a friend of mine told me she flaked on a guy yesterday but she didnt feel too bad about it because he called her up and haggled her price.

she figured since he was calling her up to waste her time, that turn-about is fair play.

ladies - do you feel like a guy is wasting your time if your rates are posted but he calls you to haggle ?

men - when you have been flaked on in the past, did you haggle the girls price when you called ?

could this be one possible explanation for the large # of flaked appointments ?

i dont let guys haggle, but if i did.. i might not be as concerned about keeping an appointment for less than my rate. especially if someone else calls before the guy gets there.

if you don't like haggling (understandable) then don't make an appointment. But once you do, honor it.

but the guy knows her rate before calling so if he doesnt want to pay it, why call and waste her time ?

now whenever i ask a guy why would he call me if he doesnt want to pay my rate, the answer is always

it never hurts to ask.

i'm thinking maybe it does but guys just dont know it.   i agree she should honor the appointment but i also think guys shouldnt call us if they arent willing to pay our rate... both people are wrong so do 2 wrongs make a right ?

Your price is your price....if he can't afford it maybe she should find a provider who fits his financial situation.  Or just play with himself and roll over and go to bed.  Time is money.  Or as I say.  Good labor isn't cheap, and cheap labor isn't good.  You know?

I don't go to places of business and haggle their prices.  It is what it is.

While I still havnt been hobbying very long, I havnt been "flaked on" at all.

I was canceled on once (in advance), and offered a discount as a result, which I silently declined but truly appreciated. When I did finally see her, I gave the posted donation and hoped she noticed and accepted the difference as a tip.

I guess my answer to your question is "no" - I wouldn't haggle. I dont think it is the thing a gentleman would do (though one expects a lady to call if she is late or cant show as well).

Ladies  I have personally called and asked if there was an "early bird" special and have found about equalamount of the time that there is/was even though none was published. I am not rude nor do I offer a price for what I would be willing to pay.  I just merely ask. As for running a service oriented business that you are... I presently own and operate and have in the past owned and operated as many as 2 other very high end resorts and people would always call to see if there were specials running for inherently slow times of the year.  I loved it as I could fill an otherwise slower time period and not have to continuosly change my advertising to reflect those "holes" in the bookings. By publishing those slow periods or "holes" I felt, diminished the amount and quality of the full fare bookings that I already had. I think you ladies should get off your high horses and realize that a client is a client and if you don't want to offer him a special kindly say that your rates are non-negotiable, nothing more, nothing less. Taking it personally is not good business sense. Putting that directly on your web sight would also deter me/us from even asking in the first place.
PS Your probably wondering if I was so smart what happened to those lodges? I sold them for alot of money.

She should just hang up on a haggler but if she doesn't then she has given him the impression that she is willing to bargain with him and see him. I don't haggle and I don't have much use for guys that do but they are out there and their are ladies who see them. If you decide to deal with a haggler it's only right to follow through.

Let me ask you this.  Is it worth the possibility of having the guy complain about her no-showing on the local TER board just to get a little revenge?

-- Modified on 3/21/2008 5:13:11 PM

"Putting that directly on your web sight would also deter me/us from even asking in the first place. "

---apparently not. Many have complained here that despite this being posted on their websites, people still push for a discount.

There'll always be people who haggle whether we like it or not.  How we deal with it is our choice.  If she did make an appointment, she should be professional and honor it.  Personally I don't deal with hagglers; I ignore them.  And if any of my clients haggle (which I don't think they would), I really wouldn't want to see them again.

It is this simple.

Is this a buisness to you?

If the answer is yes then act professionally. If you agree to a call then stick with it. If someone calls offering more money call the person and let them know that you had a full price offer and you are going to take it. You can tell them that you may accept the offer another time or you will not.

It only takes a very short time to simply say no. If that’s considered a waste of her time then it only reinforces my view that she’s taking it too personally.  Say no and hang up. Otherwise, by continuing the conversation she is equally culpable in the “time wasting”. If she eventually agrees to a negotiated rated she needs to honor the agreement.

I personally have never negotiated. For me, negotiating would detract from the fantasy. The more quickly and the more easily we move past the remuneration, the better for me. But there are all kinds of businesses (many of similar nature) where negotiation is accepted. I can’t imagine any successful business person who normally does not negotiate would try to punish a potential customer for attempting same, at least not one that stays successful.

