When To Haggle in China

[Lu]

I take the same attitude. I don't want to be ripped off, but am not going to bargain hard for only a few kuai.

[Neil_H]

I am always happy to pay a bit higher than their lowest price.

A nice chopstick set that started off as 300 RMB came down to 50 then up to 55. As the sellers cost price was 40 RMB and I did not want to give us Englishmen a bad name as being overly tight we met in the middle between 50 and 60.

I got scorned by the wife for paying such a price though! :rolleyes:

[anonymoose]

How do you know what the seller's cost price was?

If you ask me, for a pair of chopsticks, I'd guess the cost price is closer to 10 RMB, or even less maybe.

[roddy]

I think the topic Brian mentioned was this one from a few years back - I got annoyed with that one, people just kept telling me I'd paid too much, and I was trying really hard to pretend I didn't care

[Neil_H]

I said a set not a pair. There were 6 pairs in the set plus holders with engravings on the chopsticks and holders.

[kvetch]

I'm studying Chinese in Chuanda, and outside there are many small clothes shops.

I asked her the price of a cardigan and was told "99 kuai". I followed this up with "60 kuai ke bu ke yi?"

I was then told that this place doesn't haggle.

There was no price tag, so am I right in assuming that she was ripping me off due to being a foreigner?

Should I have been more aggressive?

Do these type of stores generally allow haggling?

[roddy]

Some places will have a no haggling-policy, but they'd usually display prices, as well as a 不讲价 sign. And places with a no-haggling policy may still haggle. As always, know what you are happy to pay, and be willing to walk away.

If you're at Chuanda, perhaps you could drop in here

[kvetch]

...Maybe I'll go crawling back to that place. It wasn't something you can buy in my home country. What's the standard price for clothes in these type of shops?

I was expecting around 50 kuai but maybe that's too cheap.

[roddy]

It's impossible to say without seeing the item.

Generally a place which will haggle would try and keep you in the shop with another offer.

Actually, will merge this with a very similar earlier topic...

[Lu]

I asked her the price of a cardigan and was told "99 kuai". I followed this up with "60 kuai ke bu ke yi?"

I was then told that this place doesn't haggle.

That would probably be an indication of them indeed not being up to haggling. You could still try, but you need a better reason, like trying to get three cardigans for 200 kuai or there being a problem with that particular cardigan.

It's impossible to tell for sure without seeing the item, but 100 kuai for a decent piece of clothing (not a flimsy 'I climbed the Great Wall' t-shirt, mind) doesn't sound like a big ripoff. Anyway, if this is something you'd really like to have, convert the price to the currency of your home country, and if it doesn't seem unreasonable and you have the money, just go buy it. Better to possibly overpay a little than to regret not getting the thing.

[Silent]

There was no price tag, so am I right in assuming that she was ripping me off due to being a foreigner?

Pricetags don't make a difference. The presence or absence of them are no indication at all or haggling is possible or not. In many, specially touristic places, pricetags are there for the sole purpose of setting the bar high. Many local non-touristic shops have no pricetags but still (more or less) fixed prices. Also being a foreigner means very little. More then once I got items for free or for very friendly prices because people appreciated me visiting their shop/restaurant/town. Many times I got ripped off despite knowing the correct price as they knew that I, as a white tourist, could afford it and had little or no reasonable alternatives.

As said before, basicly it's a matter of knowing the correct price there's no other way to say for sure or they try to rip you off, you get a normal price or even get a friends price. A lot of shopkeepers depend their price on three variables, how they like you, how much they think you can afford/are willing to pay and the actual value (the price they payed) of the item. This is independent on being a local or a foreigner though based on racial prejudices they may like you more or less and may have a biased view of what you can afford to pay.

[muyongshi]

川大 is very seldom a place that haggling will work. Typically you can ask (and all of the above advice was pretty good, so I won't reiterate it) but I'd almost expect to pay what they ask. Prices in CD are pretty high right now and that are around 川大 is no exception.

Also, no price tags is not an indicator of whether or not you can haggle-think about getting a drink from some 小卖部.

[Steingletscher]

As for specific stores, I've been told that you can over at haggle at 苏宁, is this true?

[muyongshi]

Haggling is kind of relative in those stores. In my experience you can get a small amount knocked off but more often there is "free" stuff they can offer as an incentive to buy from them.

[roddy]

Yeah, the big appliance retailers are already competing quite fiercely on headline prices, so squeezable margins in the shop will be low. What you're getting knocked of may well be the salesperson letting a bit of commission go for the sake of a sale.

[abcdefg]

The "lagniappe" system mentioned in #34 above is alive and well in Kunming. Even at places with fixed prices, such as Suning 苏宁 and WalMart 沃尔玛, they will often throw in something extra if you hesitate at the right point in negotiations. For example a jug of cooking oil free with purchase of an electric hot plate, or a free CD/DVD holder with purchase of a player.

Sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous. A mobile phone store near where I live will give you a free microwave with purchase of a high-end phone. A pharmacy across the street has all sorts of household utensils they will toss in if you buy enough medicine.