Counter Culture

A Standard & Poor’s report (via BusinessWeek) doesn’t have a lot of faith, like many commenters on this blog, in US consumers paying off debt and buying groceries with their rebate checks. It says they are more likely to go on a spending spree at Best Buy…even if some credit card debt gets paid down.

“Americans may say that they are going to save the money or use it to pay down debt, but even those who do pay down their credit card balances are likely to build them back up rapidly, in our opinion,” says David Wyss, S&P’s chief economist.
Continue reading ‘Forget Paying Debt, Rebates Going to Best Buy’

A New York Times article from earlier this week kind of freaks us out. Apparently you can go into a big-box store like Best Buy, Circuit City or Home Depot and haggle down prices.

We would expect this kind of behavior to take place at a crafts fair or in an antique shop, but at big chain stores? Certainly, we have never tried this tactic when shopping and wouldn’t expect a very good response from a salesperson. “Hey, can you knock a few bucks off of the price of the DVD?” It just doesn’t seem feasible.
Continue reading ‘Don’t Like the Price? Just Haggle’