One of the most obvious factors in Middle Eastern life is bargaining. Taxi fares, souvenir prices, food prices, and even exchange rates can be haggled over. Western visitors often have a hard time adjusting to this system. They can’t believe that any shopkeeper would lie about the price of an item. If they ask 50 guineas, that must be a fair price and paying less would be unfair to the shopkeeper.
In the movie Gallipoli, Aussie soldiers in Egypt buy souvenirs at different shops and then compare their goods. When one of them realizes he paid five times as much as his friends, they all go back to the shop and beat up the shopkeeper till he gives them their money back.
Although all the vendors in the Middle East are obtrusive and inflate their prices, each country is unique. In Egypt, they try to flirt with people to get their attention, then swear to the authenticity of their goods. On average, it is possible to bring their prices down by about 50%.
In Turkey, the main way to get tourists attention is to make them feel guilty. It goes like this. “Excuse me, I have what you want. Hey sir! I’m talking to you. Here in Turkey it’s rude not to look at someone who is talking to you. Excuse me, please don’t turn your back on me! All right, good bye…” They inflate their prices about as much as Egyptians but are very much harder to argue down.
Syrians, like Turks, often act extremely offended by the insult offered to their goods when you try to bring the price down. They also like to use the calculator trick. They pull out their calculator and do elaborate calculations to make it look like they are just barely getting enough to make a profit. (They hate it if you take the calculator and do your own calculations…)
Finally, there are the Israelis. They are so used to gullible tourists paying what they ask that their prices are 4-5x the real value of the objects. As soon as you balk at the price, it drops like a lead balloon. 100 shekels for a box becomes 75 (the “special price for a friend”) then 60 (“but don’t tell anyone I sold it this cheap).
Once you get used to it, shopping can be fun – just like fighting to get onto a subway or risking your life by crossing a street or …
4 comments:
yeah, haggling is fun. remember doing it in Greece, and trying to teach the others how?
"Trying" being the operative word, right, Heidi? Most of us were pretty poor students...
lol, the rest of you felt too polite to actually take it seriously ("isn't it cheating to try to pay less than they're asking?")
It is similar in the Philippines, too. When I spoke to the shop keeper in their own dialect, that definitely made a difference! (They took the price down.)
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