The art of haggling is an old form of coming to agreement on price, rights etc. in simpler words it is to negotiate or more precisely a conclusion. This practice has been in use for thousands of years especially in the Middle East, orient, and has crept to Eastern Europe and more recently to North America. About 20 years ago, I never saw anyone haggling on purchase price of anything here. The price was the price and that was that. About 15 years ago, I started seeing people want to haggle but not sure about the rules. I will try to outline rules of haggling here:
1- Decide if you want the item. If you are not serious about buying it, do no proceed. You should never haggle for the sake of haggling.
2- Come up with a price that you are comfortable paying after carefully inspecting the item. If you see that the item is selling for a fair price, you do not need to haggle. Be fair!
3- In a respectful manner discuss the price with the seller. Only in North America the buyer is king. Everywhere else the seller is King, that is because there is a shortage of items. In the Middle East the shop owner will throw you out if you insult them. Again be fair with the price. Do not automatically go with 50% of asking price. If you are buying from a store their mark up is usually 100 percent, you offering 50% means they are selling for “0” profit.
4- If you come to an agreement on the price, you CAN NOT say I will think about it. (for those who do not understand, it is very simple, think of going to buy a house or a car. You sit and write an offer with the conditions of what you are offering. Once the other party agrees to the terms, there is no going back. Either you buy or you forfeit the deposit. In the same manner, the point of haggling is to buy, thinking about it should have come before haggling.
5- Do not waste people’s time. If you know you are not serious, why are wasting the salespersons time. On sites like Kijiji, Craigslist or FB Marketplace, ordinary people are trying to sell their items, many of them wholesaling. They are not large companies like Amazon, EBay and Wayfarer who retail. If you are really interested best to go and have a look, do not send a hundreds of emails asking about everything and nothing comes out of it.
I hope this helps. Happy Shopping