Ask for The Discount!
by Katy on January 10, 2025 · 45 comments
Although my recent two night vacation at Skamania Lodge was booked for just $90 using airline credit card points, there was an additional $36 per night “resort fee” tacked onto the bill. Still a bargain considering that their suites can cost $300+ for a one night stay.
However . . .
Skamania’s swimming pool and outdoor hot tubs were unfortunately out of commission, which was kind of a bummer as my husband and I were looking forward to a nice soak. So when it came time to check out, I politely asked the employee if there was any way we could not pay the fee as the amenities hadn’t been available. He immediately said “yes” and knocked $72 off our bill.
Just like that, he was just waiting for us to ask.
This reminded me of when I flew to Nebraska for my aunt’s memorial service last March and United Airlines briefly lost my suitcase . I knew that the airline was liable for expenses related to the loss, so I asked the employee for reimbursement while I already talking to him about the suitcase. He wasn’t as immediate with his response, but a quick moment with his manager rectified the situation. They offered me $5o through PayPal for my inconvenience, plus additional money (up to $3800) to replace my belongings had they not able to find the suitcase. Luckily it was located that night and promptly delivered to my hotel.
I still got $50 for the inconvenience.
By the way, you can read about your rights for lost and delayed luggage HERE.
What’s the connection? I asked for the discount. I didn’t have to go into angry demand mode or make a scene. I nicely and politely spoke up. There was no downside in asking, as the worst they could say was “no.” I certainly had to work my nerve up a little bit, but that’s okay as there’s no harm in feeling nervous.
I feel completely justified with both situations, as neither were small businesses, (I’m looking at you, United Airlines!) and I’m $122 richer because I spoke up. Do you speak up?
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
Click HERE to follow The Non-Consumer Advocate on Instagram.
Click HERE to join The Non-Consumer Advocate Facebook group.
Like this post? Then please share it with your friends!
Like this:
Like Loading...
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a Desert Storm Veteran, and I will quietly ask if there is a military discount offered.
Patricia: Thank you, veteran! I would loudly say yes to your quiet request.
DH spoke up while we were traveling back North from Florida. We had planned to stop in Knoxville for a night, to break the driving into three days rather than two, but Winter Storm Cora was threatening to snow us in the next day, so we’d be stuck. So when we did stop there, he very politely said he knew cancellations this late weren’t a thing, but maybe they could give us a voucher so that we could use our reservation on a later date? Even just for one room. He said he was happy to pay if we needed to, as we were cancelling late. The desk clerk said no problem, she would just cancel our reservations and avoid charging our card, and if we wanted to take a break and rest in the lobby, there was a microwave we could use, and complimentary hot coffee and tea as well. We saved having to pay on hotel rooms we couldn’t use, and had a comfortable rest in a warm building before pressing on our journey.
I love it when staff are kind and compassionate! Winter storms often seem to bring out the best in people! Like my neighbor whose politics are completely different from mine, but who still helps us out with his snowblower during big storms. (We thank him with a quart of home-canned tomatillo salsa.)
Karen, I love your story! Customer service and humanity at their best.
I don’t usually but I will in the future. I’m sure I’ve paid resort fees (which I hate paying) when pools etc. have been closed and after hearing about one readers (MB in MN?) who asks for a discount on pet fees, I will definitely be trying this.
As an Airbnb host, I will generally give a discount if asked.
I will ask if there’s something to complain about. Like the time there was a caterpillar in my salad at the very swanky Rainbow Room!
Eww . . .
It was a cute green thing. I honestly wasn’t too grossed out. I thought and think today it’s pretty funny. The Rainbow Room comped my food and drinks, which was nice, but I was taking clients out to eat so the company was paying anyway. Still, fun to remember.
I loved the Rainbow Room. It’s no longer a restaurant but an event space. Still, it was the most glam place ever–serious art deco, amazing views, live music.
Jill, yup, that was me!
I feel comfortable asking for discounts or questioning a charge, mainly because I was my mom’s frugal sidekick starting at a young age and because my husband is a brave and kind (and usually successful) negotiator.
This is a longish answer to your question, Katy, but…
My parents are AARP members and my mom shares the magazine with me. Though I am old enough (ahem) to join, the magazine is the greatest value to me right now so I haven’t joined yet. There was an article in the October magazine about how to save $4400 in a day (!) and one of the things it suggested was renegociating subscription prices. (I’d link to the article, but it is only available in the magazine or through online accounts). The author suggested going online and starting the cancellation process and more often than not, you are offered a lower price.
