The first was a 1999 Toyota Hilux ute with no door locks, average suspension and a weird burning smell that was possibly the clutch. Asking price: $US 14,000. Hmm, let’s get serious, please Mr Owner. Oh, okay, then we can have it for $US 9,000?
Given it’s worth about $US 7000 in this market, no deal was struck. Besides, growing up with a family of mechanics, it’s hard for me to reconcile purchasing a vehicle that emits any type of weird smell, so I’m glad to leave this one on the pit-holed dirt track for the next buyer. I’m also happy to leave our second possibility on the dirt track. It was a 1996 Landrover TDI. Perfect structure – ute, big, hardy shell, long wheel base – for what we require, but the plastic bag recently wrapped around the oil sump and the serious clah-unk of the gear stick every time Daz shifted into 2nd, 3rd or 4th had us a little edgy. When this Mr Seller explained that it would be costing us $US 26,000 not-negotiable and had a hard life servicing him in his civil engineering job that required him to travel across the Serengeti often, and don’t worry about that noise – it’s just a “differential bolt”, we took our car-finding man aside and asked him to stop wasting our time. He said no problem, but there was also a little something he forgot to tell us. We must pay him a 5% commission upon finding the right car. Daz laughed and said, “We? But not the owner?” to which we received a retiscient nod (ie yes, actually he would be collecting 5% from the owner as well but it’d be better if we didn’t know about that). Daz then asked “So this is why you are showing us very expensive cars that are not within our budget?”. Big grin, raised eyebrows, nod of the head. Oh and there is a left-hand drive car we can look at now if we want… Daz and I decided to run away instead!
We’ve started paying a local lady, Eliza, to do our washing. We pay her the going rate, which is the equivalent of 10c per small garment, 20c per larger garment. Her first wash was a windfall – as she got the large and financially rewarding job of washing all the clothes Daz & I had put on our back since our departure from Sydney. She was absolutely stoked with her $4 payment and decided then and there to buy a pair of sunglasses just like mine. She asked for a lift into town the following day and was dressed to the nines for the experience when Daz and I picked her and her young son up. I hear the purchase went smoothly but am yet to see the end product. Assuming she's happy, then that makes two of us because Daz's bunyip aromas seemed to have magically dispersed. Now I can sleep a whole night through without being woken by the stink! Woohoo!
8 August 2007
At least one purchase went smoothly this week. Daz and I have had an absolute shocker with our buying and negotiating this week. The biggest disaster was our printer/scanner. We had a budget of $200. Daz desperately needs a system whereby he can print out architect Rob Not Dentist’s drawings, make annotations, scan the annotations then email them back to RND to assist with advice & chats. So I went into town, did some searching around and came up with a good deal, despite it being over our budget. We’d buy a $140 scanner (reasonable) and a $195 (very good) lazer jet printer. The lazer jet would be perfect b/c it was for small to medium output, suitable for us right now and for a while longer. The real win though, was the fact that, being lazer jet instead of ‘ink jet’, we’d save a heap on the print cartridges which are astronomically expensive over here - $45 minimum reaching up to $128 each. Ink jet cartridges are a rip off at home anyway, if you ask me, but that’s when you’re paying $35 a cartridge. Imagine trying to get comfy with paying a minimum of $45 each! So yes, I was very satsified with this deal, especially when I managed to get them to knock $20 off the whole purchase. So we get the scanner home and it works. Nice. But wait… no such luck with the printer. Daz’s Apple Mac laptop recognises the printer, but won’t work with it. We ring the shop and they advise that it should have come with a Mac installation disk, and since it didn’t we now have to go into town to the internet café and download the Mac driver required. We do this the next day. Of course, there is no Mac driver to be found anywhere, on any site, and on further reading we find that this particular printer is NOT compatible with Macs. Ever. Hmm, so why was it pointed out to us a suitable printer when we’d explained we would be working from both Macs (now) and PC (in future when Kels & Shona come)? We take it back to the shop. They are seriously unkeen to allow us to make a simple return. Instead we must make an