Are you good at haggling prices?

Howdy folks 🤠 how are you today? My day was very busy more than it usually is and it's mostly because I wrote 2 articles today, I had to make room in my schedule during the day to add 2-hours of writing (all thanks to the recent cross-post restrictions by hive). After writing, it was already noon and I quickly rushed over to coding, that was what I was doing until 6 pm this evening. want to see what I am working on?

It's a game 😁 and it's still a work in progress. I will add more cars later on and also increase the speed after every level. There are still a lot of things to add to it but I will just take them one step at a time. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my programming journey, I want to discuss something all of us are familiar with in one way or the other.

Price haggling

What's price haggling? According to investopedia;

To haggle is when two parties involved in a transaction such as the purchase of a good and service negotiate the price until both parties can mutually agree on a fair price. The process of haggling involves two parties making sequential offers and counteroffers to each other until a price is agreed upon.

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This is something I believe we are all familiar with and will at one point have to deal with unless you're the type who has lots of money and doesn't bother to haggle prices when shopping 😆. One thing I have learned over the years when it comes to traders at a local market is that most of them increase the real price of a product and expect you to haggle it down to the actual price or close enough.

For example, if a pair of shoes actually cost $50 (the base price), they will tell you it's $70 and you have to haggle the price down to that base price. If you don't haggle, you will be ripped off and you will end up buying the shoes for $70. Some people may end up buying it at $60, but the patient ones will be able to beat the price down till it gets to the base before buying it.

Some people are very good at haggling prices and nobody does it better than women, specifically mothers 😂 I have witnessed my mom haggling prices so many times and I always feel pity for the trader, sometimes I will have to close my ears because of the unbelievable prices I'm hearing and do you know the crazy part? Most of the time she gets the item for the price she proposed!

I used to follow her to the market a lot when I was a kid and sometimes when she's haggling prices, I start praying we don't get beaten up by everyone in the market 😂. It's mostly when it comes to food items like meat and fish that it gets worse.

Mom: You said the price for this fish is what again?

Seller: it's $100 ma

Mom: I'm giving you $30

Me: (looking around to make sure no one else hears that 😆).

At the end of the day, she ends up buying the fish for $40 but I know if it's me, I will give up at $80. I can only haggle properly when I already know the price of what I'm buying, and I start haggling from below the base price coz I know the trader is going to say a higher amount.

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For example, if I know a pair of shoes cost $100, the seller might say it's $130, then I will tell him it's $70, from there we start working our way up until one person gives up or will meet at the base price of $100 😆. But when it comes to things I don't know the actual price, I'm at the mercy of the seller coz I won't know the price to target.

I might haggle the price of those shoes to $110 and the seller will agree, I will leave the shop thinking I got it cheaper but meanwhile I paid $10 extra, that's a simple example of winning the battle but losing the war; I got the shoes but paid higher than the real amount. It's because of this that I usually investigate the price of an item (mostly by asking people who have bought it) before actually going to buy it.

So, that's my usual strategy when it comes to haggling prices; I start lower than the actual price because I know the seller will start higher. It works most of the time but sometimes it doesn't, especially when I don't know the actual price. What strategies do you use when haggling prices or do you always pay the exact amount you're told? Let me know in the comments below, maybe I will learn something new 😉

Thanks for reading 💖💖💖

Tuesday August 16, 2022