So for all three of our online newspapers, I did just that and saved $600 for the year total – in three clicks each and less than ten minutes. The hardest part was remembering our login info. So YES, friends! I will certainly keep asking (or clicking in this case)!
Also I just wanted to say Happy Birthday, Katy and I am so glad you had a lovely getaway! And to all the folks who shared how hard 2024 was a few posts back, please know I am still thinking about your stories and your determination and wishing you all a much better year.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I need to look through our subscriptions and see if we’re overpaying for anything.
I haven’t done this often, but I plan to do it more in the future. As Katy says, it never hurts to ask (nicely).
Nice is key.
Two small things.
I has bought frozen breaded shrimp made by a large company. Even though they were well with in sell by use by date they were disgustingly freezer burned. I contacted the company and they refunded my $
In addition I had a bag of chips that was rancid. Again, well within the best by date. Company refunded my money AND gave me two coupons for free chips. (Which I used on a buy two get two free day netting me 4 bags of free chips).
I also travel with a friend who by asking almost always gets $ knocked off our hotel bill for poor service or broken up working things in the room. She asks nicely and it’s worked every time.
Blegh to freezer burnt shrimp! Hooray for free food and hotel discounts!
Polite goes a long, long way!
Ages ago (pre-internet), when I was a broke college kid, I had booked a cheap red eye flight home for spring break. When I got to the airport at 8pm the flight been vastly overbooked, and everyone else in line was screaming at the gate attendant.
When it was my turn I told him I was sorry he was having a rough night, that I lived just a few miles from the airport and didn’t mind going home and sleeping in my own bed, and I was flexible to take anything they had the next day, since it was vacation to visit family and I didn’t have any set schedule or reservations.
He put me in first class on a late morning flight, and slipped me a meal voucher to use during my layover. It’s the only time I’ve ever flown first class!
During the layover they were asking for volunteers to take a later flight, and since I was already going to be waiting for a few hours for my ride to get off work when I landed (since I was a day late), I took the bump and got a free flight voucher, along with another meal voucher, and got to the airport right before my ride.
I had to use the opposite tactic at an airport once. This was many years ago. A friend and I had taken a vacation overseas on an airline that no longer is in business. Someone damaged the aircraft we were supposed to fly on, and for days and days the entire group of people, more than 200 of us, were herded like cattle to various waiting rooms to await boarding. Which never happened, and they knew it was not going to happen. One young businessman asked them to get him on another plane bc he was getting married in 2 days and would miss his own wedding; he begged them to offer passengers on another flight $10,000 to trade with him. The airline refused, thus ruining his wedding. Can’t have a wedding without the bridegroom. (I would’ve loved to have seen that lawsuit go to court!)
This trip occurred after my friend and I had graduated and we had non-teaching jobs so we missed 4 or 5 days of work; my boss was not amused and my pay was docked. Despite it not being my fault. Anyway, back at the airport we sat and stewed and several people were getting sick bc they ran out of their medications and the airline didn’t help them get more. We were wearing the same clothes for days; they wouldn’t let us get our checked luggage. We sat in the waiting area until meal time when we were herded into a dining hall; at least the meal was free (but no choice and it was airline food.) Very late at night, like 11 p.m. all us would-be passengers were taken to hotel rooms, then gotten up early the next morning, bussed back to the airport at 7 a.m., only to have to wait en masse in a large waiting area and given excuse after excuse after excuse that it would be “just a bit longer” until we could board and take off. They’d feed us 2 nice meals a day, but that was it, and we’d have to buy snacks from a vending machine that often ran out. When we finally got to fly home, my friend and I had no way to get from the Big City to our not-so-big hometown bc, of course, we had missed our connecting flight. (And it was a weekday, all our family and friends were at work and couldn’t very well drive the 3 1/2-hour one way trip to pick us up.) Some snotty Englishman with some sort of royal title tried to make us pay for another ticket home on the commuter flight. Politeness did not work with him, so finally I unloaded a week’s worth of anger and frustration. In short, I yelled at the top of my lungs with language that’d make a sailor blush. I was attracting a lot of attention Sir Snotnose wanted to avoid. But it worked, and we flew home on the next flight. And, boy, did we tell our travel agent what happened; she said she would stop recommending the airline to anyone else. When that airline went bankrupt a couple of years later, my friend and I went out to celebrate!
I have PTSD from your story, what a nightmare!
Whoa, that worked out perfectly for you!
Not so perfectly: the boss put my “unexcused absence” into my HR file and guess who didn’t get a raise or Xmas bonus that year? Later, a person with less seniority got a promotion I was in line for, so I think that absence stayed in my file for a very long time.
