Having decided to accept the inevitability of a nasty coffee machine festering in my kitchen, I likewise decided I could be magnanimous about it’s impending arrival and assist Mr K in getting a good price for it. Over the years I’ve developed quite the reputation for being a tenacious shopper – I can’t stand browsing the shops just looking at ‘stuff’ but when there’s an agenda… I’m usually pretty good at squeezing the price down. I’m also one of those consumers, who wont be ignored when I’m unhappy (Just ask JJJ how I helped her get $1500 back from United Airlines when they tried to mess her over).
Two shopping mottoes: "Never pay full retail" and "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" ….!!! In the past I’ve saved $450 when buying my first digital SLR… saved $580 off a fridge…. saved $180 off a washing machine…. and numerous other largish purchases. Dont get me started on car shopping! 🙂
Anyway the jumping off price for the coffee machine was $799, which is what is appearing in most of the catalogues etc. So I rang around afew retailers doing the "Hi. i am going to buy one of these coffee machines this week, Retailer X said they could do it for $729, can you do a better price than that?" and so on and so forth.
Did pretty good with that approach – got the price down to $599. Then it was time to hit the consortiums. You ring them, tell them your best price and they find someone who will beat it. So you give them the lowest quote you can find, just means they have to work a bit harder to do better. So I called Consortium1 (online guys)…. they came back with $563…. not bad… tried Dad’s old API Shoppers consortium… $550 even… hit BigSal’s Union Shopper consortium and came back with $530.00. Think we’ve bottomed out with that one.
Not too shabby … About a dozen phone calls all up, and $270 saved. 🙂 Now I just have to tell Mr K about my cut of the savings 🙂
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