Negotiations
July 20th, 2007
I’ve sold some big-ticket items on Craigslist recently, and I’ve been shocked by the buyers’ reluctance to negotiate. Whatever the reason, none of the four buyers made any attempts to negotiate a lower price.
In contrast, I almost always attempt to negotiate a lower price when purchasing used items. My favorite deal was when I bought my Outback. I kept quiet during the negotiation except for an occasional “Hmm,” which made the seller nervous. He talked himself down quite a bit in price. I had to hide a smile as he countered his own offers. Great deal for me!
(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)
I buy and sell a lot of things off of craigslist, and I usually don’t negotiate. The market is large enough that if I don’t like the price, I can find a substitute for the price I want. Plus, most of the stuff is not too expensive to begin with, so haggling over $5 or $10 doesn’t make me want sell it to that person, so I won’t.
i negotiated a 47″ HDTV from a guy at Michigan. read about the TV, saw some reviews saying the tubes got out of convergence every year, but found instructions on how to fix it. convinced the guy he needed to knock off a couple hundred for that. bought it for $650 after he paid $2000 for it a couple years earlier. turns out, an onscreen menu fixed the convergence, so i felt kinda bad about that, thinking i’d have to follow the instructions on how to open it up and fix it. but i got over my guilt… in about 5 minutes