I just got done watching this YouTube short of a travel influencer, and I just felt like the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. In the video you can see a kid selling Lolblachi which is some kind of candy, so when the influencer asks for one of course the kid is gonna hike the price up for a tourist. The kid asks for 100 rupees (which is about $1.18), which I’m pretty sure would have payed for half of his stock that day. Instead of just paying the tourist price which is already low as hell, he instead decides to haggle him insisting he doesn’t get “the white mans price”. Finally the young boy gives in and the influencer ends up paying 10 rupees ($0.12); but even at 10 rupees he still puts this in his description box, “apparently the Loblachi really cost 5 ($0.05) rupees each, so I still got ripped off! 😂” This guys from the UK, and apparently he use to make $10,000 a month playing online poker, and he’s haggling some poor kid on the street for cents off the price. I truly cannot wrap my head around why some people act like this, something about it feels very exploitative, insensitive about the plight of the everyday people who live there, and just plain unnecessary. I get that some people want to experience an authentic version of the country their visiting, but come on paying a tourist price isn’t the worst thing in the world. Think about how your money could positively impact the local economy or struggling families if you just spent more generously. If you can afford to go there you can afford a couple extra cents to pay a street vendor.
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I absolutely can’t stand people who do this. And they love to argue that if you pay the tourist price, they’ll keep “cheating” people because they know they can get away with it. Okay, and? You paid a dollar or two instead of fifty cents? If you’re that broke/cheap then just say it. The price of things is relative to the local economy. Why shouldn’t you pay more when you come from a country with higher salaries? Nobody can convince me they’re in the right when they’re haggling with a kid whose parents can’t afford to buy them shoes.
How is this remotely unpopular?!
It’s not about being broke or cheap. It’s about not getting fucked. The world isn’t a charity. I shouldn’t get a different price because I’m a tourist. Would this fly in the US? Hell no. You’d be labeled as racist and bigoted.
Absolutely disgusting. And not at all surprising from an “influencer”.
I can think of one or two exceptions, but those aside, literally every time I hear about an “influencer”, they’re an unbelievable c*nt.
I’ve also seen the argument that not haggling where it’s expected also drives up the prices for other tourists, especially the people who don’t haggle.
I think if it’s customary, then fine.
I once met a car salesman who was annoyed with people trying to haggle, that he made an analogy about haggling with his local coffee chain over the price of his coffee. He made a false equivalence because haggling over cars is customary given the price and the overhead. Haggling over a coffee is not customary.
There’s nothing wrong with haggling – in places/cultures where haggling is typical.
I mean honestly it’s fun to do – usually even for the seller. It’s a unique and interesting form of human interaction. I don’t know why I would go somewhere where haggling is typical and not haggle.
With that said – if you are haggling over something that costs you the equivalent of cents from your country then yeah you don’t need to go hard. Or you can tip them – especially if you’re talking about a street vendor.
And if you haggle politely and treat the person respectfully they will usually see you more respectfully for haggling. I mean everyone looks like an idiot when they’ve been convinced to pay 10x the actual going rate of a product. Only scammers like a rube.
Enjoy being scammed but no most people aren’t interested in paying 100x the price just for being foreign.
i doubt they care about the local economy or this kid’s family
“I hate when people take advantage of the underprivileged”
gee
While this example with a kid may seem insensitive as someone who traveled around the world a lot I can confidently say that they treat you like a walking wallet and pester you to buy any bs as you pass by.
On top of that they give you these bullshit prices all the time and guilt trip you then they laugh at the stupid foreigner and brag about how much more money they got out of you to their friends.
Since I shoot a lot of documentaries around the world and had interpreters and more research done in various local areas I got to know a little bit behind the scenes and as I say in most cases they just seek to exploit you and laugh about it after you leave.
So 20x mark up is completely fine? Have you ever been to another country like this? They don’t list prices, I have to just agree with what the sucker price is? How stupid.
I hate the tourists who want to haggle over candy or fruit but don’t even try to haggle buying expensive luxuries at the duty free shops.
The thing is it only became a problem because people weren’t haggling, and instead paying those 5x or 10x actual value prices, and its a practice that can’t actually be justified without the idea that exploitative capitalism is justified when done via tourism, which has many implications you don’t want to reach their logical conclusion.
Haggling for chump change is a shit move, but it comes from two places.
Haggling is either presumed, or else baked into the experience. Tourists expect to haggle and getting the deal makes them feel good. A lot of vendors in some markets artificially raise their prices, knowing tourists will often haggle them down. If you live around a tourist economy, you don’t see this behavior local to local because nobody is charging each other those prices outside of this one context.
Overcharging foreigners is already a shitty thing to do. The vendor charging 100 rupees doesn’t know this guy was an internet poker player. He saw a foreigner and went for a 10x markup. He has no idea how much money a given customer has or what other purchases they have. Its not on a specific type of customer to eat his operating costs for him.
Sucker. They see Americans and 50x the price because they don’t know to haggle
In some places haggling is an expected part of the whole routine when you’re buying stuff at the bazaar. You just can’t get mad when the Always Sunny in Philadelphia series box set you got for $5 and 2 cans of monster is just blank CD’s. Win some, lose some
You’re talking about an influencer? Influencers are among the asshole scum of the Earth. I wouldn’t expect anything less from one…