Yes.

it is personal though. This is a business, Yes...BUT none like any other. It is a very intimate personal business. You are right simply say no and be done with it.
But you expect us, the woman, to see that you the men who haggle I guess, don't Mean it personally. We should just "understand" that.
In the same right...You should as men also "understand" it is to Us, not all of us but alot , that it is personal.
It's got to do with dealing with the public, any business you need thick skin it's a bit more difficult. It feels sometimes and I need to remind myself, again and I know it's not personal, it's business. But like I said, like no other business. A little sensativity on all parts can go a long way.

No, I do not expect that. I hope I didn't come accross that way.

For those of us men that do not negotiate, it is also VERY MUCH personal as well. I think that's why we DON'T haggle.

If you don't want to see guys that refuse to view you as a "person", then maybe whether or not he tries to haggle needs to be part of the screening process.

-- Modified on 3/21/2008 7:21:37 PM

I see this as a business and remind myself that if he is haggling, and not many have ever tried, I am not interested anyway. So I do not have an issue with it myself. And not directed at you, but at those who Do haggle. They fail to see the reason why the woman get upset. I was not directing it at you just trying to show the other side of the coin.

I would normally agree that if you take an appointment then honor it.
But the scenario presented by Anna make me say yes and no.  
Rule of thumb cover your over head first......so if a provider decided to take a client  to fill in
a blank spot in the day
and later get a call offering her your normal rate should she flake or not......
Well...How does it go?  It takes money to make money and falling short of ones goals to appease someone else
maybe PC but not always wise.

Good question Anna!

Why take an appointment at all that would not at least cover overhead?

And if a higher paying client would always trump, on that logic why limit it to hagglers? If someone later comes along to offer higher than normal rate, why not then bail on the original client even if he was to pay the standard rate?

I have never cancelled an appt for that reason. It happens all the time though. I set an appt and a good long time client who I'd love to see will want the same time slot, it stinks but I honor the original appt and hope my other Gent will settle for a different time. being low volume has its draw backs I guess but it also has it's plus side as well.

Sometimes it hurts temporarily to do the right thing, but it will pay off in the long run, not to mention that, it's the right thing to do.

I don't think it's personal at all, even on the part of the providers.  Show me a provider who says she takes haggling as an insult and I'll show you a provider whose rates might be too low.  If no client paid her supposedly non-negotiable rates, she'd be happy to haggle.

I hate haggling, but I admire the self-respect of those who do it.  I'll take any provider who says she'd flake on a client because he tried to haggle after arranging a meeting off my "to do" list.  Has any provider who flaked ever paid the client for the cost of a hotel room he got just to meet her?

I'm always polite, honest, and respectful in arranging appointments with providers and I never haggle with them, but I've been flaked on several times.  I think the main reason for flaked appointments is the anonymity of the providers.  If they had to pay the client for the cost of his hotel room, lost time, etc., the flakiness would diminish.

A tale of extreme annoyance, a bit of revenge, and maybe the poor dumb SOB finally learned a lesson (probably not).

There was once a gent who called me about once a week who would first ask if I was offering any specials currently. Answer: no. Then he would ask if I would consider seeing him for a discount. Answer: No.

After about the fourth time the guy called me, I finally told him I would see him at a discount, set the time and told him to call me back for directions. I then promptly added his number to my blocked list, and no, I don't feel even a tiny bit bad about getting a little revenge by making an appointment I had no intention of keeping.

Asking once was tacky. Calling me repeatedly was insulting, annoying, and a waste of my time.

What I have done in the past with guys that politely ask ONCE for discounts (when I do not have one advertised) is this..."You have two options...pay my normally advertised fee and get my full attention OR I give you a discount and also discount the attention offered? Which option suits you best at this time?

With what I feel are pathological cheapos, a firm yet polite No Thank you and good-bye works very well. I would not book and then no show.

We are talking about people exposing their vulnerabilites and intimacies here, whether we care to acknowledge that fact or not.

Therefore, it behooves all of us, but especially the clients, to be very circumspect in all aspects of their dealings with a provider.

No one is enhanced if a transaction results in hurt feelings.  The commodity at stake here is obviously more than time and bodies.  It is emotion as well.

