Buyer Beware

Jaipur was quite an interesting city to visit – old forts and palaces to explore, frolicking monkeys to observe and “interesting” people to meet in person and virtually.

Despite numerous heeds of caution from literature and trustworthy sources, the Hathaway-Hong style of trusting people got the better of us.

Here’s how our journey in Jaipur began…

We were approached by the cool and charming “Ali G”  as we were walking down the quiet street that our guest house was located on.  He offered us a lift but we waved him off with the intention of exploring the city by foot. “No problem, no problem,” he said. But he continued to bait the hook by sharing some very ‘valuable’ information with us in better English than we were used to hearing.  He offered, for relatively the same price as a bus tour, to personally drive us around Jaipur the next day.  Our time at all the sites could be as long or as short as we desired, without having to keep up with a group schedule.  We verified the cost of the bus tour and it seemed like an ok deal. The next morning when we ventured out, Ali G was waiting for us outside the guest house again, betting that we would take the bait.

Rikshaw drivers

We were told, and it was confirmed in Lonely Planet, that tourists should be wary of the auto drivers, unofficial tourist guides, etc. who receive commission from business referrals. They are typically friendly and suggest great places for shopping. In the end, they are making a living, but profiting on the buying power of foreigners who probably don’t have the time to make a wise decision on the “bargains” they suggest. One’s purchase decision is probably based on the cost being lower than at home, but consequently tourists are charged many times more than local people – usually as much as 10x the value.  We hear that the going rate of commission for the “touts” such as Ali G is about 50% of the profit.

So with this warning in mind, we still decided to hire Mr. “Ali G” because he seemed to be friendly enough and not too pushy. In hindsight, we paid him a lot compared to other auto drivers (A whopping equivalent of $10 to $15 CDN for an entire day of work), but we were aware that his skills in befriending tourists and his ability to acquire languages quite easily (even a bit of French) gave him a marketing edge over others. We have to say that he is quite good at what he does.

For example, he took us to a textile factory which he claimed operates as a workers’ cooperative. We arrived after the 9-5 shift of the workers, so we didn’t get a chance to see any action. He claimed that this wholesale factory actually furnishes the local vendors with their products and the vendors of course inflate the price for tourists in order to make their cut.  With very little time for comparison shopping in the markets, we followed his lead to check out this ‘opportunity’.

THE FACTORY

Despite not having any workers on shift, one of the salespeople first showed us around the factory and demonstrated the block printing methods that are used there and showed us some clothing items in progress with very intricate beadwork.  In addition toe those who work in the factory, there is a legion of women who ‘telecommute’ from their respective villages as well.

Throughout the early evening, we sat before an impressive display of silk bed linens and tapestries made from recycled bedeckled saris, apparently sourced by their female staff living in the villages. (I’m sure the ladies can agree, you can’t be seen in the same sari too many times!!)

The salesman’s tactic was to start with very low-quality bed linens that aren’t for sale in this factory but rather in the bazaars. One by one he worked to up-sell us to his best quality products.  As we’re calculating the exchange rate between rupees to Canadian and deciding whether a purchase here would be a good or bad one, we started to see an opportunity for some nice holiday presents for family and for ourselves.

Then we moved on to the pashmina scarves… this is where it pays to be an informed consumer.  Did you know that for the large part the pashminas that are purchased in North American stores, are not even close to being true pashmina?  Pashmina is not just a type of shawl, it is the source of wool that it is made from.  A real pashmina is made from the wool of the Kashmir mountain goats, but only from the softest part, the underside of their necks.  Pashmina wool does need to be blended with a small percentage of another thread (like 1 or 2 percent) such as silk, but often it it is blended with straight up polyester or rayon/viscose.   How do you tell real wool from synthetic fibers?  Light up and burn a bit of the tissue… if it disintegrates as hair would, it’s wool; if it becomes a plastic like hard ball, it’s synthetic. 

While we were there, they also convinced us to get some tailored suits made (2 suits for each of us, including shirts and ties for David) with really nice merino wool (as far as we could tell!). 

We were told at the beginning that the factory has ‘fixed prices’. Our mistake was taking that at face value. When we looked at the price tag at the end of it all, our eyeballs nearly popped out of our heads. It really added up fast. I’m ashamed to even say how much, but it was double the average salary in India. We hesitated for a bit, but then decided to go for it considering a good portion of our items were gifts. 

We were still uneasy with the cost when we got back to our hotel and the feeling lingered until the next morning as well.  

It’s all about who you know….

Our guardian angel, Ajay, from Amedebad, came to our rescue once again. Originally from Jaipur, he invited us to give him a call if we needed anything while we were there.

We called him to ask what a fair price for all of these items would be.  He quickly got on the phone to a contact of his also in Jaipur,  Mr. Singh, and we soon had a local ally.  Mr. Singh knew the owner/manager of this factory and called him directly to intervene and enquire if we were getting a fair price or a tourist price.  In the meantime, we were still visiting the city the second day with Ali G, visiting places like the Monkey Palace that we didn’t have time for the day before.  In fact, while we were walking back to the rickshaw from the Monkey Palace, we got a call from Ali asking if we were returning soon.

It turns out, in our absence, he had received a phone call from the police, which of course, completely freaked him out. Mr. Singh, who owns a guest house, had some interesting contacts and he was pulling his weight to help us out.   He called the hotel where we were staying to enquire about the rickshaw driver we went with, and then he asked the drivers outside his own guest house how Ali G could be reached.  He passed on Ali’s cell phone number to his police contacts who then enquired into the situation.

We wish we could share a photo of Mr. Singh here, but unfortunately he was our invisible friend.  We never had a chance to meet him in person as our time in Jaipur was so short.  Thankfully, modern technology helped us through mobile phone and texting.

To shorten the story, we got a 20,000 rupees discount on the price that we originally had ($1 CDN = 45 rupees approximately) and we received a few extra freebees as well.  Mr. Singh, not having seen the products we bought, in particular our dress suits, told us that we should cut our price by about 55,000 rupees.  We used that number as the starting point for our negotiation with the factory, and came out with what we feel was a fair price all around.

In the end, we still aren’t really sure if we got a good deal (which for us means a fair deal).  We told the factory manager that we didn’t want him to go without profit, but that we wanted it to be a fair profit, not a tourism rate profit. 

A friend in Montreal, who studied fashion design, should be able to look at our wares and give us an idea based on the quality of the fabrics. 

I’m happy to know that our purchases were successfully shipped back to Montreal.  David has arrived at home now and can verify that the products received are the same as what we chose (there are bait and switch scams out there that made us nervous about trusting them to ship it for us). We’re banking on the fact that our association with Mr. Singh would prevent this from happening.

In the end, we left with more than our purchases. We left with a new education on the art of negotiation in India (or perhaps the stupidity of it).