Day 76 - Recognizing a Bargain

Iranian house image by HAMED MASOUMI, via Flickr

Learning to bargain was a necessity in the middle east, but it didn't come easily. Initially I found it very distasteful, based on my first impressions from Iran. My introduction to bargaining was seeing a house that Davood, the Iranian husband of one of my teacher colleagues in Tehran, was in the process of negotiating to rent. He brought several of us to look at it because it had an upstairs level he hoped to sub-let to one of us. The house was charming. It sat on a hill with a wonderful view or the surrounding mountains. In spite of the house featuring all that was typical of Iranian homes, it also had some amenities, making it a perfect combination of traditional and modern. But when anyone said anything positive, Davood shushed us so the owners wouldn't hear us. It would make it that much more difficult for him to get the owners to agree to the rent he wanted to pay if they knew how much we all liked it.

I did get many clues on bargaining techniques as I shopped, but I didn't always recognize them. For example, if I tried on a blouse that didn't fit, I would return it to the clerk with the explanation that it was too small. At that point, the clerk would drop the price. Thinking he hadn't understood, I would repeat myself, and the price would come down again. I would end up putting down the blouse and walking out, missing the point altogether. Bargaining in Iran seemed always to involve insulting the seller or the seller's possessions. The seller, in return, then insulted the buyer. And that just wasn't something that was comfortable to me.

Bargaining on the other side of the Gulf was much more agreeable, although it took me awhile to learn the difference. It took a very bad case of bronchitis that had me sent from Doha to Riyadh for me to learn how to be bargain successfully. After two weeks of following the regional medical officer's orders, I had recovered sufficiently to accept the invitation to join David, an American who was in Riyadh to provide training to the staff in the finance office, as he went shopping in the souq. Since the Saudis did not allow women to drive, the embassy had a very large motorpool from which women could order up vehicles for any personal business. So the men would invite a woman along in order to avoid having to pay the nominal amount they would be charged if they used a motorpool vehicle. That was all the invitation meant - a free ride for him if I was also in the car.

David wanted to buy a carpet for a newly renovated bedroom in his home. He knew the size, color, and style of carpet he wanted, so we went off to the souq in search of it. We went to a number of shops, without success. When we finally found a shop where just the carpet he wanted was displayed by the shop keeper, I got my lesson. When David asked the shopkeeper how much he wanted for the carpet, he named a number far above any I could image paying for a carpet.  The carpet was exactly what he wanted - the perfect size - 6 feet by 8 feet, the perfect colors - navy blue and rust, and the perfect design - an elegant city carpet. But the price was high. David's reaction was perfect, too. When the shopkeeper asked him how much he would be willing to pay for the carpet - to get the bargaining going - David responded that he didn't dare say what he had hoped to pay for a carpet because it would be insulting to the shop keeper to think that he would part with such a beautiful carpet for such a small amount. David had told me how much he hoped to pay, so I knew exactly what he meant. But I could never have put it into words so well.

David asked to see another carpet that wouldn't be quite so expensive. The shopkeeper pulled out another with the same colors, but smaller and a tribal design instead of the city design. The price was lower, but still not as low as David had hoped to pay. Again, when the shopkeeper tried to elicit a price from which the bargaining could begin, Daivd replied that he couldn't insult the shopkeeper by admitting how little he thought he could pay for a carpet, especially when it was clear they were all worth much more than he had expected.

Because we had already been in the souq for some time, the call to prayer occurred. Now, in Saudi Arabia, a very conservative Islamic country, when the call to prayer happened, everything shut down. Restaurants could not serve meals during the 20 minutes after the call to prayer. Shops had to close their doors for 20 minutes after all customers had been turned out. But our shopkeeper was determined to make a sale and he wasn't about to let us out of his sight. So instead of turning us out, he whisked us upstairs to another level and then he pulled down all the blinds so that no one outside could see that we were still in the shop. The shopkeeper continued to pull carpets out to show David, always with the colors he wanted, but smaller or in different styles than he wanted. The prices were lower, but David continued to respond with the most appreciative and generous comments about the quality of the carpets in the shop without naming a number.

Kurdish carpet

Twenty minutes after the call to prayer, we were able to go back downstairs. More carpets were pulled out for David to look at. By this time, the shopkeeper had begun to look at me as a potential buyer as well. One of the carpets he pulled out was Kurdish, a modified prayer carpet. It was just 2 feet by 3 feet, considerably smaller than David's target size. It was navy blue, beige, and brown, not the navy blue and rust that David was looking for. But I found it very interesting and I started bargaining, settling on $200.00. The shopkeeper wrapped it up for me and then turned his attention entirely on David. Eventually, he pulled out the very first carpet he had shown us, the one that was perfect. Again, the shopkeeper asked David how much he was prepared to pay for a carpet. Finally David named the price he had told me in the first place he was willing to pay, $100.00. And the shopkeeper agreed, wrapped it up, and handed it to David.

I don't know if I overpaid so much for the Kurdish carpet that the shopkeeper could take a loss on David's carpet, or if he just wanted to make a sale to each of us, no matter the price. It doesn't matter because I learned the essential elements of bargaining that day. The most important element is establishing a positive relationship between seller and buyer. Once the seller and the buyer are comfortable with one another, perhaps even have trust in one another, but certainly like one another, that's when coming to an agreeable price is possible. Agreeing on a price too soon robs both buyer and seller of the opportunity to get to know one another.

And that is my key to recognizing a bargain.