@tvad I’m not sure there will be a one-size solution to the dilemma. I’m ok with that. The point of such dilemmas is to elicit additional ideas and sub-principles which can help.
When you say that you would pay $3500 to the dealer IF that $3500 represented a discount (in response to the lower price $3000), you’ve articulated a "best practice" as you understand it in the customer-dealer relationship. I hadn’t thought of that!
It reminds me of shopping for carpets in Turkey. If you didn’t haggle or even make a move to walk out, you’d get no respect from them. They wanted to haggle — it was part of the relationship-expectation. Would they like it if an idiot tourist paid full price? Sure. But the norm of haggling fulfills something beyond the sheer quantitative goal of the business relationship. In our culture, haggling is very awkward and sometimes completely inappropriate. It’s hard to know when that is, especially in business like high-end audio, where there’s an expectation that rich people are buying the stuff and they’ll pay whatever it costs.
When you say that you would pay $3500 to the dealer IF that $3500 represented a discount (in response to the lower price $3000), you’ve articulated a "best practice" as you understand it in the customer-dealer relationship. I hadn’t thought of that!
It reminds me of shopping for carpets in Turkey. If you didn’t haggle or even make a move to walk out, you’d get no respect from them. They wanted to haggle — it was part of the relationship-expectation. Would they like it if an idiot tourist paid full price? Sure. But the norm of haggling fulfills something beyond the sheer quantitative goal of the business relationship. In our culture, haggling is very awkward and sometimes completely inappropriate. It’s hard to know when that is, especially in business like high-end audio, where there’s an expectation that rich people are buying the stuff and they’ll pay whatever it costs.