what you see is what you pay !

As soon as I see something that might qualify for a partially interesting buy, I reach for the price tag. I had been a student all my life and it is a very natural instinct that I developed for self preservation. But it took me a while, a very long while, to realize that what you see is not what you pay !!

In the beginning I used to think that in the US, what you see is what you pay, up to the accuracy of the last penny. This might over load your pocket with lots of copper coins that you carry around, but I did not consider that a problem. Then I discovered the time of a "sale" which is like the harvesting time for a consumer - time to reap all the goodies. "up to 75% off", advertise some of the stores. The "up to" is in font size 5, while the 75% is at size 20?? Which generally means they may have one useless piece in the store which qualifies for a huge discount to the point of being free, but most others that a sane person would buy will be up to 25-30 % off. Not a bad deal nevertheless, ha? And there is a wonderful policy in the US - mail-in-rebate. Mail-in-rebate is a cunning cousin of the "sale" option. If you thought that with the careful choice of the fonts, the advertising for the sale is already deceitful, mail in rebate is worse. You buy the product today, for the full price, and if you can mail the rebate form in a 2 week window exactly 6 months after the purchase, you get back a decent fraction of the amount you paid. There are no catches in this offer. But the sellers count on one of the most unfailing faculties of humans - the inability to remember the exact date of purchase and the potential savings of $20 for 6 months. And usually the trick works!

In India, there are at least two kinds of places where one can buy the goods. One is in a street side shop, where you can lay hands on the dreams of a noted designer materialized as a wrist watch, a handbag or whatever else it may be, for just a couple of dollars equivalent. It may not work as the original should, but as long as it does, you can flaunt off your fancy replicas of imported products. In this market of fair trade, the marked prices mean nothing. With the indicated prices going up to ten times what you could buy them for, the prices are meant more for confusing the customer than for suggesting its worth. The rule of the game - haggle. This is a tricky game of psychology. After hearing the outrageous value attached to the goods, let's say you quote a price which is 50% more than its worth. The vendor immediately hands the item to you with a smirk that indicates his success. To be on the safer side, if you quote a price that is possibly lower than its worth, you will be embarrassed by the eyes of the seller which ask you, "are you sure you want to buy this, or just wasting my time?" in the best case and "may be you can not afford it, get away" in most other cases. I can not afford the designer brands, but the replicas, sure I can. So, to be a winner in this game, one needs to master the art of haggling by achieving the delicate balance between the price you end up paying and the worth of ones own self esteem.

The other places for shopping are luxury goods, could even be imported goods from other countries. (I just recreated a famous Bushism involuntarily: "most of our imports are from other countries". I decided not to correct my sentence as a tribute to the ex-Prez). The game of haggling here is a little bit more subtle, or respectable if one would prefer to describe it so. These places are usually small businesses, where one would deal directly with the owner of the store. When you reach the point of billing, ready to pay cash to the owner, you would ask him "is there a discount?. I heard the New year sale was still going on here in your store" (if its after february, you would appropriately use the name of the holiday which happened either in the past one month, or is approaching in another month). The owners are usually sympathetic, and they would offer you some discount usually, 5%, 10% or whatever makes them leaves them at ease. They might also say, "if you do not ask for a receipt, you could save 5% more)." It's certainly a gentleman's agreement. He sells and you buy, why bring the middle man, called the government in between to take the taxes?

Talking of taxes, Switzerland is a tax paradise. Everything is fair here. No need to haggle. And on top of it, there is no sales tax. In the first month of my stay in this wonderful country, I went shopping and had a bill for a perfect 100 Franks. I was so happy to see the exact number, without an adulteration by the 8.25% sales tax. I even wanted to preserve the receipt. But with a host of items in the bill, that were not-so-respectable for a public display, I trashed it immediately. But wait a minute, if there is no sales tax on the food at restaurants, how would one tip in the restaurants. That was a big puzzle for me after my first restaurant meal in Switzerland. This usually an unspoken tax, or tip as some may call it, is 16-20% (the generosity of the customer depends upon whose honored company our host is in). If it is 16%, the usual trick in California is to double the tax in the bill given to you, unless one wants to use the fancy "tip calculator" built in their cell phones. With this confusion about the tip, I was a little worried about the manner of the delivery of food, next time I went to the same restaurant. But as the code in Europe goes, it is just enough to drop in a couple of euros as a thanks. It need not be associated to a significant percentage of the amount on the bill. Although food is higly-over-priced in Switzerland (as are most other items), I still appreciate their sense of tipping which does not leave your experience at the restaurant with an unpleasant aftertaste.