I've bargained at furniture stores for a leather sofa because I thought one of the cushions looked "off color" (it was, but just _barely), and my mother once bargained $100 off of a refrigerator at Best Buy, and she didn't even buy the damn replacement plan. You can cut up to $20/month off your cable bill just by threatening to leave.
Everything is negotiable, and everyone likes to be negotiated with (even the drama queens in car sales that yell in outrage in the back room with their manager then gives you your price).
99% of the consuming public doesn't give a damn about doing that, though; probably because swiping plastic doesn't feel like money until the end of the month.
Come now, we don't call Microsoft or Cisco's (or any other) outsized profits a "sucker's chest" now do we? And, most of us either have or once bought a house or mechanized vehicle, and we didn't go there, look at the flyer and say "well, that's the price. Where's my wallet?"
Haggling is healthy, it's the lifeblood of commerce. If it's how retailers negotiate at the wholesale level, why can't we turn around and do it at the consumer level?
I think, if you call it anything, you should call it the "authority tax", because you're trusting their price as gospel because they're the big, scary faceless monolithic vendor of great success. They're just a business. We're all in business. We all should be looking at CDW, OfficeMax, Dell, Apple, as the same as us. It's American worship of the corporation that makes us roll over and give them all their 30% growth year over year, not the fact that they're "honest".
Sure, some people might be okay with the haggle or even expect it.
At my company, I've come across people who find it in their nature to haggle the price. There are only 2 ways to deal with them. Up the price and come down to your normal price or don't deal with those customers.
99% of the time, I tell that we don't negotiate price. We charge what we charge because we do a good job and you're going to love it when we're done. 1% it's a good friend so yea...
If they ask again, I tell them we're not a good fit for each other. 7 times out of 10, they try to convince me to do business with them after that. 3 out 10 walk away, which is awesome because they just saved me a shit load of headache.
Nothing personal but I feel cheat out of money if I give into hagglers and if I'm not happy, I find it harder to serve them as well as I want to. Better to refuse that business than to provide sub-par service.