Consider show business for a moment.  Actors use agents to do their negotiating for them.  Why is that?  It's because it is too stressful for an artist to sit and discuss their worth like it was a barrel of nails; so they are insulated from that stress by an agent who has to be two parts psychologist to one part negotiator.

Unfortunately, there are no agents here (except for the case of agencies, which is another matter).  Ergo, the best practice is to forego the usual step of haggling over a price and just pay what the provider lists in her ad and be done with it.

I personally do not haggle, ever.
However, making an appointment with the intent of being a no show is also a classless act.
This applies to both sides.

to retaliate in kind, TBM is absolutely correct. Flaking out is just a classless an act as haggling.

It is the moral equivalent to pulling a NCNS on a provider because she had bad reviews. I'm sure a hobbyist could make a case for this type of behavior in his own mind by saying that she was a ROB anyhow and who cares about HER time, but it would still be a classless act.

The provider can't win by reacting this way to a client. Her winding up on the TER boards should not worry her near as much as winding up on a certain influential private board. That could ruin her providing business. She'd be much better off to not play games at all and just get the word out to other providers.

-- Modified on 3/22/2008 8:47:59 AM

Whether it's proper to haggle over the numbers or not, and I'm not one who does such a thing, but once a figure is agreed upon it should be honored.  Why should this part of the biz be any different that any other business?

If you go into a store and buy want to buy something that's on sale and they don't have it, don't you think that store should honor that price at a later date?  As a consumer, I would consider the act of a no show as a dishonorable thing if it was based on price.

Let's face it, there is more to this story than we're reading here.  The economy is tanking and perhaps this lady, like many of us, had bills due in her real life and her dance card was not as full as she liked it.  Maybe that is why she entered into negotiations in the first place, something she likely wouldn't have done a year ago.  It's only good business to maximize your profit and avoid a loss.

Once you agree to something, you should honor that agreement.

-- Modified on 3/22/2008 10:20:30 AM

I've noticed those who flake on me call and haggle first, I agree and then they don't show up.

It pissed me off then I learned not to lower my rate for someone unless I choose to offer a special.

when you haggle, you are saying, i dont think what you're selling is worth that much.


thats kind of mean when you look at what we're selling.

when a guy haggles with me, i up my price.

but its interesting to see what other providers do to them

if you have the money, why would you try to diminish someone's value just to save 50 bux ?

i'll stay on my horse and i'll do just fine dear.

If it bothers you that much to get contacted by hagglers, then put text on your website that says prominently, "Any attempt to negotiate these prices will result in me blocking your number and your email address.  I never run specials, and I never change my rates from whatever I list on this site."

Then WALK THE DAMN WALK.  Put anyone who attempts to negotiate a deal on the same block that you put the guys who call you just to jerk off to the sound of your voice.  Don't assume that a guy can read your mind just from the text you've put on your website; if you don't tell him you're deeply offended by this, he won't know.  It's not like there aren't any ladies anywhere who won't partake in a little haggling, so it's not reasonable to assume that he's going to treat it as a grievous offense.

I've inquired about current specials before, and had mixed results.  I've also had an IM conversation while I was on a business trip with a lady who I had seen the night before, and she tried to interest me in a repeat engagement.  I told her that my hobby budget for the trip was seriously depleted, and I couldn't quite swing her outcall rate.  She made me an offer that if I would buy her dinner at a nice place (which I put on a credit card), she'd settle for what I had, and we proceeded to have a lovely time.  I don't consider that "haggling" -- I didn't initiate contact, nor did I ask her to accept anything besides her listed rate.  She was available, wanted a nice dinner, and wanted to see me again.  We worked out an acceptable compromise to both of us, which was the best possible solution, in my opinion.

I think it's possible to tactfully inquire about any possibility that rates may change in certain circumstances, but that you need to be prepared to accept a response in the negative.  It's not an offense to be of limited financial means, and nobody should be basing their self-worth on their hourly rate.  It's disrespectful to accept an offer and then fail to live up to it, and that goes for all parties involved.

Sure, I'd like to pay less, but if I was successful at the negotiation, then in the back of my mind I would always be suspicious that I wasn't going to get your "A" game.

The main reason I don't haggle is that it further impersonalizes the whole encounter.