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Q: Help! How do I get fair price from fruit vendor?
Recently, my local fruit vendor changed ownership/management. The previous guy who always gave me good prices has disappeared and a grumpy old lady has taken his place. Now every time I buy my fruit there is a noticeable difference in price. I would say it has doubled in price. I've told her this and always ask how much the fruit costs and check the scales, but she always finds a sneaky way to jack up the price. Should I have a big verbal showdown with her or just boycott her stall altogether. But if I choose the latter, where will I buy my fruit from. Oh help!
we do this for fun sometimes at the market I go ask for the price and they mark up the price abit then I walk away and let the wife ask for the price and it is lower then I walk back and call them a cheater with everybody watching.
Lolitta2:
Good advice. Now the only problem is I don't have a Chinese wife!
There is a big market here. My GF says if I go there, the price is fair, they will not cheat me. Usually I shop at stores and the price is posted. I find it odd that the price in my local store is the same as Walmart usually.
Tell her too expensive ("tai gue le"). Suggest a lower price. If she won't budge, get a different seller. Almost everywhere I've seen in China has a fruit stall every block, shouldn't be too hard to find.
You may need to find a different seller. i have had the same problem both in Beijing and Guilin.
Sometimes I will listen to the price of the one before me (my Chinese is good enough to understand how much per "jin"). when they try to jack up the price, I ask them why was it only X Yuan per jin for the other guy? Most of the time, they laugh and give me the same price the other guy got. But on occasion, they wont budge, so i shop elsewhere.
Yeah, something like that happened to me once. There was an old guy I would buy fruit from several times, but always with a friend. The one time I went to buy it alone, I could tell he was overcharging but it was late and I was tired. Needless to say, I never went to his stall again. The guy who has a stall next to him has good prices. Like others have said, you'll probably have to go another stall to buy your food, unfortunately.
At the open market where I shop, most stalls have the pries posted on each type of fruit. I do know enough Chinese to understand it. And, I know a jin is roughly 1.1 lbs, so it is easy in my head to have a very good idea of what I should pay.
If the price quoted by vendor do not match my thinking closely, I ask for reweigh. That allows me to see the price per jin vendors enter, plus the weigh. Normally I would catch the why of the discrepancy, and act accordingly.
I also do patronize one stall over others when at the open market. That will be until he vendor tries to be smart with me. Then, if that happens,m I have no problem moving my business to another stall. After a couple of years, the current ones treat me very nicely.
