You may have noticed that in Harvey Norman it’s a sale week every week, just the type of deal and the on sale promotion type is different.
Some are aimed at long interest free periods, some on deferred payment and other deals try to target price conscious customers offering discounted prices. They usually rotate after couple of weeks, so it pays out to wait for a deal that best suits you and buy in that week when your preferred deal comes on sale.
In our articles will describe main types of Harvey Normal deals and suggest some strategies how to get most of them. Remember, no deal is final, there is always room for negotiation and you just need to know what the reasonable proposals in different situations are.
Interest Free Periods
Harvey Norman regularly offers Interest Free Deals. The Interest Free period can be different; it usually ranges from 12 months up to 50 months. With shorter 12 months interest free deals you should be able to negotiate considerable price discount.
Harvey Normal may adjust ticket prices before each deal starts. So for example if they plan 48 month interest free deal then they hike all their prices to cover to hide the interest.
But remember, no one will give you 48 months free of interest. If the interest is not specifically stated in contract terms then it is usually hidden in the inflated ticket price.
In case of 12 months interest free period the prices will not usually be inflated at all or only a little bit. If you decide to pay by cash or even credit card (meaning your own bank credit card, not their store card) then you should be able to negotiate up to 10 % discount from the ticket price.
However, in case of 48 month interest free period it is reasonable to expect that the prices are hugely inflated, so you may be able to negotiate discounts as high as 30% if you are paying with cash or almost cash (credit card).
If you propose such a big discount, the sales people obviously won’t be pleased, but you can argue that by taking an average 20% yearly interest rate then by a very rough calculation this would mean approximately 40% of interest over 4 years period. (it’s not 4×20% because the balance owed decreases with time so it’s roughly half that amount).
Taking 30% from ticket price is about the same as adding 40% to the discounted price. If the sales guys pretend that he or she doesn’t know what you are talking about and you plan to buy an expensive item then ask for their manager, explain your arguments and you most likely will succeed.
So, the general rule for calculating reasonable discount you can ask is following:
Multiply 20% by number of years of interest free period and then divide it by 3 and you will get the approximate discount percentage. Even easier method for discount calculation is our first rule of thumb.
Rule of thumb #1:
Take the number of months of interest free period and divide the result by 2
Result should be the final discount, perhaps you may ask for even slightly higher one than that. So, for example in case of 48 months interest free deal on sale that would be 24% or slightly higher, even 30%.
Be hard in your negotiations and don’t accept any discount lower than the rule of thumb #1. It means that in case of 48 months Interest Free On Sale Deal at Harvey Norman or in any other similar retail store don’t go below 24% discount!