Dealers on this site and cheap customers

[MikePA]

Great advice, Bird, as usual! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif It's what I do as well.

I've never believed it was my job to determine what someone else's 'fair profit' should be. Rather it's my job to determine what I'll pay. If that's the selling price, great. If not, I say thanks and leave.

Perhaps it's from my work experience, but I don't share price quotes with other dealers, even if they ask. At work, we send out RFPs, ask qualified vendors for their Best And Final Offer, then select the winning vendor. The losing vendors are not told why they weren't selected except in the most general terms, which does not include where their price was in relation to the other vendors.

 

[YanmarFever]

We price our tractors rock bottom to begin with so we dont negotiate much here. But attitude goes a loooong way with me too.
Ernies imports

 

[Farmwithjunk]

And I'm almost the complete 180 degree oposite. I don't expect to buy or sell much of anything WITHOUT some haggling. (Negotiating?) Some people get upset when I do it. Some people only get upset when they're selling. They in turn, try their hand at haggling when they buy. Bottom line, it's all part of the game. If you don't want to negotiate, hold your line in the sand, so to speak, but I sure don't get mad when someone starts trying to undercut my price. I EXPECT it. I have a dollar figure in mind when pricing work, when buying or selling items, or any other cash transaction. I won't go under that limit.

 

[2nstonge]

I see both sides of it on a daily basis in my home improvement/handyman business. More stories than I can share on this board, but here's one that still bugs me;

I'm doing handyman work for a customer who's selling her current house & building an $800k home. I've seen a parade of contractors come thru her current house and charge outrageous prices for work as she preps to sell it ($3k to box blade a 100ft driveway?! Literally, two hours work and this guy dragged his feet to make it take that long). Not a complaint from her, happy to have it done.

Anyway, for some reason she has a hair across her backside for the guy who mows her lawn. $30 a shot (about a 1/2 acre), he's there every week, same day, same time and usually in and out in a half hour. He's a one man band, not a slick operator but does a decent job. If she wants him to weed whack or blow leaves he charges extra - $10-$20 depending how much to do - this galls her to no end, he should be doing this as a free benefit to his steady customers. Every week she complains to me about his rates, I finally got to the point where I had to speak up (politely); "think about it for a minute, he has to drive here, that's time off the clock, he has a truck and equipment to buy & maintain; fuel, insurance, repairs...if he hits a rock in your yard in our nice Vermont soil and ruins a blade he makes no $$ mowing your yard this week..." and on it went. Now, she's a smart woman, started and ran her own company for years but I could just see that vacant look in her eyes that she just wasn't getting it. So I let it go.

The subject doesn't come up again for the next few weeks (this is last October). I show up on the appointed day and she's outside, in the driving rain (it's been raining to beat the band for days), mowing her lawn. She's furious, the lawn guy was a 'no show' on this given day and although he doesn't know it yet, he's just been fired. She thought about mowing her lawn and raking her leaves for the rest of the season and complained about it every step of the way. She asked me if I would take it over and I declined, I told her that at $30 I wouldn't be making any money on that job. I got the same vacant look again and within a couple of weeks she stopped scheduling me for other work. Go figure.

-Norm

 

[turbo36]

That is the difference between "want" and "need" she "wanted" the driveway fixed and was willing to pay any price as it was something new or better, therefore she had her focus on the improvement and not the price. She "needed" the grass cut and as this wasn't anything new or better just simply returning it to the original cut condition it wasn't exciting so she could only focus on the price. This is typical human nature.

 

[Soundguy]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I never haggle on price .... What I don't understand about hagglers is that a haggler will assume that I priced an item higher than it's worth so I can drop the price to close the deal, In my mind thats like accusing me of being a thief )</font>

Here's my take on the issue. On 'hard' priced items and stores.. like fixed retail outlets.. you don't see haggeling. For instance.. no one goes to a gas station and hagles with the clerk over the price of a gallon of gas.. or into walmart and hagles over the price of a washcloth.. Now.. where there is a perception of soft pricing.. that is.. if someone thinks there is any fat in the mix.. lie say.. car prices.. where there is a negotiable layer of commission, and a 'floating' amount of profit range the dealer is palying with.. then certaintly.. some people haggle. For instance.

We went out to eat with some friends a few years ago.. on the way home we stopped by a car lot to look at trucks. Both my friend and I haul horses alot and needed larger trucks. We were looking at a few different trucks, and been showed the sales price. My friend and his wife stayed while we went back home to get my truck to trade. When i got back, our sales price had dropped. My friend had negotiated a lower price based on us each buying a vehicle.. etc.. I'd agree that in that situation, there was 'much' play between the posted price, and what the dealer 'needed' to come out.

Also.. as another example... looking at the retail fuel and washcloth example I posted about. While i wouldn't haggle at the retial level, if I were buying from the manufacturer or the importer, and purchasing in bulk, I'd inquire about price breaks due to quantity.

