Consumer

3 On Your Side: Haggling

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― As the price of just about everything goes up getting a discount is more important than ever. But as 3 On Your Side's Jim Donovan shows you, you don't always have to wait for the something to go on sale to get a reduced price.

Whether it's a T-shirt or a TV, sometimes that tag doesn't have to be the price you pay. But you have to be willing to haggle.

And you shouldn't be too embarrassed to do it, according to saving expert Teri Gault. She says you should always feel free to ask for a lower price.

"Nobody seems to get offended and if they say no it's fine," said Gault.

Teri makes her living helping others save money on her web sites teritoday.com and grocerygame.com.

And she practices what she preaches. She wanted a T-shirt from Macy's, but didn't want to pay 35 dollars for it.

So she began asking for a reduced price.
"Are there any discounts at all? No there isn't. Are there any coupons? No there isn't. And I said, can you think of anything that we can do to get this t-shirt marked down a little? And that's when she said are you a visitor? And I was," said Gault.

Macy's has a policy of giving so-called "visitor" discounts of 11 percent and Teri got it.

Bargaining worked for her at Best Buy too.
"This is awesome. Big score, big, big," said Gault.

The store matched the best price Teri had found online for a Garmin GPS. The original price was 449 dollars.

"I got it for 269.99. They got me 180 dollars off," said Gault.

After a few questions, Best Buy was also willing to make a deal on a camcorder, listed at 499 dollars in the store.

The store clerk explained, "if it's online at a lower price at bestbuy.com, than I can match that," said the clerk.

She checked. When she returned she said that she did find it on the website for 449, so she was able to sell it for that price.
That's a savings of 50 dollars, just for asking.

The next stop is the TV department at Sears, where the sales person also agreed to lower the price by 10 percent.

"There's practically everything you can negotiate," said Deborah Kolb, author of Everyday Negotiation.

She says, negotiating really works.
"Consumer reports did a survey and they found in appliances, electronics, jewelry, furniture, when people negotiate, they had over 90 percent success rate," said Kolb.
If the store clerk can't help you, try asking to speak with a manager.

They might say no but even if you can't get money off an item, there's still a chance you can get accessories or services that go along with the item at a discounted price.

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