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Most people think negotiating prices only works when dealing with large ticket items like cars or homes. Well in this declining economy, consumers are noticing that pretty much anything is negotiable.

I don’t negotiate much since I think it wastes times, and my wife hates when I do it, but I will let you in on one time I we did and it was very successful. My wife (girlfriend at the time) needed to have her gall bladder removed. She had United Healthcare Insurance. She went to an Out of Network doctor so she thought it was covered 80/20. 80% paid by UHN and 20% paid by her. Well UHC decided that it couldn’t agree on a price with the doctor and they opted to pay nothing. According to their plan literature, they will by 80% on out of network procedures once they agree upon a price. I was pissed, I told her to call and refuse the pending balance. My wife had paid into that plan for years and the one time she needed it, they denied her. She received a bill for $8,500 from the doctors office. My wife basically called up the doc and said, “look, I am a recent grad with student loans and cannot afford to pay the total bill”. They asked how much could she pay and she said $2000. The lady in the billing office said fine, we will send you a bill for $2000 and the rest will be written off I was shocked, I guess I never really gave it a thought that it would work. After working in health care years later, I have realized that most doctors are happy to get anything due to the high amount of uninsured patients. Besides, outside of the doc fees, I bet the surgery didn’t cost much more than that anyway.

Other things I have negotiated down is my cable bill, phone bill and internet bill.

There was a Forbes Article just published that shows even more things you can negotiate. I may think about trying this, since I realize that most companies are willing to due anything to sell products these days since no one is spending!

If anyone has any interesting negotiating stories, please post a comment, I bet everyone can benefit from your experiences!

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