Funny you should ask: today is very cold so I am wearing some heavy sweatpants I bought at the “GW Boutique” — better known as Goodwill. The pants were hanging on the end of a rack and the fabric design was really cute and unique. I grabbed them up and the tag said they were a “2 pc set” of “men’s pajamas.” No, they weren’t! It was just sweatpants, no shirt or anything else to go with them. (And just a pull up garment with a drawstring waist and no fly.) So I asked the cashier if they could either reduce the price or find the other piece of the outfit. After a brief and unsuccessful search, they knocked a couple of dollars off the price. (This was over a year ago so I don’t remember how much money it was, but I got the discount.)
Also, a week ago, I took in some plastic grocery bags to the local used book store. I got a few books in trade, paid the sales tax, and was walking out. En route to the door, I saw another paperback book I wanted. I used some more of my store credit for the book but the tax was 33 cents and my hands were full, carrying out the bag of books I’d already gotten. Plus, I knew I would’ve had to break a $20 bill, which was all that was left in my purse. I reminded the man I’d just given them a big bundle of sacks and asked if that’d be good for the 33 cents. He smiled, said yes, and tossed some change from his own pocket into the cash register.
Like you said, ya gotta speak up.
I love every part of this story!
It wasn’t frugal for the cashier. He paid your $0.33.
Hi Katy! Yes, I speak up! Windstream increased my bill in December. I called customer service and was offered a $5.00 discount. I declined that amount, and they sent me to another person, and she lowered it to $65.00 per month. It does often pay to ask a simple question. The worse that could happen is that they say no. I hope that you have an amazing day!
That was a profitable phone call!
I generally always politely ask. My motto is they can always say no (but they might say yes :-).
Being polite it key. I tell my kids “Nobody does a favor for an asshole.”
You’d be surprised, sadly. My mother, who worshipped her old sister, was once telling me a story about how horrible my aunt was getting discounts on new furniture. Finally she and the store owner (probably desperate for a sale) agreed on a price, the owner made up an invoice, and my aunt did her fake-surprise thing. “Oh, tax? Huh. I don’t pay tax.” The store owner said everyone had to pay tax. My aunt said, “I don’t think you heard me. **I** don’t pay tax.”
I then interrupted my mother and said, “Mom, she’s an asshole and she’s cheap. She can afford to pay a reasonable price for this stuff and I don’t want to hear any more crap about how savvy she is.” My mom looked at me with a “You can’t question my sister’s greatness!” on her face. I have had no more contact with her after the first time orange felon was elected, since of course assholes of a feather flock together.
Let me fix that, sigh. “My mother, who worshipped her older sister, was once telling me a story about how wonderful and smart my aunt was when getting discounts on new furniture.”
Reminds me of a magazine story about Lenore Helmsley, the Queen of Mean. She supposedly told her workers, “WE don’t pay taxes, other people pay taxes.”
But IIRC, in the end, she went to prison for not paying taxes. Unlike the orange felon, the Queen of Mean didn’t get away with her crimes. The magazine writer wondered whether they’d put a chocolate on her prison pillow at night, LOL.
good for you – of course orange pox, felon or otherwise, really do not flock together. More of a partake of a verb on an anatomical appendage. Some may be of the fungi family member.
I have a magat relative who knows fully well to not mention said orange pox, first and likely ONLY felon to occupy the “white” house, golden pussy’s occupancy a crap shoot.
I tell people all the time, “You don’t get what you don’t ask for”, and you get more flies with honey – so always ask nicely!
My reading of that was that being pleasant and hopeful we’re in no way part of the request!
Just this week I asked an Airbnb host for our upcoming trip to Scotland (!!!) if we could add an extra night on to our stay. He approved the night, but I noticed it was $511 for the additional night (a Saturday) which was double the nightly rate we’d paid for the rest of the stay. I politely asked if we could get the same rate as the other nights and he quickly responded that it would be no problem. It took literally seconds to reduce the bill by nearly $300!
I am shameless. Polite but shameless. Even my dog has earned us discounts: at one hotel they wanted to use one of our Irish wolfhounds in a promotional photo. I asked if that meant we would not have to pay the pet charge. The guy said, “No. We are giving you the night for free in exchange for his photos.” When we buy appliances, I ask for free delivery or free hauling off of the old appliance; I have never failed to get one or the other.
The one place I won’t ask for discounts is the farmers’ market we have on the weekends in the summer. I have seen advice like go at the end of the day and see if they will sell you the leftover tomatoes (or whatever) but these people have small farms and I won’t eat into their meager profits when I can afford to pay the full price. Ditto for craft shows; I know how long it takes to make things and usually what they make barely pays minimum wage.
