Learn Australian English in this episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I teach you to use an English phrase that will save you $100s-$1000s.

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AE 478 – Use This ENGLISH PHRASE to SAVE $100s-$1000s

Just on the morning coffee run one, but one of these is almond, an almond cap, and I’ve forgotten which one. Damn it!

What’s going on, guys? (I) wanted to make a little video, a quick one for you. I wonder if you know what I am going to say and what this expression is or what this phrase is, right. So, as you will or will not know, may or may not know, I recently got into photography, right. So, I’ve been taking a lot of photos, but it’s required me to obviously buy a lot of gear. Well, a lot, some gear, right.

So, as you’ll know too with photography gear tends to be pretty expensive. You know, hundreds, thousands of dollars, usually, and it occurred to me the other day when I went to Ted’s, if you guys come to Australia, this is a great company to get camera gear from. I went to Ted’s and I was after a new lens. It is the Tamron 100 to 400 lens. Not that that’s probably relevant to many of you. But I want to get closer to animals, right? So, on a side note, this lens isn’t too bad, but it’s just not getting close enough to the action. When I want to take photos of animals and birds and stuff, it’s just not getting close enough. Anyway.

So, I went in there and was asking if they had the lens in stock, and they didn’t unfortunately. So, they didn’t have it at that store. They had it at another one. But I used a phrase which saved me a hundred dollars and I wanted to teach you this phrase or a variation of this phrase today, because I think you guys can use this in many different situations all over the place in Australia and the English-speaking world to save yourselves potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars, okay.

So, it’s a pretty simple phrase. The phrase is “what’s the best deal you can give me on something?”. Alright so, “What’s the best deal…? What’s the best price…?”. You could use either of those words. “What’s the best deal you can give me on something?”. “What’s the best price you can give me on something?”. Okay?

So, imagine that I’ve gone into a store and I want to buy this camera and it is $2000. If I just go in there and say, I want that camera. Can I pay for it? They’re not going to give you any discount. They’re not going to give you money off. You’ve asked to buy the thing. They’ll say, this is how much it is. If you agree to that, they’re not going to say, Would you like to save $200? They’re going to take your money. Right? Fair enough.

If you go in, though however, and you say to them, “What’s the best price you can give me on this camera?”. “What’s the best price you can give me for this camera, on this camera?”. “What’s the best deal you can give me on this camera or for this camera?”. You can use either of those, on or for. “What’s the best deal you can give me?”. They’re going to instantly think, okay, we can probably discount it a little bit. Okay, I’ll give you 5%-10% off the price, especially, if they have the ability to do that. That’s how you save that money.

Worst case scenario, they’re going to say, sorry, that’s the best price I can give you, in which case you’ve lost nothing. You buy the thing for how much it was in the first place, right. You didn’t lose anything.

However, what happened with me yesterday was that I went in to get a lens that was $1000, actually, it was $1200, $1199. And I just said to him, as an instinctual kind of thing, “What’s the best price you can give me on it?”. And he just said, oh, let me have a look, went over to the computer, typed in some stuff, and I saved 100 bucks. He took a hundred dollars off the lens, although unfortunately, he didn’t have it in store that day and I have to go in and get it.

But it sold me 100 bucks. That’s a hundred bucks I could use on anything else. I could put it towards more gear. I could buy beer with that. I could buy textbooks to learn Portuguese with that $100. The point is though if you don’t ask, the answer is going to be “No.”, you know, in all those situations. If you don’t ask, there’s not going to be a discount.

So, a really good phrase to use in these sorts of situations where you are buying things that are hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars from places like camera stores, like car dealerships. It’s got to be certain places, right. There certain places you can go and they will never discount the food, the product, that you’re buying, whatever it is. If you go to Woolworths, if you go to Coles, a supermarket here, and you say, “What’s the best price you can give me?”, they’ll say, that’s the price, mate. But with goods like this, cameras, usually, machinery, appliances, cars, renting places. You know, if you want to rent a house, you could probably use that line, and they might be able to take the rent down if there’s not very much competition for it. If you’re renting a hotel or a motel room, you could say, “What’s the best deal you can give me on this thing?”. If you’re buying flights to another country, “What’s the best deal you can give me on this flight?”.

So, all those kinds of things, you can just use this single phrase, “What’s the best deal you can give me on this thing?” or “What’s the best price you can give me on this thing?”, and it’s going to save you potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, guys.

So, yeah, I want you… That’s your task. Okay? Next time you buy something like a camera, I want you to use this phrase, okay. That is the challenge. And I want you to go down in the comments and tell me how it went. That is your challenge, though. Next time you buy something that’s expensive like that I want you to say, “What’s the best deal you can give me on this thing?”, “What’s the best price you can give me for this thing?”, and I want you to tell me how it goes, because worst case scenario, they’re going to say, that is the best price. Sorry, I can’t bring it down anymore. Best case scenario they’re going to say, ah, well, seeing as you asked, I’ll knock off 5%, I’ll knock off 10% and I’ll give you a discount.

So, go and do that, guys, and let me know how it goes. I’m going to enjoy the rest of my coffee maybe go shoot a few photos of some of these birds around here. Whoops! And I’ll chat to you in the next episode.

Hope you enjoy it. Peace!

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