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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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i moved from the united states to a country which has a pretty intense haggle culture. without being able to talk about it, you might come here and think you're just being scammed by everyone.
Where are you now if you don't mind? I absolutely hate haggling. I've read that in Persian society if you don't haggle three times you are being rude. I'm not trying to be racist, and I may have remembered wrong, but this sounds like hell to me.
See, THIS kind of discussion is what I asked for. Good intentions and just trying to figure out the POV of the other culture. This hyper-puritanical moderation prevented this good discussion from taking place where it belongs.
yeah. as an American, I think haggle culture is annoying as hell. it's completely unnecessary. they'll tell you the price is really high, and then you'll ask for something really low, and then they'll meet you in the middle where the price is supposed to be. what the hell was the point?
it's partly an ego thing. if you're selling something, and you don't give them at least some inconsequential discount, they're going to feel like they got ripped off. even if you're giving them an honest price that they won't find anywhere else, they need to buy it at a price that's lower than what is offered. The buyer and seller both need to feel that they are smart because they moved the price from what the other person wanted.
selling your motorbike or camera gear on Facebook is absolute hell. 90% of the messages you get will be wasting your time. "hello, I would like to buy your motorcycle for $40". haggle spam, basically. oftentimes they will agree to some price and then actually show up to your place, stare at the bike for an hour, and then change their bid to something so low that it is not sensible.
I could list examples for hours.
Guh. All that sucks. I have some friends who were born in India, and they have told me the worst thing about being from that culture while living in the US is random Indians asking them to do things or give them a discount or even free stuff. Not all Indians do this of course, but it's enough to complain about.
yeah, I'm sure that being an Indian immigrant gives you access to a business community. probably nice for finding clients and partners, etc. the business culture within that community would be some mix of American and Indian.
I mean this is just a cultural difference. Of course as an American, where haggling is uncommon and not a part of societal norms, you will find it annoying.
In other countries, where retail sectors are not as standardized, haggling is seen as a form of social interaction and networking. It is, by all means, less efficient. But not every culture romanticizes productivity to the point of working / chasing a bag until you're frail, incontinent and need to be put in a 'home'.
The lack of efficiency is also antithetical to consumerism which is a cultural norm in many parts of the world where haggling is uncommon. You can buy 15 pieces of junk on Amazon in the amount of time it takes to haggle one peice of junk at a market. Which is more 'normal' depends on which part of the world you're from.
Haggling in person is a completely different experience from online. You can fake your identity online, disappear randomly, and spam for the sake of spamming. It's much harder to do that when you show up with your real face in a relatively close knit community.
Not in any way trying to dismiss your experience. I find it very uncomfortable as well but having South asian parents means that I've seen my fair share of such transactions and how they can have the interesting effect of bringing people together.
yea, the key to doing business offline here is to make friends. the service quality and prices you get are entirely dependent on it. i usually enjoy this aspect of the culture more than i am annoyed by it, but it depends on what I'm trying to get done. what you are saying is accurate of my experiences as well.
Not my point. I just presented an argument for closing the thread. There is a valid conversation to be had, but having it is difficult.
it sounds like from op's drawing here that it was a discussion which was working. if the threaded Reddit style paradigm isn't the right format for this type of discussion, I don't know what is
The issue is not the thread format, but the community they asked in and the generality and phrasing of the question. If you were to ask about a specific region and try to ask in a space where people who live there are willing to answer it would be much easier to moderate.
My issue with this is that barter and haggling is a very diverse practice that is seen differently across the world. All cultures do it in certain forms and in certain contexts, but both those concepts and how haggling is performed/perceived differ wildly. This in my opinion is a very solid question for general anthropology. Before the thread got removed, I was getting answers about all kinds of places, not just the Middle East.
One really good comment in that thread that is now removed mentioned that, when they went to Thailand, the merchants had a system where they would hand you a calculator with the price punched in and you would change that price and hand it back. They said that they entered in decimals that don't exist in Thai currency as a joke, and that the merchant seemed entertained. I don't think that I can get these kinds of answers from mass-posting on subs of a bunch of different countries--I wasn't even thinking of Thailand when I wrote the original post.