One thing I have been thinking... in eleven incarnations of the shopping task, there have been numerous attempts to barter prices down, but not once have I ever seen anyone ask on the phone what the price would be. To me, on a task about spending as little as you can, this would seem to be so obvious it seems remarkable that apparently no one has ever thought to do that. Which makes me think, are they banned? I can't see why they would be other than to make the task unnecessarily harder, but it's the only thing I can think of.

It seems more like you use the phones to find leads and check stock, then face to face sort out the nitty gritty.

Yes, but given the number of times they arrive somewhere only to find the price completely out of their budget, it seems odd that no one ever asks on the phone.

Generally its a knock down the price task so doesn't matter if its a million quid for a teaspoon, you need to bargain it down as much as possible and perhaps they do ask the price but its edited out so that they can seem like geniuses when they get a £100 thing down for £20.

Regardless, it would still help, wouldn't it? If you have two places, one selling it for £200 and one selling it for £150, you'd always go to the cheaper one, because if you negotiate it down you'd rather start off lower.

Probably makes for better TV as basically they seem to walk in blind and have to hope for the best

I tend to agree. After all, negotiating on the phone is a skill, but it wouldn't be quite so dramatic in a "group of headless chickens" sort of way!

This is sort of what I said yesterday about buying in a supermarket v buying from an independent. It's better to buy something at £1 and receive no discount than buy something for £1.25 at a discounted price but I have to spend hours negotiating it.

But you'd get roasted for not getting a discount in the boardroom and in a time critical event like this you can't wait an hour or two for the store manager to get a decision from head office one way or the other.