I'm not a Christian, but I am curious how you guys would handle this situation:

I've recently had to evaluate software packages from two competing vendors.  It struck me that one fundamental aspect of price negotiation is to deceive the other party regarding the upper limit how much you're willing to spend for the purchase.

(more after the break...)

For example, suppose they're willing to accept anything > $10,000, and you're willing to pay anything less than $15,000.  Then your job is to make thing think that the most you're willing to pay is around $10,000. 

Also, playing the two vendors off each other can be an effective strategy.  This is especially effective if you can prevent the two vendors from discovering what each others' price quotes are.  Bonus points if you let vendor A believe that vendor B's most recent offer was more attractive than vendor A's was, regardless of how you really feel about the two vendors' most recent offers.

Now, some additional details that may be relevant to the discussion:

1.  The market is very small, and the products are similar but not identical.  So there's no such thing as a "fair price" that I can see here.  There's certainly no "fair price" that's established by the market, because the product isn't a commodity, and because there's no public record of what other people have paid for the products.

2. This is my employer's money, not my own.  So any generosity to which I might be predisposed seems to be irrelevant.

How would you negotiate with the vendors in this case?

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SteveGus   |2009-07-29 14:31:01 Not a whole lot of guidance I am finding here. You do, of course, also owe a duty to your employer as well as to either vendor or their representatives. On the other hand, everything I read about Biblical cultures suggests that theirs was a culture in which a certain amount of haggling in sales was permitted and expected by all parties. In that milieu, you cannot violate the Golden Rule by haggling. Biblical rules are not the end of any inquiry, though; the Bible was written during a time when slavery was accepted, and does in fact counsel slaves to accept their lot. It's come up here recently that the Bible nowhere forbids polygamy; single marriage or serial monogamy is a Roman custom that got written into church rules and cultural norms, but is not required by Scripture. We're allowed to move beyond the text sometimes. I'm a poor reader of people, but if you are a better one than me, you might seek to notice how much pressure seems to be put on each of the business's representatives. Are their responses collegial, or do they seem canned patter, learned by rote from a manual? Do they speak English, or resort to TLAs and buzzwords? My opinion is that the harder it seems that management is riding the employee, the less I'd choose to reward the people who create those kinds of work environments. If they seem relaxed and unhurried, those are the people I'd prefer to be dealing with. This, to me, is what the Golden Rule suggests, and that's all the advice I can come up with.

exile   |2009-07-30 11:39:46 I wouldn't worry too much. Haggling and making profit (either by spending less than you need to when you buy, or equivalently, by earning more than you need to when you sell) is in and of itself a good and moral thing. It acknowledges and reinforces the uniqueness of each individual in the transaction and it impresses upon us the value of the relationship between you and the person you are dealing with. Rabbi Daniel Lapin gives a riveting lecture in this vein and I highly recommend you watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVS0vIkTrsw

SteveGus  - re:   |2009-07-30 13:30:34 exile wrote: ... making profit (either by spending less than you need to when you buy, or equivalently, by earning more than you need to when you sell) is in and of itself a good and moral thing. This, I am not sure I agree with. The Golden Rule, again. No one wants to pay more than something is actually worth, or to be paid less than it is actually worth. Therefore, no one should seek to pay less or sell for more than something's customary and actual value. With bespoke goods like this, ascertaining customary true value may be difficult. On the other hand, the idea that prices ought to float freely based on circumstance, that they lack a social and customary dimension, and that people ought to be able to raise prices above what's customary because of a circumstantial drop in availability or trouble that makes people need a certain commodity more urgently --- these practices are something the Christian churches have historically condemned. That kind of thinking is a recent innovation and removes the morality from the moral economy.

exile  - re: re:   |2009-07-30 17:08:15 SteveGus wrote: [quote=exile]... making profit (either by spending less than you need to when you buy, or equivalently, by earning more than you need to when you sell) is in and of itself a good and moral thing. This, I am not sure I agree with. The Golden Rule, again. No one wants to pay more than something is actually worth, or to be paid less than it is actually worth. Therefore, no one should seek to pay less or sell for more than something's customary and actual value. [/quote] Yes, but as long as both individuals are free to make their transaction at an agreed upon price (ie. not through coercion), then the transaction necessarily follows the golden rule. And then in so doing, because both parties in the transaction have "profited", then both can be assured that their being in service to one another in that transaction was a moral thing

