Chapter 12
Negotiating Your Best Deal
In This Chapter
Managing your emotions
Understanding the negotiating process
Structuring an offer the seller can’t refuse
Including contingencies — clauses that protect you financially and structurally
Spotting fake sellers
Low-balling pros and cons
Handling credits in escrow
When it comes to buying things, most Americans are lousy negotiators. Negotiation isn’t part of our culture. We’ve been conditioned for generations to be docile buyers who pay whatever price is marked on a can of beans or a TV set. Instead of negotiating with someone eyeball-to-eyeball to drive down the price, at best we comparison shop to find the store with the lowest price. (And many time-starved people don’t even do that.)
Sure, we can negotiate when our back is to the wall. We haggle over expensive things like cars and dicker with the boss for a raise, but doing so makes us uncomfortable. We walk away from these encounters with the nagging suspicion that we came out on the short end of the deal — that someone else could’ve done better.
Realizing our nation’s discomfort with negotiating, some car dealers have taken the haggling out of buying a car. Instead of using high-pressure sales tactics, these dealers post a sales price on the car — the no-dicker sticker. That’s their price; take it or leave it. If you take it, you probably won’t get the lowest price, but some people think that’s a fair trade-off to avoid the unpleasantness of negotiating.
You won’t find no-dicker ...
