If you have ever been in the market to buy a car or some similar item, you know the power of walking away. You know, you do your thing of back and forth negotiation and when the salesperson says they cannot go any lower, you thank them and walk away. If you are truly willing to do that, it can go along way to accessing that “secret” price that you were not offered before. 🙂
Learning To Walk Away Online
Well, the phenomena of walking away has been on the internet for a while now and can save you money in just as many ways. I only wish I had kept a list of the different services and products that offered me a discount or an increase of the product when I tried to leave. The point is that websites will offer you something better oftentimes but not until you are getting ready to leave them for another product/service. At that point, they do a pop up offer for additional discounts or increased benefits. So, how does this work?
Here Come The Discounts
This little feature works quite a bit with service-based businesses. I have had the pop-up discounts occur with Audible (audiobooks) before as I went to leave after looking at the subscription services. They then offered me 3 free months to try it out, on top of the 3 months that were already offered. This has happened to me with XM radio, internet providers, cell phone providers, and more.
Websites are fairly smart. They are not often going to offer you the back-of-the-shop sale price just for visiting and leaving their site. The discounts start to come if you check out the price list or product offerings and then leave. The time spent on the site or the pages visited can often trigger the pop-ups. The pop-ups come when you try to leave the page. If you try closing the internet tab, it will pop up something to offer you something.
Another time the pop-ups will occur is when you are filling out an order form or some similar submission form and then try to leave. The pop up will come to encourage you to stay and finish it.
The Vonage “Extra” Offer
Don’t Go Anywhere!!! 🙂
The most recent site I had this happen with was Vonage, the voice-over-ip provider. I had clicked to check a portal bonus for miles and they were offering $9.99 per month for 12 months. For service-based business like Vonage, it really does not break them to offer an additional discount since they are providing a service and not a product. The sale was a $35 Groupon gift card and when I went to “walk away” it popped up an offer a $25 prepaid gift card. Combined with the Groupon gift card, I would get $60 in value for a one-year commitment of $9.99 per month for an internet-based calling plan. Not bad!
Summary
So, to try this out, go to the website of interest and click to check pricing. After looking at it, try to close the tab. If they have such an offer, it should pop up to you at that point. This doesn’t typically happen with products, but can offer small, additional discounts for such stores for time to time. I have had it happen before at the MLB store online.
What stores have you had this happen for? It does work sometimes with foreign airlines as well!!!
[…] More often than not, people will bite into an offer as if their lives depend on it. This results in people reducing their margins so much that if you factor in your costs for pick up, you actually lose money than make. It is a trap that people fall for, transport is never for free! So if your max to spend is say, 150 euros for a 70 euro profit (great margin!), do not settle for 200 euros, unless you can pick it up by bike, your transport costs will be higher and thus your own profit margin when flipping will be way lower or non existent. And more often than not, you might get a discount if you just dare to walk away! […]