It is generally said that dealing with Indian shopkeepers is not easy. The person who knows to bargain alway ends up cracking a good deal with a shopkeeper. This is what makes Indian shopkeepers hard to handle. Be it a regular shopkeeper or visiting a new shopkeeper. These days, as I am trying to explore the local market of a new place, I always get new experince. Even after so many years of shopping experince at my back, I end up getting fooled with these shopkeepers. They get too rigid with their product. Some were too harsh while some gets to polite. One thing is pretty sure that these shopkeepers needs business and they have nothing to do on getting personal.
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There are challenges in getting the goods at a fair prices. There is a recent case, where I end up paying excess amount for a stationary product. I was looking for a office file at a local stationary shop. They charged me at the printed price. My previous experience says that these stationary products were never sold at the printed price. The price is generally much lower, but the shopkeeper starts behaving in such a way that they will lose their buying cost if sold below printed price. Being new place I am unaware of their tricks. They started behaving as they lose. I started moving away to the next shop, when the shopkeeper called back and offered at a reduce price. Even that price was looking way beyond the original cost of the product. But I get ready to buy the product.
During all these bargaining, I end us musing and making some friendlybtalks with the shopkeeper, just to make myself familiar at the market. And it happened that I build a good repo. Many things could easily happen over normal talks. I ended up making him friend. In few day, I again needed the office file and went straight to him. This time, the shopkeeper offered me the same file at a much lower price. Not sure if he forget about the last deal or I made a good deal by being friendly with these guy but now I know, whatever stationary I needed now, I will get it at a genuine price. A win win situation for a cracking few jokes with the shopkeeper.
However, such tricks does not goes well with all the shopkeeper, I made to feel embarasing by a small bottled water vendor. Again it was at my new place, the vendor was charging hefty price of these water. I asked for lowering the price as similar water was available at lower price in big cities like Delhi. While convincing him, I falsely said that I knew about these bottled water business and the charges were too high. The cunning vendor, soon asked me thr price of an empty bottle, which surprises me. Unaware of the price of bottled jar, I turn blue and black. He was shrude man and caught me of my false claim. Anyway, I soon get away with the deal. But he does taught me abgood lesson. Traders are shrude and cunning.
In India, few of the shopkeepers get too close to us, and some get to an extent of brotherhood. It solely depends upon the person attitude and behaviour. If we adopt a polite and friends day behavior some of thebtrader will treat us well, but we cannot expect the same with everyone, as they mean business. It is rightly said that,
घोड़ा घास से दोस्ती करेगा तो खायेगा क्या?
If a horse makes friends with grass, what will it eat'?. It is a Hindi proverb. It means that in business, one should not incur loss to make customers friends . That is, one should work in a limited manner, so that there is no loss due to friendly behavior
In good faith - Peace!
