Monday 26 November 2007

Elastic Israeli pricing


When you're making aliyah you talk a lot about money, even without doing aliyah you talk money...

We need to know how much it would cost to buy new furniture, a fridge, a tv etc. Easy you think, well it would be in many countries, but not in Israel.

A few weeks ago on our trip to Israel we went in to a huge store where they seemed to be specialized in fridges, plasmas etc, Idon't remeber the name of it but it was a chain.

The prices where high and after a while my husband grabbed a vendor telling him it was really expensive, are these prices fixed?

The vendor smiled and said of course not, tell me what you want and we'll talk!
That's funny.
In big stores prices are always fixed, sometimes, after half an hour, you may obtain 10 % reduction but that's it.

Same things seems to be with the real estate agencies. We visited five or six houses, when I asked for the prices it was always the same, I told the woman that it was funny that a small house with a small garden was as expensive as a big house with a big garden.
Noooo,said the woman with a smile,the price I gave you is just an example!!! Tell me which one you like and than we'll negotiate...
Okey, I'm not stupid. Yesterday we had a meeting with some Israeli banks, we spoke about fees and interest charges and I felt really relaxed, I know how it works now, everything is elastic and few things are impossible, just negotiate... I pointed out to the woman in that her charges were high, gave her a smile and said "it's just an example, isn't it, in reality it's much lower" sure she said, we'll talk about it later, it's just an example...

3 comments:

Shlomo Yona said...

When you are a customer and there is a competition between vendors and service providers there's almost always room for bargaining for a better price or for more value for the same price. Almost everything is negotiable. 10% off is not a lot: you can get more off the price, depending on the product/service/vendor...

This should not come as a surprise to you.

Svensk chekchouka said...

yesterday with the hapoualim bank the interest dropped from 6.8 to 5 in 2 minutes. I think what amuses us is how fast they go, it's like they're trying and when they see it doesn't work they don't drop slowly but really fast...
In Zikhron Yacov someone showed us appartements, same thing, the appartement lost 70 000 dollars in a minute!!!
The French are known as people who wants to pay a lot I guess, as real estate on French speaking sites are 30 % more expensive than on English speaking sites, maybe the price rices a little extra in the beginning because of my husbands accent :)
Thank you Shlomo for your input we will investigate before buying!

Mia said...

Underbart, skulle ge medelsvensson magsår direkt. ;)

Du e verkligen rätt person att deala till er något. Jag håller på dig!