Flea markets, garage sales, swap meets and shops going out of business is where I feel haggling is acceptable. I am not sure how to say it but respectable haggling is what I always go for, i.e. an item is priced at $5 I don't automatically start with, hey I'll pay you a $1 for it. To me that's kind of rude.

Often just being polite and asking if the price is negotiable would open the door to a discount. If they wont budge then I just go on my way.

My only experience with retail haggling was with Macy's. They have those three hour sales and I was so engrossed in finding a purse I missed the deadline by 20 minutes. When I got to the checkout the lady was kind enough to honor the sales price. Retail discounts don't happen often but you have to encounter the right sales person to hook you up in most cases.

~Maddie

Nothing more embarrasing than someone trying to haggle down the price of a prescription for Viagra...In a shop full of customers.

I was never so embarassed as the time I went with my brother to Sears to buy a couple of those cheapo plastic drop cloths for painting his room and I heard him over there trying to get a discount for them being 'the last ones on the rack.' I just walked out to the car an prayed if I ever had to go into that department again, nobody would recognize me. Yet when he finally came to the car he said he got 'em to knock off 10 percent.

the clerk at the local liquor store I go to always gives me a discount. I think that has to do more with being a frequent shopper rather than haggling. since I've never asked for a discount.

Pardon the thread hi-jack, but I have to ask, was your froggie just as fiercesome when you brought him home? Did he live for a long time?

Quite an amusing story!

In college one of my roommates had moved to the US from Hong Kong, and would haggle any place. We'd go to Kroger and he'd be at the register telling the clerk the price on the bananas were too high. Everything he bought he would try to haggle down. Then he'd leave shit on the bottom of the cart hoping the cashier wouldn't see it and he'd just be able to push it out of the store. It got to a point where I didn't even like him any more because he was so uptight about money, I wrote him a check like 4 years ago for 70 bucks and he never cashed it, and went back to HK after college, he came back to the US like 4 months ago and was in New York so he gave me a call, I went to go hang out with him and we were eating dinner and he was like, hey remember this and pulled out the check. He had held onto that check for 4 years, and when traveling back to America from HK had packed it with him and prepared it for our meeting. He asked me if I still had the checking account and when I said no, he asked me to rewrite the check. I told him hell no, and will never talk to him again.

My own grandmother ( regular church attendee) would take the Reader's Digest and put it under that plastic flap on the kids seat built into the shopping carts and push it right out of the store. One time later in life when she was in a wheelchair, I had taken her to Target and she wanted to go to the garden section. she would pull out those decorative 'picks' they stick into flower pots that say things like 'Happy Birthday' etc. and put them under the blanket on her lap. I said, "Granny, what are you doing!" and she told me, "I tried to buy them one time and they said they couldn't sell them separately, so this is the only way I can get them."

She was big, bigger than this one:

http://www.thatpetplace.com/images/Prom ... WILD-C.jpg

She was so huge that when she went to the surface to get air, you'd hear a little "pssh" sound, as if she was a little whale.

I used to feed her goldfish, and you'd see them flutter around in her belly afterwards.

She died two years later, she was probably very old when I got her. African Clawed Frogs can live up to 15 years or so if you play your cards right.

aaah..skullbrain.

Awwww! That sounds soooooooooo cute! Your own little domestic whale . Sounds like she was a good froggie. I'll have to look to see if our local California Academy of Sciences aquarium, has these. Thanks for the link and the story!

While I worked at a record store we got a lot of dudes trying to haggle us down. Thing was, we only had the CD's marked up barely over cost (that's how we made money, made less per CD, but sold TONS because of it) so it was pretty crazy anyway. We'd tell them we don't even get employee discounts because the prices were so low (which was generally true, rarely did we get something at cost.)

It always shocked me when my dad did it too. Again, big appliances, cars, things like that it's expected, but sometimes it's just not. ONCE I've seen him try it at a doctors office for a co-pay, clearly he didn't understand how insurance worked.

Hey that idea of putting shit on the bottom of the cart is so old that Walmart has code words for it. A manager will come up to the cashier and say, "Have you seen Bob this morning?"

Bob= bottom of basket.
They have many other acronyms.

Unless you are in a really bad neighborhood Walgreens has no security.

My Dad uses "consumer reports" for all auto purchases. They have a way of getting dealer prices for $20. You go to the dealer and say, "I won't pay $200 over the price you did" SAVES YOU TONS OF MONEY. (probably none of us buying new cars though....)