Long-term residents - how much haggling do you do

[roddy]

I'm curious as to what extent people who are here on a long-term basis find themselves having to haggle.

Had to get a key cut today. It's one of the newer types of key, flat with indentations in the surface rather than a 'jagged edge' type, so I thought I might need to ask around a bit. A few places say they can't do it, then one guy says 50Y. This is obviously daft for getting a key cut so I walk away and he yells 30Y after me. I go back and tell him if he doesn't know his own prices I can't really trust him to know how to cut a key. He doesn't like that. Another guy can't do it, but says he reckons it will be about 10Y. Next guy down the street (I'm walking home at this point, not doing a key-cutting tour of Beijing) wants 35Y. Next few guys can't do them, but are telling me I should pay 10-20Y. One closest to my house says 10Y, but his boss says 15Y for that kind, I get a key cut and it works.

I generally find that when you are out of tourist areas doing everyday stuff, you get a fair price on the first asking. Maybe clothes shopping needs a bit of negotiation, and haggling with fruit sellers is a part of life, but your average food / hardware shop without prices marked does, in my experience, give you 'the price' straight off -- maybe a bit off if you're buying a lot, maybe round down to the nearest 10Y, but nothing that actually requires any work. I've paid 3Y for things I expected to be over 20Y, and had people call me back to say they'd made a mistake, those lightbulbs are 3Y cheaper than they'd charged me. So I was surprised to find people quoting me three times a fair price for something as mundane and simple as getting a key cut. I have no idea if even the 15Y is a reasonable price for this type of key, but frankly I don't care and it was the last key-cutting place I was going to pass before getting home.

What do you reckon? Are you engaged in a constant price battle with shopkeepers? Am I a daft foreigner throwing money around left right and center? Let the forums decide!

[Marco]

Sorry to tell you but you paid way to much, I had to pay 6 Kuai for three keys.

I do have to say that I live near 苹果园 only a few times saw a 外国人here, people know me so I don't have much problems with buying things here(sh)

[md1101]

well considering you had that wierd key i would expect it to be more than normal. but the boss saying 'oh that one is 15' sounds a little dodgy to me. maybe the right price would have been 10 kuai.

as for being told bullshit prices it happens a fair bit with me. when i went to luoyang i went into this hotel that had a sign saying 90 kuai a night for a 3 bed room. I thought thats great so went upstairs to look at the room first. we came back down and they had switched the sign to 250 kuai a night! me and my mates laughed and said no no no we saw the first sign but they wouldn't budge. after a long time we got it for 100. next day we 'left' then went back to see the old sign there so they had no choice but to give us the 90 kuai fee for the that night.

sometimes i am surprised though when they come straight off and say the right price. which is usually much cheaper than you thought it would be. but im always weary....

i'll haggle over 1 kuai if i know its just a 'foreigners tax' now.

and ive written before about those longyang station taxi's... that really annoys me

[imron]

Where I used to live a normal jagged key would cost 1 kuai to get cut. Then there's the kind of key that has 4 jagged edges and fits in a keyhole sort of like the top of a phillips head screw, which would cost 5 yuan to get cut. I've never had to get one of those "flat with indentation" keys cut, but I'd be surprised if you could get three of that type of key cut for 6 kuai.

I do find that the longer I spend in China the less inclined I am to bargain. Firstly because the places I usually buy from already know me, and know not to rip me off and secondly because sometimes I just can't be bothered spending the extra 5 minutes trying to knock a few kuai off the price. Of course I'll still bargain to bring prices down to something reasonable, but nowadays I rarely go the extra lengths to get the absolute cheapest price possible.

[wushijiao]

I really hate bargaining, so I assume that I’m getting ripped off a lot. I don’t know.

Generally, as far as fruit, which I buy in large quantities daily, I generally find a vendor in my area that is honest, and stick with him or her.

I suppose the problem with buying keys, or something like that, is that the vendor knows that you won’t be a long-term customer, due to the nature of the product, and thus he is more likely to rip you off.

For me at least, I try to do almost all my shopping in places that have fixed prices.

[roddy]

Sorry to tell you but you paid way to much, I had to pay 6 Kuai for three keys.