OrionBlastar  - I must confess   |2009-07-30 14:45:36 that I used to play Tradewars on BBSes and then later the Internet. It had space ports that you bought and sold items from, and haggling was part of the game. When buying if you give too low a price, they won't sell it to you, if you give too high a price they'll gladly sell it to you, but you don't get as many experience points. Experience points are given based on how close you got to the minimum price the star port was willing to sell it for. While that is a text based video game, the rule of haggling remains the same. In this case it is a software package. I am also a software engineer and programmer analyst, whatever company sells you the package will also have a contract for tech support. Whatever money they lose on selling the software package they will try to make up with the tech support. Chances are something will go wrong or need fixing, and then they charge you whatever their standard rate is, which could be anything. I think that, to help you choose, you should find out what their tech support costs are, and if tech support is free and included in the price or separate and based on how long it takes to resolve the problem. As am employee you should try to find the best bargain for your employer since you are in charge of bidding. It is better to keep both vendors unaware of the other's bids, because if they think the other one is trying to undercut them, it would ruin their relationship. If you lie that one, for example bid at $8000 and they didn't, isn't that a form of false witness? How can you haggle without revealing the other's bids? You just bid lower and keep track of the reaction and watch the counter-bids. For example ask if they want to sell at $8000 instead of saying the other vendor bid at $8000. See if they answer with a counter of $10,000 or $9000. Remember when haggling to start out as low as possible and see the reaction and then slowly raise your bid up a bit each time until you reach a bid both can agree on. Because they will try to bid as high as possible and then lower each bid until they reach a target price or you agree to their bid. Most of this process isn't in the Bible per say, it is basically things learned by merchants and other business people. I for example learned it via text based video games like Tradewars. :)

PerpetualAgnostic  - re: I must confess   |2009-07-30 15:32:21 I think what you're saying is that the best [i]honest[i/] way to get the best price in a situation like this is to have an auction. Is that right? I see several issues with this: 1. Salespeople generally won't engage in auctions.  Auctions drive prices down, and that's anathema to salespeople. And they certainly don't want to set precedent. 2. Salespeople generally don't want other potential customers to find out what previous customers have paid for the product, because that also drives sales prices down. So this is another reason I don't think salespeople would go for it. 3. By telling each vendor that I need their best offer, I'm subjection them to FUD regarding the best offer by the other vendor(s).  If vendor A knows that vendor B's offer was for $10k, then vendor A has little incentive to offer a sale price below, say, $9999. But if vendor A is ignorant of vendor B's offered price, then vendor A feels pressure to lower the price to, for example, $8000. So it seems like to do my job well in this case means to sow FUD in the minds of both vendors, even it I don't outright lie. How should a Christian feel about doing that?

OrionBlastar   |2009-07-30 16:10:53 So is it FUD that they don't know the other vendor's bid, or is it FUD that they are allowed to know the other vendor's bid? The FUD factor is something I hadn't considered. How to haggle or have an auction without FUD, now there is a challenge. http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/2009/06/2... There are emotional barriers to overcome as well. One of the tips in this article is to ask the vendor if they can do better than the offer given. I suppose that can try to get rid of the FUD factor. Ask each vendor what their "best price" would be and the most they could discount without getting in trouble. a Christian wouldn't intentionally use a FUD factor or lie, but if he or she did by accident he or she would pray for forgiveness.

metallurge   |2009-07-30 16:03:39 A few general thoughts about big-ticket purchases. I use a technique where I do all the research in advance, and narrow down to what I want. Then, I find maybe 5 people who meet the criteria and who have the authority to make a deal. For example, at a car dealership, the sales manager. So, for 5 nearby dealerships, I call and obtain the name and fax number for the fax machine nearest the targeted person. I wait until near the end of the month (or better, near end of the quarter). I prepare a letter saying that I intend to buy such-and-such in the next few days, and I want their bottom-line out-the-door best price with all taxes and fees. I fax the letter to my target audience. I tell them they are competing with several (but only four) competitors, and that I will be making a deal inside like 5 days (before the end of the month). I tell them there will not be an opportunity for negotiation, that I need their bottom line best price. I tell them that I appreciate their time, and if they choose to participate, I will share the price I chose to accept, even if they did not win. I believe that this method gets closest to the optimal price, without involving unethical methods, including a waste of time on anybody's part.

