Travel the World Without Worries: An Inspirational Guide to Budget and Adventure Travel (3rd Edition) by Marek Bron

Author:Marek Bron [Bron, Marek]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

Advanced lowballing

I used to ask cab or tuk-tuk drivers and market salesmen and the like how much something costs, but I realized later that this is clearly a rookie mistake. I mean, why would you ever do something as stupid as ask for the price? Presenting them with such an open question is just a big invitation for them to make something up on the spot. They’ll often just tell you the highest price they think they can get away with, and from there it can take a long time to walk things back to a reasonable price. (We are talking here, of course, about any country where there is a big income disparity between locals and tourists.)

What I often do now is to not even give them an opportunity to name their price at all. Instead I will flip the script and immediately suggest the lowest possible price that I can think of. Even when I don’t know the actual price at all, I will just suggest one that’s extremely low—really any price that seems just a hair short of being plain offensively low.

Saying “I need to get to the station. That’s 10 Baht, right?” is much more likely to get you the actual local price of 30 Baht than saying “how much is it to the station?”, as then negotiations will surely start at 150.

While this technique can be very effective, it does still follow that good service should be rewarded. If someone is willing to charge you an honest price, you might want to also leave them a nice tip.

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