Donna Montaldo scored a $175 discount when she bought a gas stove from an appliance store in Louisiana. Sally Greenberg wrangled $100 off the price of a flat-screen TV at Best Buy in Washington, D.C. How? By simply asking.

If you thought haggling was limited to car dealerships and mom-and-pop stores, it's time to broaden your horizons. Nationwide department-store chains, exclusive clothiers, and big-box discounters are open to negotiating prices. You just have to know how and when to approach them.


Get over it

For most folks, the biggest obstacle to haggling is the fear of looking foolish, says Montaldo, a bargaining expert at www.about.com, a consumer-advice Web site. "You have to get it in your head that you are a savvy negotiator, not a cheapskate," she says.

Most salespeople won't be surprised when you ask for a price break. Retailers allow and sometimes even encourage their managers to negotiate, though it's rarely a part of written corporate policy. "It's customer service--an opportunity to say yes to the customer," Montaldo says.

Montaldo has negotiated the biggest discounts for herself at clothing, appliance, furniture, and jewelry stores. But she has haggled everywhere and over just about everything. She's been especially successful when she finds a flaw. "When you buy something new, you should expect it to be perfect," she says. "If there's makeup on the collar of a blouse or a scrape on the inside of a table, that's not new, and you should be able to negotiate a discount."


Follow the rules

Here's how Montaldo saved $175 on the gas stove: It was in perfect shape, so she didn't haggle on the $900 sticker price. (She had already researched the model on the Web and knew that it was priced fairly.) Instead, she asked for free delivery, which would have been $75, and $100 off the cost of installation.

Robert Bordone would call Montaldo's deal a classic example of one of the basic rules of negotiation: Propose an outcome that will be attractive to both sides. Bordone is an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law School and the director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

The key is putting yourself in the other party's shoes, Bordone says. If you make an offer that you wouldn't accept if you were in their place, why would they? But if the offer would satisfy you, chances are that the other side will accept it.

"Always ask" is Greenberg's mantra. When Best Buy didn't have the TV model that she wanted in stock, she asked for a $100 discount on a higher-priced set. The manager agreed to the deal.

Greenberg's typical approach is straight-forward: "First I remind the manager that I'm a good customer and that I spend X amount at his store every month. Then I ask if he can do better on the price," says Greenberg, an attorney who, as it happens, is senior product safety counsel for Consumers Union in Washington, D.C. Consumers Union is the publisher of Consumer Reports and this Web site.

Like Montaldo, Greenberg doesn't pay full retail price for imperfect goods. She's even gotten discounts at Toys "R" Us and Target on items with damaged packaging. But if you don't ask for a discount, she says, you won't get one.