Doge

If I don't like the price i go someplace else. I don't haggle.
I grew up in a culture where this was sport, and I do it in my job, but for small stuff, I don't. I'm buying service, not parts.

Doge

I absolutely do that. Read post above.
Last week... price was 33, I took part and left 50 when owner was out.

I also pour my own beer and tell them my tab. For me, I like the relationships and trust. I am fiercely loyal. I also pay less than anyone I know. I don't do it for that, but that tends to happen.

RShantz

Exactly. I own a small business & never do business with someone who wants to lowball me on price. I will negotiate reasonable offers, but not a lowball. In the end, I'd rather my competitors have the honor of dealing with the lowballers.


Isn't there some study that says you should cull your lowest (most troublesome) 10% of customers each year? I try to get a head start on this by not even having them as customers to start with.

Doge

That goes for employees too

canklecat

I don't think Amazon adjusts prices per customer, although they do seem to adjust prices as a group for Prime subscribers. And this varies, so anything I say now may change at whim.

For example, in summer 2016 I put a pair of Pearl Izumi Canyon shorts in my wishlist. At the time it was listed at $76. While checking my wishlist price drop filter (which Amazon has changed since then) I noticed it was $20. I snagged a pair, and should have ordered two. Just out of curiosity I checked the listing via Firefox, without logging in to my Amazon account, and blocking tracking. The price showed $58 until I logged in, when the lower price appeared.

Later in 2016 I received an email notice that I could buy a pair of Continental Speed Ride tires for $20 for the pair. Again, the full price of $23/each still showed on another browser when I wasn't logged in.

So it appears to be an incentive aimed at Prime subscribers.

However Amazon often changes practices and rarely makes clear its current policy. So I watch for trends.

Sometime last year Amazon eliminated the price drop filter on wish lists. Lots of subscribers complained. Now Amazon will show price drops, but not on demand via a filter. You just have to watch for price drops. These appear when I put items in the cart, and I'll receive email notices of items in my wish list that have price drops.

Amazon used to do price matching on more items, but eliminated that. Last time I checked Amazon only offers price matching on certain TVs.

Regarding shipping, we've occasionally experienced problems. The vast majority of problems were the fault of our local post office back around 2014, and affected everyone in our area, not just Amazon customers. That problem has been resolved.

Same day delivery has usually been satisfactory. Offhand I can think of one delivery that was late and another that was lost. But the other 20 or so same day deliveries were on time, occasionally within only a few hours of ordering.

canklecat

BTW, like Doge I'll pay more in very specific cases with businesses and people I like. I pay whatever they're asking at the nearest LBS. It's a small shop, not a chain, with good folks and a top notch experienced mechanic. I always buy a little something when I visit, especially if they've helped answer some questions about stuff I couldn't resolve myself by Googling around. I never leave without buy a tube, a gel pack, snack, any little something.

I tip generously with servers and delivery folks who really make an effort. I enjoy chattering at late night diners and will tip more with servers whose company I enjoyed. I probably tip way too much at the local Waffle House, but I like that place.

I'll pay more at small businesses I value. Usually I'll ask whether using my debit card rather than credit saves them money. If it does, I'll use debit or pay cash.

I try to never stiff a server on tips, but if they're not making any effort I'll leave a minimum tip.

I think maybe twice in decades of eating out, including more business travel than I care to remember, I've refused to pay for meals. I'm not rude, just firm. I won't eat the meal and then refuse to pay. But if the food is absolutely terrible, inedible crap, I'm not eating or paying for it. The last time was more than 20 years ago at a Shoney's. I'd eaten at Shoney's before on road trips and it wasn't awful. When one opened near us we tried it one evening after shopping. It was atrocious -- rancid grease, burnt food, stale, everything was like they'd dug it out of the garbage. The waitress was rude when I asked to redo the entire meal. Then I asked to speak with the manager. He was even worse. I asked for their corporate office number and said I wasn't paying for food that I wouldn't even feed to my dog. They tore up the bill but were as rude as they could be. And so were the corporate office people I called. Pretty much explains why you don't see many Shoney's restaurants outside of a small region around Tennessee.

shelbyfv

If you want to curb your appetite, check the Shoney's breakfast buffet in Mobile AL.

kbarch

Sounds awful, and very sad. I don't know how spoiled the food might have actually been, so I don't blame you and don't mean to suggest you did anything wrong, (aside from expecting them to re-make the meal any better when you knew they were starting with stale ingredients ) but your story makes me think. I wonder what they'd have said if you'd asked them honestly: did you eat this stuff? Would you? Unless it was unquestionably spoiled or falsely advertised somehow, if they would happily eat it, it was edible, so you owe them for it whether you like it or not. And one can certainly understand their negative reaction to your claim that what they fed themselves was garbage. I'm sure you weren't the first or last to be served such a meal. That's the sad part - that some people have to satisfy themselves with garbage.

rumrunn6

FWIW I recently read an old thread where I bought an older MTB. guy was asking $70 but I offered & paid $30 cuz it needed so much work

you don't get what you don't ask for

sfh

I don't haggle. If I see something (bike or otherwise) I want, I offer what it's worth to me. The seller can either accept or decline. I don't take offense.

