Quote:
Originally Posted by gnappi
When I was a kid, my parents took me to lots of flea markets, garage sales and antique stores and they had amassed a lot of really nice stuff.
One day my mom told me her secret(s) about getting good deals...
1. If the price is fair, pay it don't even think about chewing off a few bucks. Some sellers get set off and it does no good to make a seller angry.
2. If the price is actually too low, tell them it's a VERY good price and are they sure it's correct. They could do two things:
A. Raise the price to a silly level and you can put it down
B. Say the price is correct and you buy it.
3. See #1
This approach has served me well, I went into a pawn shop once and picked up two VERY expensive Penn reels with rods, and when I asked the price (no tags) the owner shouted out a ridiculously low price. I took the poles to him and told him that new they were both worth over #2k each.
He told me a story about a pawn shop owner who had no medical insurance and his wife was REALLY sick and in order to get the operation she needed he had to come up with a lot of cash to get his wife well. Then he said the price was correct, and over the past few days I was the only honest person who didn't say... "Would you take? #xx"
Well I bought the reels (I still have them) and from then on he sold me anything I wanted AT his cost, proving it by showing me how to read the cost code on the tags.
Oh, BTW, his wife came out of the issue really well.
I have never regretted my approach to buying "stuff"
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My wife and I had been looking for a specific teardrop travel trailer with a wetbath ( toilet and shower in the same space).
After a year and a half looking one, six months old, came up for sale on one of the RV websites.
The asking price was more than fair, but I had to ask if that was the rock bottom price. The lady said they’d take $1500 less.
I told her “sold”.
We traveled 1000 miles to pick it up in Ohio and found it was only 6 months old, had only been used twice and some of the accessories hadn’t even been unwrapped.
When we inquired as to why they were selling, they told us the husband had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and he was trying to get things in order so his wife didn’t have to deal with things.
We had a bank check for the agreed price but I offered to write an additional check to bring it up to their original asking price but they declined.
To this day I feel guilty for being cheap and capitalizing on those folks misfortune.