Regards, Yon

You likely have more experience than I but it strikes me that based on your description there are some moves open to you.

For example, after the dealer quotes a ridiculous price, you might not react at all but say with an utterly straight face, "I understand that you have to try but I'm actually serious about this piece and if we can agree on a price, I will buy it. I do know that similar pieces have sold at auction recently for about $___. Let's see if we can deal seriously and realistically about this piece."

I don't know what a give dealer might respond but notice that you're now in a position that makes a failure to go on the result of his actual behavior not the result of your prediction of it.

I've been taught that a general rule in bargaining is to keep things pleasant, say things that make it more likely that conversation will go on, and give the other person a maximum chance to make a deal with you. That latter means arranging sentences so that if you fail to make a deal it, is a result of his actual overt behavior, not your predictions about what it is likely to be.

And there's one more thing: if you try this strategy and it fails, you have lost nothing. You are then only in the same position as you are in as you walk away in digust at his initial riduculously high quote.

You have likely seen and tried this strategy but if not, it might be worth testing.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I'm kind of a blunt and to the point person, and have never been reluctant to tell a dealer that his stuff is really nice but more than I am willing to pay. I don't use the "I can get it cheaper down the street" line, though. It reminds me of the story of the woman who comes into the butcher shop and asks for lamb chops. The butcher tells her that it will be $6.00 per pound. She replies that the butcher down the street sells it for $5.00 per pound. "Well, go down there and get it from him then", the butcher says. "But he has none left", she says. "Well", says the butcher. "when I have none left, my price is only $4.00 a pound."

As an aside, I don't look to break dealers' backs, and on more than one occasion I have reminded dealers who were good friends that the price at which they were offering me something seemed awfully low, and that I wanted them to be sure to make a profit on the sale. Otherwise, my good friend won't be a dealer much longer and I'll have to cultivate other sources!

Regards,

Steve Price

Making an analogy between how rug dealers negotiate their prices and how physicians do so, particularly the spin on the motivation behind giving pro bono care to indigent patients, is ridiculous. It is also offensive to anyone in the medical profession.

Steve Price

I like both the butcher’s prices and medical exam price examples and think they are applicable. Surely just about every dealer has made an occasional lucky “find” and hopes to make more than his usual markup on it—to make up for bad purchases that sit forever in a corner of the gallery, and on which he ultimately loses money. And that’s another thing: few customers are inclined to believe that a dealer is speaking the truth when he says he is willing to sell a piece at cost or below cost, just to get out from under it. Maybe the color or patterning proved to be unpopular, maybe fashions changed, or he decided it not a smart purchase…whatever. Believe me: it happens!

Marla

This is why doctors tell patients that an echocardiogram costs 600-700.00 dollars, they will occasionally get that much for it. In reality a real patient in real difficulty without insurance might get the exam for 50.00 dollars or whatever they can pay. In the same way a rug dealer with only a very limited amount of virtuous material will start out very high on the odd chance that you just might pay it.

Here's what that says, in slightly different words.
1. A doc tells his patients that an ECG costs $600+ because he can sometimes get that much for it. But for someone who's poor, he'll do it for $50 or less.
2. A rug dealer will quote you a high price because he can sometimes get that much for it. But he will often come down to what you can afford. It's similar to how a physician deals with indigent patients.

Baloney. Physicians have been treating the indigent without charging anything like what it takes to make a living on the services for ages. They do it for humanitarian motives - better to take a beating on the fee than to let someone in need suffer or die. No rug dealer gives rugs to indigent rug lovers for humanitarian reasons, although some dealers are very generous and humanitarian people. Pricing of rugs and the negotiation of the price in response to buyer resistance is not the same thing as physicians delivering services to the poor without charging full fees. Not by a mile. To suggest otherwise is an affront to every physician who has ever donated his services to someone who couldn't afford to pay. That, by the way, includes nearly every physician in the world.

Steve Price

Just as an insurance company will sometimes reimburse the medical provider for a “standard” fee that is excessive, large corporations with set budgets for “art” often seem unconcerned with prices paid for individual pieces, as long as they are within the budget. When I see the unconscionable prices that art consultants have sometimes charged their corporate clients for my pieces when they have realized that they could “get by with it,” I have been shocked…then have faced a real dilemma when called in to appraise the collection a couple of years later! I have always made my price lists public, maybe foolishly so…But why are so many rug dealers unwilling to do this? Because it’s quite handy to be able to adjust prices to suit the customer’s ability or willingness to pay. Under such circumstances, any well-heeled collector who doesn’t realize that he often pays more is certainly naïve. I think we’ve all seen dealers salivating as they’ve marked up prices in anticipation of having an eager ICOC or ACOR audience at hand, only to drop them on unsold pieces when the show ends.