It's a simple negotiation. I have a value. The seller has a value. If you agree on the value, then there's a transaction. If not, then there's isn't one. This keeps me from buying new stock in bike shops, of course, but that's okay.

fietsbob

Optimistically over priced used stuff on craig's list may give you an opportunity, if the seller is sitting on it too long.

Psimet2001 

When I was still in industry it was actually a main focus of my job for a few years to constantly analyze, identify and rationalize complexity reduction which included "non-core customer optimization" (elimination).

In short - there are bad customers. The customer is not always right.

canklecat

Yup, a more recent re-analysis of the "Customer is always right" maxim says this should be interpreted as a general policy toward the customer as a group entity, not as an individual. It's another way of saying the market is always right, even when the market is bad at the moment.

In other words, trends determine the best policy toward customers. If the trend indicates customers are dissatisfied, and the customers appear to be honest, and your business policy appears to be sound, it's probably time to examine how your policy is being implemented by employees.

But if your employees are faithfully implementing a good policy, perhaps the customers aren't so honest. If a store develops a reputation for being easy to scam, the scammers will flock there. And even otherwise honest customers may be tempted to become scammers.

An example I saw many times living on the Gulf Coast was hurricane preparation. Customers would flock places like Walmart, Target, etc., to stock up on batteries, water, Sterno, etc. Then a week later they'd want to return everything they didn't use. It's not just that they gave no thought to actually preparing for the inevitable next storm. They were trained by the "no questions asked return policy" of the stores to regard the retailers as their personal disaster preparedness storage facility and lending library.

A small grocery store owner I knew refused to participate in such excessively generous schemes. He wouldn't accept returns of items purchased in advance of storms. Let the major retailers deal with those headaches. In his experience, those customers were equivalent to the hot check writers. Sure, they'd eventually pay up, but it wasn't cost effective to hassle with them.

Good store policy helps create the customers you want. In which case, the customer as a group is always right because of their influence on how businesses operate. So even when the customer as an individual is wrong, he or she is still part of the customer group that determines policy for a healthy business.

Incidentally, I just bought some Sterno for my emergency stove early in January when the temperature dipped into the teens, fairly uncommon for this part of Texas, and there was a possibility of ice storms that might interrupt power for a few days. I know from trying before I can't heat up a pot of water for coffee with candles -- tried it, didn't work. So I'm keeping that Sterno even though the weather wasn't too bad. Because I can't function without coffee in the morning, let alone when the temp is below 20F and there's no electricity.

Abe_Froman

Just a tip...make an offer, rather than asking for the best price. Asking for the best price is effectively the same as just complaining about the shops pricing strategy. Put the ball in their court by making an offer you are willing to follow through on.

There's only 3 ways it will go from there - accept, decline, or counter.

kbarch

I've always thought that a lot of people who quote that maxim don't really understand what it means. Yes, the customer is always right about what they want, and whether the vendor has provided satisfactory service or not. However, the customer is quite often very wrong about what the vendor ought to do about it. When customers demand satisfaction from an unsatisfying vendor, they just make themselves more upset - it's silly, and sad to watch.

I also have to take exception to your notion that the market can ever be right. But then it's never wrong, for that matter. Only persons can be right or wrong, and the market, as an abstract entity, is no more of a moral agent than the weather. However, along those lines, just because enough people do things a certain way and thereby constitute a market doesn't make what any of them do morally indifferent. They can all be wrong.

Sy Reene

You do realize, that evidently that can put you in your LBS's 'scum' bucket? The seller is never wrong.

kbarch

It's one thing to make an lowball offer out of ignorance. That's not being a scumbag, it's just being in over ones head, and you can't blame a person for that. But when a price has been quoted and someone comes back with a lowball offer, yes, that's probably being a scumbag. There's nothing wrong confessing to selfishness by saying something to the effect of "I was kinda hoping I could get it for X," but making a "serious" lowball offer is not only selfish but thoughtlessly rude. Unless the lowballer is already on friendly terms with the vendor (this is where culture comes in), it's a clear expression of bad faith, callous indifference to the welfare of the vendor, or both.

