Negotiating Purchases

For someone who frequently gets incredibly good deals when buying things, I am usually a terrible negotiator.  I used to estimate that I saved my company an average of $1000/day in purchase price discounts, for months before and after an office move.  We needed to buy a ton of equipment, and I was good at sourcing it cheaply.  My boss's specialty on the other hand, was in getting things for free, usually in exchange for feedback or joint PR.  That involved much more negotiating than the approach I took, but my deals were usually no strings attached, based entirely on comparing prices, and knowing where to look.  I built three editing facilities primarily out of parts I found on eBay.  But very little actual negotiating was involved in that whole process.  Most of the negotiating I did, was with our operations and finance officer, convincing him that I needed the funding, for things the company actually did need.

In my own personal finances, I am fairly thrifty as well, without being cheap.  My onne big extravagant “habit” is always having a nice laptop, but I usually get good discounts on those, and still no negotiating involved.  I usually attribute this to the idea that the only deals I bother pursuing or ones that are already so good, that they can't expect to be improved.  That assessment is probably fairly accurate.  My first three Craigslist purchases, I made half hearted attempts to knock down the price.  But all of them were already ridiculously, low as a prerequisite for me following up on them.  In two of those cases I had people with me, advising me on how to negotiate, but it was still a no-go.  And even without negotiating at all, I got great deals each time, on relatively large items.

So today was a new experience, starting with pursuing a deal that was merely good, instead of incredible.  And I had the right mindset going into it, being prepared to walk away.  Being in the process of rebuilding a house, I am buying a lot of things, and learning about them at the same time.  I found a matching set of high end kitchen appliances on Craigslist a while back, and since they were more expensive than I was originally planning, I wasn't sure whether to pursue them.  When they were still available two weeks later, and I was scheduled to drive within 10 miles of their location an hour away, I took that as a sign that they were worth looking into.  I had to learn a few things about high-end appliances in order to evaluate the deal, but that was good knowledge to acquire.  I ended up talking the price down from $1600 to $1250, which is not too bad, and makes what was previously a good deal into a great deal.  Now I just have to finish building the kitchen that I want to put them into.  And I still need to find incredible deals on a fridge, water heater, and washer & dryer.  Maybe I will even have to negotiate a bit more.