Don't Get Done!

At the end of March I happened to catch one of the series Don’t Get Done Get Dom, a BBC consumer affairs programmes in which Dominic Littlewood either tracks down rogue traders or incites customers to get the best deal possible. In this episode there was a guy who wanted to buy a set of Ping G5 irons and a driver, and Dom took him to a golf store and coached him through his ‘negotiations.’ I can’t deny Dom’s hard bargaining worked. Basically, despite the shop manager’s insistence that he was going to sell at a loss, he was beaten down to £630 for all the clubs including the driver with custom fit, free range tokens and a brolly thrown in. (This was over £300 less than the recommended price, but as the shop already had £100 discount on the irons, the saving was more like £200).
My first thought was, if most shops can knock off 12-20%, surely charging the full price is daylight robbery? But secondly, why should we have to haggle to get the best price? Dom claimed the negotiations were all done in a friendly way, and that this helped clinch the deal, but I’m not sure all retailers would have been so happy, (especially if they weren’t up for some free T.V. publicity!) and as a customer I’d be embarrassed to push so hard.
So, where do you shop for clubs and do you haggle over the deal? Should we all brush up our ‘negotiating’ skills, or is it easier to avoid confrontation by paying up or shopping online?