiesces. Is person two haggling here? Or anybody? At what point in the conversation should this end?

How about this scenario? Person 1 says "I got it" and person 2 says "Ok thanks." Is person 2 a douche for not playing the "No I got it... are you sure? I'll get it next" game?

Asking for a favour from people you know is not the same as asking for a deal. Asking a friend for a discount is even worse since you are playing on the friendship to get him to do something he might not want to do and which he could even get in trouble for.

Despite cheap people's desire to believe this is possible it isn't. If every business is making outrages profits someone will start selling for less. Short of an actual price fixing conspiracy this situation never materializes.

No. He is making an offer at a lower price to the general public by having a sale. It is nothing like asking someone to change their offer.

Then I'm out of my mind. I think caring about $100 when spending $2000 is ****ed up but if other people don't that is fine. The reason this is cheap is because you said it out load. Thinking it is one thing but actually saying it out load is cheap.

I have never declined a transaction because of price. I like to shop very efficiently and basically go with the intent of getting something very specific so as long as it is what I was there for I don't typically care about price. What I said is if you are leaving and they ask then that is more acceptable to haggle. You can't do anything to incite them to ask or say anything about price unless they actually ask you.

Well online poker is a bunch of WoW playing massive life nits so using them as a sample is pretty bad. I was talking about a new acoount. If you have a non-rakeback account and want a rakeback account I don't know enough about the process to comment as I don't play on FTP.

The salesperson has no dignity by saying this, obviously.

Do you understand that the salesperson does benefit by the existence of haggling by being able to price things higher than they otherwise would be able to?

EDIT: Not related, but do you really think online poker players are life nits? I usually got the opposite impression. Most of them seem like degens to me. I only really played for a few months at low stakes. It seems like most posters on 2p2 are much less nitty financially than most people I meet IRL or on other forums (such as teamliquid.net).

That assumes that the people begging won't buy the item for the original price. Anyway even if you are right that is completely irrelevant to my position. My position is that people will think you are cheap. That it has benefits in no way changes that. Which is the interesting thing because this topic won't die mostly because people refuse to accept that some people out there are going to judge their behaviour as cheap.

So I don't understand at all why it is acceptable for a salesperson to offer you a lower deal once you decide to walk away from the stated price and the opposite is like begging. The salesperson is begging you to take it for less. Say the salesperson is your friend... snap defriend?