Sy Reene

You're presuming the sellers of bike equipment out there can't have the capacity to be just as ignorant as buyers though with respect to what the market will bear. Perhaps I'm suggesting this is more applicable to sellers of used equipment rather than NOS stuff in a bike shop. Perception of value is a tricky thing and I'm only saying that no party is necessarily more or less ignorant than the other. I don't think though it's a stretch to state that a bike shop, selling the same used bike will ask for more money than a private seller; look at the used car market and resale prices and offering prices for used cars that dealers and private parties offer. Who's right? Is offering an amount, supported by prices paid on comparable bikes sold thru ebay or listed on craigslist, that's lower than a shop has listed the item, a "lowball offer out of ignorance"? If a bike shop can sell a used bike for the same as on the private market, it likely means they paid a lowball price from the person who sold it to them.

kbarch

Yes, I think you make a good point.
However, the reason it's worse for the customer to lowball than it is for the vendor to highball (?) is because selling things is how the shop or a professional vendor, if you will, makes a living. In contrast, when it comes to things like bikes, the buyer's livelihood generally isn't dependent on how reasonable or profitable the deal is. Things are a little different when it comes to essentials.

canklecat

Another factor in negotiating -- leave the customer room to be wrong and extricate himself/herself gracefully. Customers often have no idea what something is worth, new or used. They may have received bad advice about prices and been told to expect to be ripped off by every business and sales person.

Back in the 1980s I sold cars for awhile during breaks from college. It was an interesting experience. Turns out some customers can be as dishonest as the public believes most car salesmen to be. Most will lie about the condition of their trade-in vehicles, or their credit history. The tricky bit is to accommodate that without insulting them. Just shrug it off, adapt, and figure out another way to get them into a new car.

At the time most Japanese cars had little flexibility in pricing. With few exceptions most customers paid full sticker price. An exception would be the base model pickup trucks, which were often sold with salesmen "spiffs" or guaranteed commissions of around $50-$75. Saved time haggling. The sales manager would pretend to discount the price, which was still profitable as long as we didn't waste a lot of time. So on good weeks we could shove several out the door quickly and still have time for more profitable sales with higher commissions.

In addition Honda dealers often added exorbitant mark ups -- usually $2,000-$3,000 -- clearly labeled as dealer profit or some euphemism such as "dealer pack", typed onto the window sticker. And for awhile Honda dealers wouldn't budge from those inflated prices, unless it was a less desirable color that sat on the lot for awhile.

Meanwhile we could barely move the vastly inferior Ford *******, which at the time were still the U.S. designed and manufactured versions. (Later the Escort was redesigned and built according to Mazda standards, which had partnered with Ford -- those ******* were very good economy cars.)

So in that atmosphere some customers were shocked to see such inflated prices for Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota vehicles. They wanted or needed reliable new cars, which meant Japanese at the time, yet they felt they were being fleeced and manipulated. Can't say I blame them, but that was the market back in the 1980s.

I had one particular customer who apparently had read some bad information about how to buy a car. It was outdated and confrontational. We went back and forth. The usual "Let me talk with my sales manager" thing, which was valid -- salesmen were not authorized to offer any discounts, so every final deal was negotiated through the sales manager. Eventually we offered another color than the car the customer wanted, since the sales manager could offer incentives on older stock.

After several negotiation sessions the customer left in frustration. I called her a few days later, our usual follow up. She said she'd bought the car she wanted from another dealer and got the lower price she wanted. I was puzzled by that and asked my sales manager.

Turns out my sales manager had family in the business throughout the metroplex -- brothers, sisters, his mom, all were sales managers at other dealerships. My customer bought from one of them. My sales manager told me not to worry about losing the sale because we did the best we could. The customer actually paid *more* money for the same model/color car. She was just too frustrated and embarrassed to return to us after shopping around, so she paid more rather than return with her tail between her legs.

And there really wasn't that much money involved. It wasn't one of our top of the line cars or higher profit items. But I did wonder whether we'd allowed the customer enough room to be wrong and to return to make her final purchase with dignity.

Not something I'd dwell on if it were only that little bit of money involved. But there was a valuable lesson in that experience. And it might have mattered if it were a more critical negotiation involving a lot more money.

kbarch

Why, when I read this, was the first thing to go through my mind: Refund?! REfund?!!!

phtomita

I got a lowball offer for a bike I am trying to pass forward. The price I posted is (I believe) very competitive and am getting people interested.

Less than half of asking price - really?
I just deleted the email from craigslist and moved on ...

deepakvrao

I live in India where haggling is the norm. Patients haggle with me on my surgical rates, which you guys might find hard to believe. Say, my hospital presents a bill of 1000 dollars, they will start as low as 700 sometimes. And, yes we have a published rate list which is very reasonable.

Horrible human beings, and yes, scum is the right word.

Being on the recieveing end so often, I never haggle when I am the buyer. If the orice is too highg, I just leave it.

rumrunn6

yeah I've gotten emails like that, I just delete them. he's a flipper. a personal rider checks out the bike in person, then decides what he is willing to pay

roadwarrior

and the starting prices are not thee same, either. Haggling...jack up your asking price 20-30% and go from there.

Done business with people from Europe and South America...they grab everything that's not nailed down. They know the price, it's easier (they say) and they have a heart attack when looking at prices.

We used to sell some to European racing teams where they could ship stuff home in the cargo plane. It was a feeding frenzy.