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I’m pretty good at haggling. Whenever we need to buy a major asset, Richard stands back and watches me do the negotiating. The adult kids occasionally ask for my advice when they’re making a major purchase.
Even if the product or service has a firm list price, I’m not afraid to initiate a negotiation if it’ll save me some money, especially if the product is priced extremely high. When buying No Tan Lines, I negotiated the price down $30K. That was a 23.1% savings! (Yeah, I calculated it.)
Oh, the awesome (expensive) arch! They provide mariners with extra room for even more equipment (toys!). And, even better, they look super cool! No Tan Lines (“Tanny”) has one solar panel hanging from the port side that hasn’t worked since we bought her. Tanny’s myriad of antennas are attached to stanchions on the port side of the stern. I’m not even sure all of those work, either.
We had a really nice set of davits for the dinghy but we knew we’d have to remove them in order on install an arch. The good news is they’re worth about $1500-$2000 used. We took pictures so we can sell them.
For the arch, we contacted a well-known local firm for a quote. They came out and measured Tanny, and the estimate was astronomical. I was expecting to pay maybe $3K to $4K. When the much higher estimate arrived, I said, “No way!” I had resigned myself to the fact that we just weren’t going to have an arch.
Fast forward to the St. Petersburg Boat Show a few weeks later. The same arch company had a booth there and they were advertising the same arch for a much lower price. $1800!! I didn’t hesitate to immediately confront the guy working at the booth. Why was the price so much lower than the quote I’d received? He stammered a bit, and tried to tell me the boat show special was for an arch that was too small for my boat. Uh huh… It’s so funny when salesmen in an industry dominated by men (boat products) think this blonde chick was born yesterday.
Fast forward again to the following Monday. Brian called the owner. He’d heard we’d been at the boat show. After Brian’s added high-skilled negotiations, we did indeed get the arch for the boat show price and Brian would install it for us, saving us even more money. The deal was so good that Brian got one for his boat, too!
Our awesome and multi-talented neighbor, Diego, pitched in to help and now both No Tan Lines and Floggin’ Molly have beautiful arches AND new davits to boot! (The davits were only $400 per set, and they attach directly to the new arches.) Now we get to begin the fun task of deciding on new solar panels. If you have any recommendations, please let us know! 🙂
NEXT: CAN GIRLS DOCK BIG BOATS? YEP!!
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Angela Hoy is a publisher, a blogger, and the author of 19 books. She lived on dirt her entire life before her family gave away almost everything they owned, and moved onto a 52-foot Irwin Center Cockpit Ketch. They all live, work, and play on board full-time.
Angela is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, a free source of paying markets for freelance writers and photographers. If you want to write for magazines, websites, businesses, or others, check it out. It’s free! Her publishing services company, BookLocker.com, has published more than 9,000 books over the past 18 years. If you want to publish a book, she’d love to hear from you! Abuzz Press is BookLocker’s hybrid publishing company. And, PubPreppers.com offers services to authors who are having their books published elsewhere.