I really don't care. How often to I need to buy keys? Even assuming I find out the right price and haggle down to it, frankly the time and hassle often isn't worth it. If you're buying something that costs real money, fair enough. It's only when something comes up with something completely out of the ballpark that I get annoyed. Fair enough, if 2Y was a decent price and I was told 15Y I'd get annoyed, but I'd had a stream of people who weren't even selling the things quote 10-20Y.

Rather than the price of keys, I'm curious about how people find it works, and how they deal with it. Mick will haggle over 1Y, Imron can't be bothered spending the time and wushijiao does most of his shopping at places with fixed prices.

[gougou]

I suppose the problem with buying keys, or something like that, is that the vendor knows that you won’t be a long-term customer, due to the nature of the product, and thus he is more likely to rip you off.

But how many Chinese are there that actually see the long-term customer in you? I've always assumed this to be a concept absent in China...

[griz326]

Some of the prices you were quoted were higher than prices in the US!

Getting a standard key made these days is 16 RMB with 40 RMB being the high end for oddball keys that are cut without the aid of a locksmith. The fancy new keys used in automobiles are an entirely different matter.

I found your haggling tale interesting...I've made a mental note for my next trip.

[johnd]

It is possible that those guys quoting the price, even though they didn't have that type of key, were still giving you the "international price" so that they were not letting down the lucky trader who finally got your business.

Am I too cynical??

[roddy]

I'm amazed how interested people are in the price of keys . . .

Doubt it, to be honest - three places that didn't have the right cutting machine quoted similar prices.

[liuzhou]

how much haggling do you do?

I have a wife to do that sort of thing for me.

[mr.stinky]

what i find annoying is that even after the haggling is complete, the 'price' is not set.

you still have to deal with the volume - ask for a kilo of whatever fruit/veggie, they try

to sneak in 1-1/2 or two. then you have to argue all over again. get that settled and

it seems that 9 times out of 10, the 'merchant' will give the incorrect change. catch that

little trick and you get the smug little smile and giggle.

i've started smoking again.

[Crivens200]

The bizarre thing is I find more and more people trying harder to rip me off through gentle persuasion cos I speak chinese. For example if I get in the front seat of a taxi and my non-chinese speaking friends are in the back, if I get speaking to the driver he'll blatantly ask for 10rmb even though the meter says 8. He can't ask my friends to pay 10 when they are in the front cos they don't speak chinese and the meter says 8. Doh.

[venture160]

the other day I was out at a car products market out in haidian buying a mini-fridge as a gift for a friends 大型面包车。 There were about 20 vendors selling what apeard to be the same model made by 奥利特, some Beijing based company. 12" deep, but I got prices all over the place, some said 1,000, some said 250. I quickly discovered after close inspection that while they were all made by the same company 奥利特， out of the 20 or so 12" deep models I looked at, NONE OF THEM WERE THE SAME!!! they all differed in slight ways, coloring, placement of plugs, dials, manuals, but they all had the same box!!. So it donned on me, these were all knock offs, just being packaged in the origional boxing. I knew it and so did these shop-keepers but they REFUSED to give me a cheap price and got pissed off when I said these were clearly knock-offs and there was no way to I was going to pay full price for one. So finally near closing time, I got angry and demanded one shop keeper to show me all the boxes he had for this model, and I finally found a model that actually corresponded to the one that was on the outer box and in the manual, an actual real product, but then he demanded I pay 100 more. I was pissed!!! I just proved him dead wrong and he still wouldn't make mine cheaper nor would he lower the price on the "actual" product. This was all after I paid 360rmb for the fake model. (I didnt know it at the time) The place was closing so I just said screw it, the one I bought works (tested) and its close enough, but I was pissed for a while knowing that I got screwed into buying a knock off for the same price as the actual product. But again, this is China. the entirety of NEC has been faked here. Anything is possible. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/business/nec.php

[Marco]

The thing is that I didn't had to any haggeling for the the 6 kuai, I just gave my key and got it cut, I don't haggle for most of my shopping, only when I go to places where people are used to having foreigners around i find that I have to haggle( and I rather dislike it so I try to avoid places like hat)

[self-taught-mba]

WOW!

You HAVE to read this article--wow! That could be whole another discussion just on that. Wow that is something special.

But again, this is China. the entirety of NEC has been faked here. Anything is possible. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/business/nec.php

[Qcash3]

Lol, that is a counterfeiting scheme worthy of the movies.