How much discount should you give when a customer bargains?

Updated 2026-07-26 · 8 min read

A customer asks the price. You say ৳1,450. They say "1000 e diben?"

Whatever you type next, you are making a pricing decision with no time to think, possibly at 11pm, possibly while packing three other orders. Do that forty times a week and you have no idea what your average selling price actually is.

A flat "fixed price" costs you orders here

Dorkoshakoshi is not an objection in Bangladesh. It is part of buying. In a New Market shop the first number is understood to be an opening, and asking for less is not rude — it is the normal next line.

So when a page replies "sorry, fixed price" and nothing else, the buyer does not think fair enough. The conversation has ended, and there are four other pages selling the same kurti open on their phone.

That does not mean say yes. It means having an answer that is not simply "no" — and does not cost you ৳300 either.

The real problem is deciding the discount in the moment

When you settle a discount inside the conversation, three things move at once: how tired you are, how badly you want to close, and how hard the customer pushed. The same kurti goes out at ৳1,400 on Sunday afternoon and ৳1,150 on Thursday night.

It gets worse when someone helps you with the inbox: a helper has no way to know which of those two prices was correct. So they pick low, because low is what ends the conversation, and ending conversations is what looks like doing the job well.

The price ladder: four numbers, written down before anyone asks

Instead of one price and unlimited discretion, write down four:

Set the floor from arithmetic, not from feeling: what you paid, plus delivery, plus packaging, plus your real return rate — cash on delivery cancellations are a cost, not bad luck — plus the smallest margin that makes packing the order worth doing.

The floor is a number, not a mood. The steps exist so you never jump from base to floor in one message. A seller who drops ৳300 the first time they are asked has taught that customer that pushing works, so they will push again — on the delivery charge, and on the next order.

Hold firm on the first ask, and on the second

The expensive mistake is not discounting. It is discounting on request one.

1. First ask: refuse. Restate the price and say why it is worth it — stitching, warranty, the fact that you replace damaged pieces.
2. Second push: still hold. The price is already fair; say so.
3. Third push, when they are about to leave: step 1, reluctantly, as a favour.
4. Every further hard push: exactly one more step. Never two.

A "real push" is not any mention of price. A customer who says "accha thik ache" and then asks about delivery has already accepted. A customer who says "onno page e 1200 e ache" is pushing. Only the second one costs you a rung.

What a lowball actually tells you

You quote ৳1,450 and they say ৳700. That is not an opening bid — it is below your floor and probably below your cost.

• They are usually not comparing you to a cheaper seller. They are testing whether your number is real.
• If you move even ৳50, they will go lower, because moving proved the price was soft.
• Sometimes it is a genuine "cannot afford right now". That customer is worth a phone number and a message when stock changes, not a discount.

Whichever it is, the price reply is the same: give the floor once, say plainly that it is the last price, and stop moving.

A price ladder is not a discount policy. It is the list of prices you have already agreed to accept, decided before a customer was ever in front of you.

How Tanet Chat holds the line

Every product in Tanet Chat carries those same four fields — base price, price drop 1, price drop 2, price floor — plus a bargaining on/off switch. Products with variants carry their own set on each variant, so size L can have a different floor than size M.

Some of that is a hard rule the software applies; some is an instruction the agent follows. Worth knowing which is which before you trust it with your margin.

What the software enforces:

• The ladder cannot be saved upside down. With bargaining on for that item, put drop 1 above the base price and the save fails: "Price Drop 1 cannot be greater than Base Price". Each rung is only checked against the one directly above it, so a blank rung leaves the next one unchecked — fill in all four.
• An order below the floor is not created. Nothing is written. The conversation is flagged as needing attention, an alert naming the product, the offered price and your floor goes to Telegram, and the customer gets "Vai eta possible na ekhon, ami manager ke check korte bolchi." One gap: this reads the product's own floor, and on a product with variants the floor lives on each variant — so it does not fire there.
• A below-floor step is never recorded. Every time the agent moves down the ladder it reports the step to the backend, and a report under the floor is thrown away. What it does not do is un-send the message. Scanning the reply text for prices was tried and removed — it kept reading ৳1,049 as ৳104 and blocking honest replies.
• On a lowball. The conversation is flagged and a Telegram message quotes the customer's actual words, so you decide yourself whether ৳700 is worth answering.

Those alerts only arrive if you have paired a Telegram account with the shop. Without one the order is still refused — you just do not hear about it.

What the agent is told to do — firm instructions, not locks:

• Quote the base as the price. Never say the price is negotiable, never reveal that a floor or a ladder exists, refuse the first two requests outright.
• Treat the base price as the minimum when the floor is blank.
• The step it is on and the last price it offered are fed back into its next reply, so it knows where the conversation stands. If it reports jumping straight to step 2, the backend records step 1 instead — which corrects the record, not the price already sent.

Shop-wide settings sit in the agent config, behind the "Allow bargaining" box: a firm, balanced or flexible stance; default drop percentages (10% then 15%, up to four steps); an auto-accept threshold, so an offer within 5% of the floor is simply taken; what happens when someone hits the floor (alert you, refuse automatically, or pause the bot and hand you the chat); and sweeteners to offer instead of more money — free delivery, extended warranty, a free gift, a bundle, priority shipping. You can also write the refusal and acceptance lines yourself, in your own words.

Two honest limits. Bargaining is set per product, not per shop. If no product has it switched on, the agent is handed a firm-price brief and refuses discounts outright, in your own words if you wrote them. In a mixed catalogue it is softer — a product with the switch off simply has no ladder to walk down. And none of it works until you fill the numbers in. The dashboard requires a floor on a product without variants, but a variant's floor can be saved blank, and a blank floor is not a protected floor.

What to set up this week

1. Take your five best sellers and work out the real floor for each: cost, delivery, packaging, cancellations, minimum margin.
2. Write all four numbers per product — base, two steps, floor — even if the two steps are only ৳50 apart.
3. Turn bargaining off on anything you genuinely never discount. New products arrive with it switched on, so this is a step you take, not a default you inherit.
4. Tell whoever else answers the inbox that the floor is a rule, not a starting point for their own judgement.

If discounts are slipping because every reply is rushed, fix reply speed first — why your page gets messages but not orders covers that. Tanet Chat access is invite-only for now; you can request access on the apply form, and the plans and prices are here.