The local feed co-op will give price breaks by weight.. 1st discount at 500#, 2nd discount at 2000# 3rd and last discount at semi-trailer load... however.. the discounts are not automatically applied... you have to ask for them /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

One last area I might see haggeling is on clearance or returns type items. I have bought a few things that way.. one was a large lawnmower that had been at sears for 2 ys.. had a little rust... as soon as the manager saw me even glance at it, he mentioned that he would love to sell it. I looked at at and said would you love to sell it at a couple hundred off the price marked on the tag. He smiled and said he'd love to... and did... similar situation at another box store recently on a leftover farm vehicle I bought... was 1yr plus old, and the new models were in... Again.. same situation.. as soon as the amnager sees you looking at it they ask what they can do to sell it to you.. In this case they couldn't drop much off.. but offered 50$... that was enough of an incentive for me... etc.

Had it been a new unit.. I wouldn't even have considered anything but the sticker price.. etc.

One other point.. My wife and her mother travel overseals extensively.. some of the asian and soviet countries.. The encounter lots of open markets.. bazaars.. etc. Virtually 100% of those sales are negotiated on the spot. No prices marked. And many of the sales are dependent on what currency you are paying with. There was actually an instance where my wife was buying something with us dollars and not the native coin.. and got a better deal by paying in dollars vs native money.. even though she was paying less due o the exchange rate. In that area.. us dollars were very much sought....

That's my .02$ anyway..

Soundguy

 

[Soundguy]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( And I'm almost the complete 180 degree oposite. I don't expect to buy or sell much of anything WITHOUT some haggling. ...If you don't want to negotiate, hold your line in the sand(Negotiating?) )</font>

Good way of saying it. When I'm at a tractor dealer.. specifically.. I may ask if the price is firm.. if it is.. then I decide from there.. if they indicate it is.. byut mght wheel and deal on some implements.. then there you go..

No one needs to get mad and think they are being called a thief.. It's just the nature of trade.... and it's been going on before coins were minted.. etc.

Soundguy

 

[CT_Tree_Guy]

<font color="blue">I have a dollar figure in mind when pricing work, when buying or selling items, or any other cash transaction. I won't go under that limit. </font>

Especially when pricing my work, what I am saying is that "that limit" is the honest price that I just handed my customer on a written quote.

If I were to then agree to do the job for less than that price, they would have every reason to believe that the price I first gave them was not my "best" price.

I just think this whole haggling thing has a lot to do with respect. Respect for yourself, in knowing what you deserve to get and accepting no less, and respect for your customer, in giving them your "best" price right up front. At the risk of using a subjective term, I believe this approach is simply more "professional" than leading with a price that is not your "best" price.

And just because one can talk someone down doesn't mean that it's a "good" thing to do.

When one goes to a mechanic and he says it'll be 400 bucks to do your brakes, how comfortable are you going to feel when you're driving around in the car that he just grudgingly worked on for $350?

I like the way I do my pricing, and as I said, I sleep very well at night.

 

[strokerduster]

to a certain extent, you can control the dealing. when i traded tractors a few months ago, i tried my dealer of 1st choice and the deal wasn't what i was hoping for. biggest thing was he really didn't want my trade. thought my jd 2210 would compete with kubota models he had on the lot. i had done a complete detail and serviced my 2210 where all he would have to do is put it on the lot. when it became obvious he wasn't going to haggle, i decided to try a dealer i had not approached (70 miles away). i emailed em a few good detailed pictures, offered to haul myself and faxed a copy of a completed credit app i downloaded from kubota's website ( kinda to prove i wasn't bluffing). "MAKE ME A DEAL I CAN'T REFUSE". when the salesman called, he offered to accept 500.00 less for his tractor with a larger mmm than dealer #1 and offered 750.00 more for my trade. done deal, over the phone. ONE DAY after i picked up my new rig, the new owner of my 2210 called to ask what kind of oil i had been running in it. dealer #2 sold 1 new rig and 1 used rig and made 2 new customers in 48 hours. my opinion is dealer #1 shot himself in the foot. bottom line, i think there is a time and a place to haggle and it isn't over every little purchase. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[EddieWalker]

Home Depot and Lowes will lower there price if your buying in bulk, or can prove the other, or somebody else is selling for less. It's not like a car dealership, but if you ask, you can save a few bucks. I had a manager at Lowes take ten percent off 20 sacks of readi mix just for asking. It happens, but usually it's when I'm spending thousands of dollars on lumber that they are the most flexible. Usually I buy my materials at McCoys since they are so much easier to get discounts out of.

One of the most annoying things about car dealerships and their flexible pricing is when they advertise a vehicle and say it's $4,000 to as much as $10,000 off list price. Am I to understand that they were makeing over $10,000 profit on that vehicle before the sales price? Sure sounds like it to me.

As for customers on jobs I do, I put my bid in writing and it's a take it or leave it option. When hiring subs to do work for me, I ask them for their price and chose from there. I don't haggle on service, but will chose who to hire partially on price, the rest on qualifications.

I bought my Century tractor over Kubota on a price difference of $4,000. Kubota had hydrostat transmission that Century doesn't have, plus better resale, but that wasn't worth $4,000 more to me.

Eddie