Haggling 101

“How much is this?”- Me

“30 Lira.”- Merchant

“I’ll give you 15.” I turn to Sarah and ask “What is this again?”

Haggling is a common and expected occurrence in Turkish culture. Although many malls and other fixed price stores exist in Turkey, a lot of the local merchants hold true to the tradition of price bargaining.

As always, with the good comes the bad. In many areas where one can haggle, the prices are set high for the less savvy tourists who don’t speak the language. When purchasing goods tourists know their money is worth more here and believe they are still getting a good deal, when in fact they are paying twice the cost. In Turkey it’s good to know that the cost of producing things is much lower than in the United States. This might seem like an obvious statement, but if you are not haggling then the merchant is making an outrageous profit.

When one haggles it is usually good to drop the price significantly and work with the merchant from there, but in many cases the price won’t drop much without a native speaker. Many times we have asked the price on something and been given a high price. However when a native speaker or professor Andaç inquires about the price it is usually a little lower.

Some examples of this happening were mostly in the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. In the Grand Bazaar our group was hunting for some nice fake Ray-Bans. When we asked the price the man said 30 lira. Then, when a boy walked up and asked the price in Turkish he said 20. Professor Andaç was so offended that we left the store immediately, and rightly so.

An even worse example occurred when buying spices and teas. Tabitha made purchase of tea for 45 lira. The next day when we went back a different man offered to sell the same product for 20 lira to Nate. Professor Andaç was outraged and she began arguing with the man in Turkish. Before Nate could buy the product, she took out five lira coin, put it in the man’s hand, and handed the tea to Nate. Ultimately Tabitha and Nate ended up with a fair price after paying five lira that day, but professor Andaç was still not pleased since she frequently visits that shop.

These are just a few examples of price bargaining gone wrong. As in many other places, if you don’t know the language, it’s easy to be taken advantage of. In the future though, we have a new strategy:

“Let’s try this. ‘You want 15? I’m not paying less than 30!’”- Sarah.