NEW YORK -- — If you're looking for an extra bargain before the holidays, you may only have to ask.
With holiday sales shaping up to be the lowest in years, retailers say they're extending return policies, volunteering on-the-spot discounts and even letting customers haggle prices well down from what's marked in a desperate bid to make cash registers ring.
"You'd have to be a moron not to ask for a discount," said Stephen Hoch, a retailing expert at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
More and more consumers are doing just that, treating a trip to the mall like a visit to the used-car lot.
Allen Chen, a part-time cashier at a J. Crew store in White Plains, N.Y., said shoppers with 2-month-old receipts were asking for partial refunds for items now on sale. Normally, the store's policy is to refund the difference between an item's purchase price and a later sale price only if it goes on sale within seven days of the purchase.
"When I tell them it is past the seven-day policy, they tell me that they will just return it and re-buy it" at the sale price, Chen said, adding that his store managers are allowing customers to do so most of the time.
Shoppers are also being far more savvy about asking retailers to match a competitor's lower price.
While shopping for Blu-ray discs at a Los Angeles Best Buy, Luis Levy used his cellphone to check the price at nearby competitors. Each disc was $10 cheaper at Circuit City or Wal-Mart. Best Buy matched the lower prices.
Diana Thang, manager of Grace Jewelers near San Francisco's Union Square, said she and her staff were bargaining more than she ever had in two-plus decades in the business. But it's not working wonders.
"They have a budget," Thang said of most customers this season. "We give a low, low price and they still can't accept it. They're looking at more-than-$1,000 stuff, and they want to spend $200 or $300."
With sales slow at virtually all retailers, experts say customers have the upper hand. And even some who don't explicitly ask for a discount or price match are pressing for better deals.
Jill duPont, owner of a small women's clothing and accessories boutique called Out of the Box in Greenwich, Conn., said she had felt some pressure to mark her prices down to be competitive with others.
"Customers aren't shy about telling us what a good price they found somewhere else," she said.
