Off the back of the discussion on conservatories and certain companies giving it the hard sell “buy right now and I can do it for £xxx” Also the ridiculous initial prices that get slowly brought down once the sales person has has “talked to their line manager” for the appropriate time.
I have had both of these when looking at kitchens in the past.
What are your tales of “The Hard Buy” or Brilliant negotiating when shopping for these types of things.
For context, we are in the market for a new kitchen and want to go in with the right ammo.

Kitchen? Just go straight to the factory – diy-kitchens.com

Based in Wakefield I think, they manufacture for a lot of other companies, they only catch is you have to design it yourself, but they have full tutorials online.

Units come pre assembled, and have higher spec details than equivalent high street stuff – eg thicker backboards.

I’d not want to put a penny in the pockets of these con artists so my advice would be to go to Ikea and just pay their prices.

Hurrying into a store with a friend just before it closes- desperately needing to get some equipment for an event that night. He feels it’s a good time to haggle

“How much are those uv tubes?”

“£20”

“How much if I buy twenty of them”

“£15 each”

“Right, I’ll have three for £15 each then”

A bit befuddled the store owner agrees, we pay, turn to leave and the tubes slide out of their boxes and smash

Before we can say anything the shop keeper says

“You’ll be needing three more tubes at £25 then”

🙂

We haven’t seen an Ikea one we like, though we should double check.
We wouldn’t want to go with a kitchen we haven’t seen an example of.
Not planning on doing it again anytime soon so we will be living with it for many years.

The best ammo is competitive quotes. Play them off each other. You’ll quickly find who wants to sell a kitchen.

For magnet kitchens the biggest discounts are in October.

For magnet kitchens the biggest discounts are in October.

That’s good to know.

Whenever I ask salespeople into the house to quote for home improvements I always make it very clear (in a nice way) that I’m after a written quotation that is good for at least 30 days and that there is absolutely no way I will be buying anything from them at that visit.

If they try the “if you buy now then we’ll give you a discount” routine I remind them what I asked for.

If they persist I tell them to leave and that I’ll not be using them.

Any decent company will be happy to give a proper quotation. IME only shysters do the one day only discount thing.

A few years ago one double glazing salesman asked me what he could do to get me to sign up on the spot for new windows and doors. I told him that if he’d do the lot for £1 then he had a deal, anything more than that wasn’t acceptable.

on the flipside, i do a bit of sales for our company. we are very niche & we have a very full order book. its always amusing when buyers try and play hard negotiating tactics as they are met with a shrug, the price is the price, do you want to order one or not?

Smile!

You’d get no discount if you’re a dick and the best deals I’ve ever done have been when I’ve had a good laugh with the person I’m haggling with!

Yes, I am not intending for it to be an unpleasant process.
I just want to get straight to their best price without the nasty too and fro. which universally P’s everyone off.

As already quoted, diy-kitchens. co.uk are great.

Far cheaper than wickes, even after their 50% off our 50% of price, and others and high quality. Sales and service both brilliant. I fitted ours two years ago.

If from a chain get the best price the branch will offer. Take it and phone a different branch from the car park saying you have been offered x but will go to them if they agree to x-£500. When they agree go back into original branch, give them the price the other branch has agreed and challenge them to beat it for a signature right now.

Until you know what your next best alternative is it is very hard to negotiate.

Also, they know you are interested by virtue of you having been talking to them for an hour or so. They know you are unlikely to walk away. Had this when buying my last car so got my wife to come along after I had spent half the day with the salesman test driving, getting part ex quotes etc and she just flat said ‘no, it’s over budget’ and wouldn’t budge till we had about 10% knocked off. He tried wooing her just to be met with her saying ‘i don’t understand why we need a new car anyway.’

+1 for diykitchens.com

Used to like it when my old boss used to steadfastly refuse to sell stuff – even at a higher previously quoted figure if people pushed too hard 😆

Kitchen buying has become one of those dark art activities, like double glazing and second hand cars. It’s frustrating that people selling them have become a byword for “ripoff”.

There are all sorts of buying tactics people employ every day (as a counter to sales tactics). I use plenty of them – buying is basically my job and even I know I can be a proper pain in the arse.

I’d summarise the approach as this: (1) be serious (so the sellers know you’re worth investing in) and (2) give yourself choice. In other words, don’t get emotionally attached and remember there are dozens of people who will sell you the same or similar.

Oh, and don’t be a tyre kicker. When you find the product you want at an acceptable price, buy it.

As for kitchens, a friend of mine runs his own kitchen business. He’s straightforward with his prices: he’s not in the business to rip people off, so he doesn’t indulge in all that Howdens/Magnet/Wickes/Wren “72% discount” bollocks.

Not exactly kitchen related but that’s what I like about carwow. Stick in what you want and the request goes out to stealers who come back with best and finals straight away knowing they’re competing from the off (assumes it’s not a massive cartel). Assuming you’ve done your homework and like the prices, pick the stealer you hate the least and crack on.

Get price
Counter offer at 30% of what they say, while saying ”old aaht yer aaaand’

Works every time for my reliable source….

+1 for Carwow
I used it recently to decide if the “fantastic offer” a dealer was proposing was actually any good.

From the other side of the fence.

I work in sales for my sins, I enjoy the “hard buy” it’s “the dance” I can’t stand – all I want to do is give my clients the right do-dar for a fair margin considering the value we add, all they want to do, is buy the right do-dar for a fair price. How hard is that?

Well, incredibly if they what to go all Mike Brewer “make me a bid” which is lower than I can buy the thing for and then spend an hour pissing back and forth “I can get it cheaper down the road” “I can buy this on instead” which isn’t the same and doesn’t do what they want it to do but hey it’s 5% cheaper.

Nope, tell me what you want, I don’t even care if you give me your “top price” and I’ll politely tell you yes or no.

As if it were foretold…

Me: we can do you a discount of x% off rrp
Reseller: I need 3x% discount to make it viable. Please investigate.

Just debating on whether to respond with ‘no’ or not to respond at all….

Once had British Gas come out to give me a quote for a new boiler (homecare had just been used and it was on it’s last legs).

After about 30 seconds looking at boiler and pipping, then watching him struggle with a portable printer for 15 minutes he finally slid over a quote.

Boiler was reasonable priced, fitting was about £2000! For a combi to combi swap!

I casually asked; “…So how long does the change over take? About a week?”

He very proudly said “Oh no we can have it you done in a day”…

“So you expect me to pay £2000 for one days work?”

He left rather swiftly after that.