Peter_C said:
Purchasing 101:
Pick a price that you are willing to pay. Start far lower than said price. Lets use $1000 that you are willing to pay with seller asking for $1400. You start at $800 and work your way up, and of course you will settle in the middle.
The numbers used in this example are consistent with what is called "lowballing" - which is offering a price well below the market and well below the asking price. It sometimes works, mainly for things which have no demand and no defined price, it may work with sellers who are desperate to sell and have no options. However, in case when there is a reasonably established market price and demand at this price, it is more likely to lead to a negative reaction than to a success. In the best case, you will not be taken seriously, in the worst case it may destroy all chances for a negotiation. If I am selling something which I believe is more or less worth the asking price, I may consider a reasonable offer, but if someone offers me 50% off the asking price and the item which I am selling has a value for me (meaning, I am not going to donate it to Goodwill by the end of the week if it does not sell), it does not start the negotiation. I received low-ball offers before (via Craigslist) and these offers never gotten anywhere with me. I either counter-offered MSRP as a "special" using it as a way of telling "go to heck with your low-ball offer, I do not want to hear from you ever again", or just ignored the offer.
It is a free world, one can try anything you want, sometimes it might even work, but be aware that it may just as well kill your chances to do business with that particular person and get that particular item. Anyhow, I doubt it is a plausible tactic with high end tools which do not go on sale and supply for which does not exceed demand.
One of the facts to consider, in the framework of this forum, is that people who buy a tool for, say, $1000, are less likely to find themselves in a dire need for cash as quickly as possible. When they decide that they do not need this tool anymore and decide to free up storage space, they can wait. They can just keep the tool for a few months longer. I dare to go as far as saying that acceptance of a low offer below market and below typical eBay prices could mean that this tool may be stolen or something may be wrong with it.
"If something looks too good to be true, it is probably not true".
I wonder who on this forum would even consider getting in a discussion with someone who offered you $400 for a tool for which you are (hypothetically speaking) asking $800 (and consider this price justified for the tool condition)?
Returning back to the question which started this discussion - it is fairly easy to get an idea, e.g., from eBay prices, what is the realistic price for each of the components offered to you as a package. If it is really in barely used condition, I think 20% off current MSRP can be considered a good purchase and would mean a lot of money saved. Even 10% off can be considered a decent deal for a like-new tool... Because you normally would not get this discount anywhere!
The reason why 50% off the "new" price is often thought to be a proper target for used tool purchase with many tool brands, and why one can actually get a tool in a good condition at such low price, is because these tools are likely to go on sale at 20-40% off at least once, if not a few times a year. From this standpoint, it is not really 50% off, but just 10% - 20% discount off the best available retail price of a new tool. Since Festool fixes retail prices in the US, MSRP is the only available "best retail price" that one can find. You can wait for years and see the price only go up. So here we are talking about the same 10% to 20% off the best retail price, except that "best retail price" is equal to MSRP and only increases year over year.
Whether or not you can get an extra discount for buying a set of tools, as opposed to one tool at a time, depends on the seller. I would not keep my hopes too high for a significant discount, or any discount, because used Festool tools tend to sell relatively quickly and there is no real reason to give a discount when a single person buys the whole set if one sell them at a higher price separately, but it depends on the sellers mood and his individual circumstances as well as his desire to sell as a mail order or only locally.
I would not put too much value on warranty (or how much of it is left) because it matters mainly for tools known to be unreliable. Festool can break, but overall it is fairly reliable.
