8. What about foreign ATMs?
ATMs in the US that charge $1 (or $1.25, $1.5, whatever it’s up to now) for non-bank cards will sometimes not charge that if you ask for a different language (Spanish, French, Chinese, etc). I assume they don’t always bother translating the “I’m going to charge you now” page to airtight legal lingo in every language and just skip it. Some will present a translated version of it, but it’s worth a shot when stuck needing to use one. They also often don’t charge for non-US cards so if you have another account out of the country they’re free in many more cases.
9. This one is pretty cool
I’ve never worked here (Cash America Pawn), but this is one of the best, will save you hundreds.
Some of you may know this, but at Cash America Pawn shops, on every price tag on a product they are selling is a collection of letters from the word “MARY LOUISE”. The letters are a code for how much the pawn shop paid out for the item, how much they’ve invested.
The code is that ‘M’=1 ‘A’=2 ‘R’=3 and so on. The ‘E’ = 0. Say that the price for an item is 400 bucks. You look at the price tag, find the code, and it has the letters AAEEE. This means that Cash America paid out $220.00.
Once you find what you want, make sure you’re talking to a manager or assistant manager, they are the only ones who can go really low. For the example used above I would offer $250, then $275 then we would probably settle for $300.
I love buying shit from pawn shops and this code can give you the upper hand.
10. Looking at you, hotels
I’m speaking as a person who has been in the hotel business for most of his life.
When you drive into a hotel parking lot and you see that it’s not full, that means the hotel’s probably not full – unless there’s a bus or something. There is no such things as a fixed hotel price. You’re given automatic discounts for AAA, AARP, senior citizens, membership clubs, etc., but you can easily get 20% off the rate the person at the front desk quotes you by hustling and haggling. It’s better to sell a room for 80% of the asking price than not sell it at all, right?
