How To Play “Lets Make A Deal”

Negotiating when thrifting is an art. Depending on the store’s policy you can score some pretty fab pieces at a nice discount. But it can be sort of scary right? Like, what if they say NO! I will be referring to this game A LOT in the Epic Room Makeover posts so I thought I would kick the tutorials off with the most important/awkward one first.

How to play Lets Make A Deal.

Now don’t get me wrong, I can hold my own when it comes to wheelin and dealin but when there is a little something called peer pressure it takes it to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL. My partners in crime are my girls Mia and Jilly

Rule 1. Know their policy. If you are going into a store that you know will not negotiate its sort of a waste of time to try. If you are going into an Estate/Yard Sale or a store that will negotiate then go in ready!

 

Rule 2. Don’t discredit their price offensively. No one wants to hear that what they are selling is a piece of crap and that you would never be caught dead paying that much (even if that is how you feel).

 

Rule 3. If they even entertain the lower the price a little then you know that negotiations have begun. Had Randy said “The door is $75, I cant go down at all, its our policy.” Then it would have been much harder. The Restore in St. George doesn’t negotiate AT. ALL. Buuuut because Randy went down on the price and didn’t say anything about a policy it was ON.

Poor guy, he had no idea what he was up against.

Rule 4. The key to Let’s Make a Deal is bundling. It works for your phone/internet/cable and it is CRUCIAL to getting Randy/Todd/Helen to drop the price.

Rule 5. Have FUN! People are WAY more likely to give you a deal if they like you! Use their name, find out a little bit about them,  make friends!

This is a real life situation that we recorded so you guys could see how it went down.

Meet poor unsuspecting Randy the employee at Restore who had the privilege of helping us lock down the price for our sliding barn door.

There was a sign posted that said “Solid Core Doors $35.00”. Well this door was solid core, so in our minds it was priced at $35.00. Randy was not amused. He said that the price of the door was between $75-$100. We explained to him that the door was with the sign that said “Solid Core Doors $35.00”. He then explained to us that that sign was for doors that were normal height and that our door was 8ft tall. He said he would go down to $65.

In Randy’s case,  we bundled the door with a canvas that we really liked that Randy wanted to get rid of. The total offer was $60 and he was getting us out of his store. I mean how could he say no?

 

Up next is Serg. He owns a small Estate Sale in a storage unit in downtown Phoenix. In this video we took 2 end tables from $100 to $15 each. Bam. You may need to turn your volume up for this video.

So do you have any tips to add to the Lets Make A Deal rules?

Check out the other posts in the Epic Room Makeover 2012 Series:

Epic Room Makeover Reveal

Source List

How To Build A Simple Sliding Barn Door

Love Your Guts, Mandi