Aug 30, 2006
Responding to: Leon Gettler, How to Haggle
In my view, haggling should be reserved for cases where the price makes a difference in whether or not you will buy the object.
If an item costs $5, and you would willingly pay $5 for it, either because it's worth that much to you, or because $5 is a trivial amount of money for you, then just pay the $5. The $1 you might save by haggling might mean a lot more to the vendor than to you. Your haggling will be perceived (correctly) as yet another attempt by someone with money to take advantage of someone without money.
But if an item costs $100, and you just aren't willing to spend that much money on it, say so. Be genuine - nothing is more obvious than fake haggling. When you approach it this way, haggling will be welcomed by the vendor as a chance to make a sale that might not otherwise have been made.
The point of haggling - despite how it is so often portrayed in the media and in guidebooks - isn't to get the best deal for yourself, it is to enter into a mutually beneficial agreement where both you and the vendor get something you would not otherwise have obtained.
In my view, haggling should be reserved for cases where the price makes a difference in whether or not you will buy the object.
If an item costs $5, and you would willingly pay $5 for it, either because it's worth that much to you, or because $5 is a trivial amount of money for you, then just pay the $5. The $1 you might save by haggling might mean a lot more to the vendor than to you. Your haggling will be perceived (correctly) as yet another attempt by someone with money to take advantage of someone without money.
But if an item costs $100, and you just aren't willing to spend that much money on it, say so. Be genuine - nothing is more obvious than fake haggling. When you approach it this way, haggling will be welcomed by the vendor as a chance to make a sale that might not otherwise have been made.
The point of haggling - despite how it is so often portrayed in the media and in guidebooks - isn't to get the best deal for yourself, it is to enter into a mutually beneficial agreement where both you and the vendor get something you would not otherwise have obtained.
