How Not To Haggle

Don't email a seller with a ten-paragraph manifesto on what a fair price for an item is, what the conditions of the market for that type of item are, why the seller is being a terrible human being for attempting to sell that item for more, and a smug assurance that you, and only you alone on planet Earth, would even consider buying such an item in the first place, so the seller might as well just save everyone a lot of trouble and give in to your demands.

I'm all for haggling and making a deal. If I've had an item sitting in my Ebay Store for a year and you come along and offer me 50% or 60% of the asking price, and it's been a slow day and you're polite, I'm gonna jump on that chance to make a sale. But if you come at me like the person above did, I'm just as likely to RAISE the price of what you're after.

It's rude to come into someone's place of business and lecture them on what they do for a living. There's that old saw about how the customer is always right - but at this point, someone like the example above isn't a customer. They're a nuisance. They're so blinkered by their own perception of a situation that there's no reasoning with them, there's no path to a sensible and mutually fruitful conclusion... and there's no sale. So you're not a customer. So pack up your crazy bag of theories and market predictions and move on. I've fired you as a customer.

Thankfully, people like this are exceedingly rare. Unfortunately, they tend not to go away. The one that inspired this little rant has been emailing me about a $20 CD for the past year, every few months, insisting I sell it for what he deems as a fair price. Obviously, he hasn't found anyone else to sell him one at that price in all this time. At this point I'd rather throw the CD in the trash than sell it to him, even for the full asking price.

I think what irks me the most about a guy like this is how he's so rigid on his principles, he's denied himself the pleasure of the music he's trying to buy for a significant chunk of his life over eight or ten dollars. At that point, it's not about the music at all, it's about a stance.

When I worked retail years ago, a lawyer - a guy who probably pulled down six figures - stopped in every week for months to see if a used copy of the then-new Van Halen best-of had come in yet. A used copy would have run him $7.99, and the new one was (I think) $14.99. Not only did this guy, who wasn't hurting for cash, deprive himself of the songs he wanted for months of his life, but how much time did he waste coming in over and over? How many minutes of his life did he nibble away in worry that he was gonna get "took" by paying seven more dollars for this dumb CD?

I don't know if the guy emailing me now chooses to live like this, or has some sort of compulsion he can't control. But the bottom line is, if someone's price isn't to your liking, go find one that is. If you can't, you might just have to suck it up and be the guy on that end of the supply-and-demand chain for once. And if you DO choose to haggle a little, please, go for it. But it might be a good tactic to not be a pedantic, irritating jerk to the person who owns the thing you want.