Marla

Also a couple of thoughts tying two other threads together: the issue of good taste, as Steve brought up, along with the issue of collector/dealers. I think, understandably, they frequently intersect. And of course it's frustrating to want a Not For Sale piece, it has happened to me many times! BUT - I got to see some really fine pieces which I wouldn't have seen otherwise, and this provided a great education which I wouldn't have had if the Personal Pieces hadn't been in the store.

As far as Good Taste is concerned - goes without saying! Some shops, you walk in, you walk out, you NEVER go back, it's obvious you and the dealer are on a different planet. On the other hand, other people might find what they like there. A buyer of collectible rugs is quite likely to find EXACTLY what he wants in the stash of a dealer/collector, because they love the same things.

And finally - Goddess bless the dealers who teach!

Amen.

First, Sophia: I think you misread my post. I didn't say that rug dealers are not humanitarians. In fact, I specifically said that many of them are. One recently donated the proceeds from the sale of four very nice pieces to disaster relief for New York, on Cloudband. A very generous and humanitarian act. What I did say is that while physicians often provide services to the poor for humanitarian reasons, the humanitarian concern for needs of the not-very-well-heeled collector probably never motivates a rug dealer to give away his goodies. The "need" of a rug neurotic for the rug, of course, is not worthy of the same humanitarian concern as the need of a poor person for health care.

Next, Marla; If there are insurance companies that are paying top dollar to physicians for services, they must be somewhere else. Around here, the way nearly all of them set their reimbursement schedules is by negotiation with individual physicians or physician partnerships, who either accept the fees the insurance company offers or forego the patient population that the company covers. Physicians are forbidden by law from increasing their negotiating clout by sharing information with other physicians about their fees or bargaining with the insurance companies collectively. This, in case you ever wondered about it, is one of the reasons you now see few physicians who are not part of large groups. In a larger group, the group has better negotiating power than a single physician does. It's also one of the reasons (but not the only one) why many physicians are retiring early or finding other occupations.

Regards,

Steve Price

Is “forgoing the patient population that the company covers” an example of the charity of physicians you cite? Many, many physicians now refuse to accept a new patient who is over 65 and thus automatically eligible for medicare. I know. I’ve called a long list of offices recently, with no luck, and so just have to hope that my husband and I stay healthy.

Best,
Marla

"Forgoing the patient population that the company covers" means if a physician group decides that, say, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, doesn't reimburse enough and therefore opts not to participate in that plan, any current patients the group has who are covered by that plan will most likely be lost. Since people tend not to switch physicians without good reason, most lost patients will not return. So refusing to participate with an insurer, particularly one that covers the employees of a large local company (or the local government) has long term consequences.

The Medicare problem is another kettle of fish. It is a government program that provides medical insurance to a high risk population at relatively low cost to the taxpayer. It accomplishes this seemingly impossible feat by passing the risk on to the physicians, who get reimbursed less than their actual costs in many situations. The law says that they can't kick out a patient who reaches medicare eligibility, but it doesn't require that they take new ones.

The pro bono delivery of medical care to the indigent is a humanitarian practice of most physicians that existed long before to the intervention of taxpayer funded insurance. There's less of it now than there used to be, since fewer people are uninsured. The law still requires a physician or a hospital to provide care to someone who presents with a need for it, whether that person can pay or not. We don't require that supermarkets provide food to the indigent without complete reimbursement, and we don't require anyone else to provide services or goods at no cost, either. The exceptions are the medical and (in criminal matters) legal professions, although the rationales are different in the two cases.

I know of nothing in the business of being a rug merchant that is in any way similar to the pro bono services provided by the medical or legal communities. Being a rug dealer is a lot like being a merchant dealing in any other class of goods in which prices are generally negotiable. It is not - and I mean this with no disrespect to anyone - the delivery of a service essential to the health of the clients or anything of comparable importance, and carries none of the moral considerations to deliver goods or services that such professions do.

I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble finding a physician willing to take on the financial risk of accepting new elderly patients, but many simply could not continue to practice if they did so. I'd be surprised if most of the ones who won't accept you as part of their patient population would turn you away if you needed help.

Regards,

Steve Price