One time our connecting flight home was cancelled due to weather, stranding us in LaGuardia overnight. While my husband worked on finding us a hotel, I waited patiently at the Delta desk to get our flights rebooked. I asked about hotel vouchers but they declined and didn’t offer any compensation, so I politely asked if we could at least get meal vouchers. They agreed and gave us 4 (one for each member of the family). We had to wait for my husband to finish booking our hotel room and my kids were pretty good about the whole delay (they were 10 & 7 at the time). Another Delta employee commented on how well-behaved they were and gave us another 4 meal vouchers on top of what we had, so at least all our meals were covered until we could depart the next day. There wasn’t a lot of good choices for breakfast the next day, but they said we could use it on anything, so I ended up maxing out the credit by getting snacks and chocolate for the trip home.
This is such a great topic. I love reading everyone’s stories and I’ve been thinking about my own. In addition to the hotel pet fee mentioned above:
— On the last day of an estate sale, I was buying something for a few dollars and I also wanted a manual pencil sharpener (the kind that has a reservoir for the shavings) that was not priced and was mixed in with a bunch of other office supplies. When I went to check out, I asked if the pencil sharpener could be a “gift with purchase.” The person laughed and said yes.
— Every year, when SiriusXM sends my husband the increase notice, my husband calls and says he would like to cancel unless they could offer a lower price. Last time, they offered less than what he was currently paying!
— My husband negotiated four additional nights at our vacation rental by offering a specific price per night that was significantly less than the normal charge. The proprietor immediately said yes, so it was more of a win-win for both parties rather than a negotiation.
My earliest memories of my mom’s frugal example took place at the grocery store. A container of Half & Half went bad before the expiration date, so my mom brought it in, along with the receipt, and the manager promptly gave her a replacement. She’d also bring in the receipt whenever there was a discrepancy between what she was charged vs. what the price tag said (this was before the days when items were scanned). Her demeanor (proper, friendly and complimentary) no doubt helped.
I understand people don’t like to be told no, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
We do the same thing with Sirius XM on DH’s vehicle. Last year they offered a fixed monthly price going forward which was a bit less than the price I usually negotiate.
I’m much better about politely asking for discounts. Like so many of the folks here, all they can say is no.
Most recently, I emailed the owner of a recently re-opened Indian restaurant in our area after a bad experience. (The restaurant had closed shortly after the pandemic for a variety of reasons). I started out by saying the carry out dinner we got was on my birthday, and how excited we were that they had reopened (all 100% true), as we had fond memories of wonderful meals there previously….then proceeded to explain what went wrong. I ended by saying we truly hoped this was just “working the kinks out” with re-opening, etc. The owner responded with a very gracious reply, and offered us a free meal the next time we come in. It never hurts to ask – or in this case, give feedback. (I also email small businesses when I have a really good experience, too).
I ordered oat bran from Amazon (not something we do very often and we definitely do not have Prime). They sent the wrong item. I called and they offered to refund the money but not to send a replacement. I persisted that I wanted the item and not a refund. They gave me a $10 credit and the refund. They also did not want the GF pancake mix back (the incorrect item) which made DH happy.
On the very first leg of a recent trip to Europe, our large suitcase came off the conveyor belt with a very important wheel completely missing. Even though it was annoying, we spent our first 30 minutes in Portugal at customer service to report the damage. Ultimately we were able to use the bag for the three week trip and deal with the reimbursement when we got home. They ended up reimbursing us the entire replacement cost of the suitcase.
I always ask for: senior discounts, veteran discounts, and educator discounts. For online shopping, I signed up for ID.me, which is available to all first responders, educators, and other public servants. I get 20% discounts automatically at a lot of stores, even if the items are already on sale. The other day I needed new socks, went online, found good socks on sale (hard to find size), used the 20% from ID.me, then used shoprunner for free shipping.
Interesting. I didn’t know that ID.me served what I guess I would call commercial purposes.
ID.me is open to anyone over 18.
It serves to prove you are a member of one of the groups you mentioned if you have provided evidence that you are. It includes healthcare workers, residents of certain cities. university alumni– I suspect more groups are being added.
Social Security is pushing users with older SS logins to sign up for either ID.me or login.gov. Pre-9/2021 SS account logins will eventually be invalid. They haven’t set a final deadline for switching yet.
The IRS is also moving to using ID.me, tho’ they said a few years ago they’d move to login.gov. That last doesn’t look to be happening anytime soon, which is unfortunate, given ID.me’s privacy and security lapses.