What's the price?

Can you imagine going to the dairy in New Zealand to buy Milk and Bread, and having the guy look you up and down before decided what to charge you? No?

Here in Chile, more often than not, pricing is not displayed on products in stores or in the Feria, the fruit and vege markets. Virtually no-one includes the price in their FOR SALE signs eg in car windows, on lampposts message boards advertising rooms or apartments for rent, houses for sale; in general, you get the picture. Here, people tend to use Facebook to sell things. These posts on Facebook for products or services will usually not display a price, and when people ask for the price in comments, EVEN THEN the price will not be posted publically  - they say something like "i've emailed you the prices." I built a website a couple of years ago for a Pilates instructor, and she definitely did not want to put any prices on her site.

All the details of what’s for sale, minus the actual price.

What’s that about?

If you’ve travelled much in South America (or in other third world countries for that matter), you might have heard about the “gringo tax”.  It’s the additional 20 or 30 or 50 % that’s added to the price because you are blonde, blue eyed and obviously not from around here.  You feel like you’re being ripped off, and you probably are. To many, this might even seem corrupt, and reinforce our ideas of the “Banana Republic”.

But interestingly, this is not just a Gringo Tax. I asked some Chileans why prices were not displayed, and someone described it like this:

“It happens in every feria at a national level, where the guy selling fruits or veggies will look at you and decide how much to charge based on how wealthy (or not) or naïve (or not) you look! I think that many people want to put you into a box first and then give you a price accordingly”

To a large degree here in Chile, the price for many things is not actually a fixed price. It’s based on a whole lot of things, including but not limited to what you look like & how you are dressed, and how much the vendor thinks you can pay. (Just as a caveat, there are large supermarkets here, and this practice doesn’t happen in the supermarket).

But the phenomenon was also described like this:

“it has to do with the fact that posting a price publicly might scare away clients and haggling is better done in private (over the phone, via email, etc)”

Hey, I thought. We have that in New Zealand. It’s called POA (Price on Application, otherwise known as really, really expensive and we don’t want to scare you by printing the price)

But this got me to thinking, and I realized that we are perhaps not as open and transparent about pricing in our culture as I first thought. Yes, we display prices on our goods in stores, but what about professional services? I’ve worked in organisations pricing services with an hourly rate, and our quotes and estimates have definitely changed based on the perception of what the client can afford to pay. For example, a quote to build a website might be adjusted based on who it is for - a large business can afford to pay more than small companies or a not for profit, and because of a desire to "win the business" a smaller quote might be provided.  I don’t see people calling this corrupt – this is just business.

To me, and I guess my cultural background, it seems logical and somewhat sales 101 to display the price when you’re trying to sell something. Maybe I’m lazy, or “time poor” but I’d rather have the relevant information given to me rather than call 10 numbers only to find that 9 of them are out of my price range. Maybe culturally we understand in New Zealand that the price on a house, or a car, is there to be negotiated. Maybe we understand that ONO means hey, this is a starting point, let’s talk. Whatever the reason, it does make for some frustrating experiences here.

Why is this relevant? Because it’s good to remember that things are done differently all over the world. Because NZ, especially Auckland, is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world (something like 180 different ethnics groups are represented in the great Auckland area). While it’s easy to argue that migrants to our shores should “do it the kiwi way”, this process of learning another culture takes time. We should remember that just because something is obvious to us, it doesn’t mean it’s obvious to someone else. We should remember this in our daily lives & our work.

As a final note, many of these same ads here in Chile that don’t include the price also include the words “Serious buyers only”. And therein lies one of the many paradoxes of this country… how in hell can you be a serious buyer if you don’t know what the price is?