So I’m working on a novella where the worldbuilding involves a complex system of barter. My main character is told, “People who don’t haggle might come off like a sucker. No one respects a sucker.”
I don’t know about you, but I hate haggling. I want the price to be the price, and to pay it and be done. But that’s not how the world works. And I also hate feeling like a sucker.
Lately, I’m trying to institute a system of rewards for when I meet my goals. (See a recent post about setting habits. I get a sparkly sticker on my day planner when I do the writing sprint. Silly, but tangible.) As a big reward for finishing the rough draft of PsyCop 9, I splurged on an espresso maker. But when I went back to the Amazon page as I was setting it up, because I remembered there were useful tips in the reviews, I saw the cost of the machine was almost $20 less than when I bought it three days ago.
I really hate feeling like a sucker.
I also really didn’t want to box it back up, send it back, and rebuy it. Because then I’d eat $11 in shipping, and blow an hour trying to get it back in the box. (It was really hard to unbox.) Plus it seemed unethical, because I’d already washed the whole thing and it couldn’t be resold as new. So I wrote a nice letter to customer service asking if they could refund me the difference.
I got a canned response saying basically, no.
Annoyed, because I DON’T WANT TO BE A SUCKER, I endeavored to research my options. I saw that many credit cards offer price protection. I’m chagrined to say I paid with a debit card, so no soup for me. But you bet your bippy I set my Discover card my primary payment method for future purchases.
So, please take some benefit from this expensive lesson I learned: it’s worth checking what benefit you have on your cards and which payment method is set as your default.
(I then went and checked to see if my big spendy computer still cost the same as when I bought it. It does. Phew.)
*I think the novella will be ready by Valentine’s day. Can’t wait for you guys to read it!
Photo by Flооd on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND
Jordan Castillo Price 