Hit Me with Your Best Price

From reading my guide-book I knew that there would be a lot of bargaining “opportunities” in India. And by opportunities, I mean traps. I already mentioned how my tour guides were in a habit of taking me to places that I knew already had inflated prices, but for the most part I felt like my driver had my back and looked after me (he even offered to turn the radio on for me to hear some Indian music…and immediately turned on “Barbie Girl”-no joke). But there was one incident on the road that put me off my game. It was just after the strike– he pulled over on the side of the highway and had us dodge traffic to get to the other side of the highway to get to a little building that was this woman’s shop. His uncle, who was another driver following the same route as us pulled over as well. (I found out later that he told the Swedish couple in the car that I was the one who requested the shop, and they thought “Why does this weird American want to stop here?”) Anyway, we get into the shop and the woman was very excited to see us while her three children ran up and down the stacks of rugs. She gave us a demonstration of how she made her rugs and explained there were some from camel hair, some from sheep, some from elephant (I might have made the last one up). At this point I realized there was no way I could leave here without buying anything– it was clearly expected of me. The good news was the driver kept telling the woman to give me a good price (as opposed to the guides who kept telling me the vendors were already giving me a good price– way to help me out, buddy.) He even said “actually, she’s my relative.” Hmmm not sure if the lady believed that one . . . I started off by telling the lady I wanted her smallest size rug. I appreciated the hard work she had put in, but the pattern styles really weren’t my style, and I really hadn’t factored in buying rugs on the side of the road. Bargaining always starts with me asking how much they are charging and them asking me how much I’m willing to pay. She asked me to pick out two rugs.  Since I really didn’t want any, I offered her about a 1/3rd of her price for two– I didn’t even want one. We haggled back and forth over her calculator with her son translating the numbers I put in back to her. My driver kept insisting I was his relative and gave her some numbers too, but they were on the calculator so I didn’t see. (That’s the trick at the big markets to hide the numbers to make sure you can’t hear what prices other people are discussing). Anyway, we went back and forth for a while and finally, even though the son looked incredulous, the woman agreed to my price. When we got back in the car my driver was thoroughly impressed. Said he had been giving higher numbers to her than I had. Said he’d call me the next time he went to a market– had I been practicing bargaining? But I bought two rugs I didn’t like or intend to buy, is that really good bargaining??

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