The other day we decided that we needed to go shopping for small appliances such as toasters, coffee makers, irons, etc. We went to few shopping centers to look around, the shopping centers here are huge and have more sales associates than customers. Anytime you look at anything you have a sales person come running over to you to assist you. Many spoke English, although broken, in time we were able to understand each other with many hand signals and rephrasing of words. When you decide on something the associate writes you a hand bill that you then take to a cashier, the cashiers are located on each floor but many times only the main cashier can accept credit cards. They do not accept debit here either, most Chinese only deal with cash. Once you locate the cashier and pay for your merchandise you then take the proof of payment back to the sales associate who then gets someone from the warehouse to bring out your item. They then insist to take everything out of the box to show you that it is in good condition and works properly. We noticed that the prices seemed to be the same no matter what mall you went to and prices were similar on name brand as you would find in Canada, there is also no negotiations in the mega malls.
After buying the needed kitchen appliances we wanted to buy a GPS system for China. The first place we went was an electronic market. This market in Shanghai was four floors of mind blowing electronics. We were able to find a GPS system that could speak in English but were concerned that there would be no receipt or guarantee with the unit so we decided to make our way to Best Buy. We found the same unit but it was about 400 yuan more that the price at the market without negotiating, so we threw caution to the wind and went back to the market. Now, Will loves to negotiate and is very good at it, I on the other hand will need some work. He went back and forth between two different vendors until get got the price he wanted and we ended up paying about $70 less than the price at Best Buy. Not bad for a days work!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Somehow I think that you will get very good at the negotiating thing over the next two years... If you can't negotiate, just stare at them, maybe that will work?
Post a Comment