holmegm   |2009-07-30 20:58:45 Quote: 1. The market is very small, and the products are similar but not identical. So there's no such thing as a "fair price" that I can see here. There's certainly no "fair price" that's established by the market, because the product isn't a commodity, and because there's no public record of what other people have paid for the products. I think you have your answer here. Not that it would necessarily change even in a larger market, but this makes it pretty explicit. The "fair price" is what the buyer is willing to pay. Your company isn't going to pay more than you collectively think the software is worth. There is no Platonic price sitting behind all the haggling.  A price is the outcome of haggling, be it short term, long term, explicit, implicit, hashed out between two people in the souk, or over time in a huge market for cell phone contracts (or whatever).

PerpetualAgnostic  - re:   |2009-07-30 21:28:38 holmegm wrote: There is no Platonic price sitting behind all the haggling.  A price is the outcome of haggling, be it short term, long term, explicit, implicit, hashed out between two people in the souk, or over time in a huge market for cell phone contracts (or whatever). I mentioned the absence of a clear "fair price" (based on current market rates) because I anticipated someone saying, "A Christian should pay whatever the current market rate is.  That's what would be fair." My main point of curiosity is how a Christian ought to navigate such a situation, not what a "fair price" would be.

emperorbma   |2009-07-30 23:18:04 Quote: My main point of curiosity is how a Christian ought to navigate such a situation, not what a "fair price" would be. There's basically two equally valid answers to your question: The first answer is doctrine. This is what Christ, Scripture and the Church teach about matters that might reasonably pertain to this situation. In that vein, we should not cheat others and we should "do unto others what we would like them to do to us." We should, furthermore, always do all things with humility, prayer and the desire to glorify God. There is, however, no specific prescription as to how we are to go about doing this for this case. That leads us to the second answer, which is determined by how each Christian is applying the above truths to his or her own life. It can vary quite greatly depending on which Christian you ask. The only common thread is that the general teachings above should, in some way, be factored into that interpretation for any sincere Christian. Amongst Protestants, the technical term for this sort of thing is adiaphora. These are matters for which there is no specific Scriptural rule, neither for nor against.  The only rule in these situations is to avoid breaking something that is Scriptural. That's why it is rather difficult to give you anything more specific than simply what Scripture teaches.  Every Christian is different with their own thoughts and their own relationship with God. As Justice Potter Stewart said, "I['ll] know it when I see it," except it's more like... we'll know it when it doesn't seem right. (or so we hope, which is also why we're supposed to be prayerful and humble about it)

emperorbma   |2009-07-30 23:26:17 P.S. There is such a thing as paralysis by analysis, even among Christians. That tends to take the form of praying, but not having the answer come and then not being able to decide what to do next... It would be nice if we had all the answers. The Spirit moves, but we won't always know whether the answer is the right one until later. Sometimes we may have the answer quite easily, sometimes we are left to struggle for whatever purpose only God knows.

OrionBlastar   |2009-08-01 13:05:17 Sometimes in order for a business to function properly we have to do things we don't like to, or things that Christians might not always do. Let's say a Christian would just pay retail price and nothing less, then he or she wouldn't haggle over price and just pay the $15,000 and not try to lower it to $10,000 or under. Then his or her boss would fire him or her for not trying to get below that price. How can you feed your family if your own beliefs get you fired from work? What if your boss asks you to work on a Sunday? Would you refuse or try to catch a Saturday night mass so you could work on Sunday, or just skip mass that week? Would you just say that Sunday is a Holy Day you cannot work, and tell your boss that and risk getting fired? If would be nice if we had all of the answers. Christian Fundamentalists seem to be more business oriented and do business that is not Christian like and they seem to profit from it via Prosperity Christianity, or whatever. Doing whatever it takes to earn a profit. Most of us have limits, in things we wouldn't do to earn a profit. The Bible doesn't seem to cover things like haggling, and we are trying to figure out the true Christian way to handle a situation like that. Which is why this is a good topic to discuss. I found this: http://www.christianadvice.net/christian_busine... Then I found this: http://www.seekthebible.com/2009/07/who-have-i-... Apparently we can haggle, but not too seriously and not too low. But how do we agree on a "fair price" that is fair to the buyer and seller?

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