Imagine getting a call from a potential client about a project they want you to do for them. If you gave them an estimate for the project and they complained that it was too expensive, would you be willing to negotiate the price, or would you tell the client to take it or leave it?

In this story, one potential client seemed to think the price was negotiable, but it wasn’t.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

You don’t wanna pay the estimate, that’s fine ma’am enjoy your day

For context: the software development company i used to intern at uses a sheet to estimate the cost of building a certain software or update for a client.

This sheet includes: employees working on the project, how long they estimate it’ll take, yada yada yada.

After an intern goes around the departments collecting this info from the various employees we then calculate the cost & send it to the client to “accept” or “reject”.

Note: Since our company is so popular in the area we have a pretty long query sometimes, so if you reject the estimate, chances are you might have to wait in the queue all over again to request a new one.

Here’s how the day started…

So the day was slow & they mostly had me man the phones and go on coffee runs, typical intern stuff; then a client calls in saying she wants a piece of “Clock in” software for her employees so she can more accuarately track their work hours.

By this point into my internship, i had done at least 4-5 of these sheets at least and i was taught by my supervisor how to identify which departments would be needed for which projects so after gathering the details from the client i hang up and translate the needs for the employees(essentially explain it in programmer jargon).

Half an hour later, i’m done with the sheet & i have checked the calculations 3 times so i email it to the client and i swear not even 2 minutes later i get a “Estimate Rejected” message on the company smartphone i was given.

The client thought the price was negotiable.

She added a reply stating “This estimate is non compliable with me”

So i respond to it with “We are sorry to hear that ma’am, please enjoy the rest of your day” and then i go about my business.

Roughly an hour later she emails the phone again asking “is that all you have to say?”

By this point i realized what she was trying to do and report to my supervisor that ms.karen was trying to haggle the price.

The supervisor explained the situation to Karen.

My supervisor calls Karen’s phone and asks if she would like to have the estimate resent to her so she can accept.

And Karen outright tells her she wants a cheaper price.

To which my supervisor tells her the price is non-negotiable and to take it as is.

So Karen uses her signature move of “let me speak with your manager, but my supervisor simply informed her that she’d get the same response and just hung up on her.

Karen has some nerve!

Karen eventually did call back and even showed up to the building to “renegotiate” the price but was shot down, but she was able to get a meeting with the manager to file a complaint for “poor customer service & unproffessional behavior”.

My supervisor & I were called in and asked for our side of the exchange, we just gave them the chat log and proof that she rejected the estimate initially sent to her.

She had no color in her face after those came out and couldn’t even look at him.

She was given a blacklist for us and reccommended other companies.

Karen has to go somewhere else. Not all prices are negotiable.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is basically what happened.

This person is most annoyed at how Karen tried to negotiate.

Another person thinks they shouldn’t be surprised when someone tries to negotiate.

This would’ve been a funny way of responding!

Sometimes the price is the price.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.