exchange. Problem is, they’re a bit like Bunnings Hardware – except 1/kabillionth of the size – they stock the dodgiest cheapest stuff OR the slickest expensive stuff. No middle range whatsoever. So suddenly we’re being shown a lazer jet printer, compatible with both Macs and PCs that costs $430. If we’d bought it and kept the lazer, our printer system purchases would have reached $570 – well beyond our budget. So I said no. We were then forced into selecting from a cheaper range of ‘ink jet’ – the very type we wanted to avoid – machines that were all-in-ones (photocopier, scanner, printer, fax). Kinda annoying because as I said we didn’t want to pay for their more-expensive cartridges and because we don’t need a fax and were hoping to buy separate machines so that if anything broke down, we wouldn’t have to do without the machine’s other services while the entire machine was sent back to town to be fixed. Anyway, there was a $350 machine that we were assured had been checked – and worked – despite the crack on its side where it had been dropped. Darren who was doing all the negotiating at this point, since I’d become a bit to grumpy to be reasonable, insisted that we be allowed to check that machine in the shop before we took it home. Lucky we did. It obviously hadn’t been checked for working order – as the scanner was entirely kaput! At this point, sick of the lies, I left the shop to go and price some salt and pepper shakers, can openers and cooking pans across the road. When I returned Daz had done an excellent job of convincing the shop to not charge us for the ink cartridges we’d opened to check the kaput scanner-printer machine, convincing them to sell us a small $184 All-In-One (pictured) that worked (he’d checked it) and to return the rest of the money we’d given them. Perfect outcome, but man, Daz worked hard for it!
Another negotiation that bamboozled us occurred in one of the seed selling shop in town. We went in to buy the vegie seeds required to grow our own food at the Kesho Volunteer House and the farming tools we’ll need to work the land at Kesho Leo. Straight up, as is now standard practice, we asked the owner if we’d get a discount since we were a charity, were making a bulk purchase and were paying cash. Yes, yes, no problem. Afterwards… Expenditure: $50. Proposed discount: 60c. Serious. Daz and I looked at this guy and said “Are you joking?” and he laughed and said, “No, it is a good discount”. Daz and I looked at each other and back at him, eyes boggling. Daz said, “It is a good profit. Did you hear us when we said we are here, volunteering, to build an orphanage?”
“Yes, I support many orphanages – one out at somewhere or other, do you know it?”
“No, we don’t know that one. Here I will give you $45 cash, no more”.
Haggles ensued, but in the end we got our discount there too – and found out that the guy also holds the building contract for one of Arusha’s fanciest buildings and has implemented an interesting pressure-based water system in it. We might talk to this guy, who we’ve now nicknamed Sixty Cent, about some of his systems when Corky, our environmental advisor gets here.
So far, we’ve come out on top with most of our bargaining. But every situation, as you see, offers some new challenge. We were again scratching our heads after recently locating ALL the furniture we need to quickly outfit the Kesho Volunteer House entirely in one fell swoop. We’d read a notice in town at the deli outlining a whole home’s worth of furniture up for grabs, cheap, due to the owners moving. We made the calls and eventually headed over to Njiro, a wealthier part of town where most of the UN staff and Arusha-based Indian business owners live. We met a lovely couple from Jordan who agreed to sell us their 3-seater, 2-seater and 3 single seater lounge suite, their 7x7 foot bed, their mirror & lockable dressing cabinet, their single bed, their 2 bedside tables. Their office desk and ergonomic chair. The prices were already rock bottom, but as we were tallying the amount, the man of the house offered to give us a $US160 discount. Well, you can imagine how that one made us beam! We had them write us a receipt for the deposit we left (which accounted for about ¾ of the total price) and shook on it. Sweet.
All the way home Daz was beside himself, saying, “Babe, see how the universe works? Look at what an awesome deal we just got. It was reasonable to start off with and then they must have liked what we were doing, so they gave us that discount…” I being my comparatively wary self, replied “Yes, it’s excellent indeed, fair love, but forsooth, I can never get excited about these things, until the said items lie in my abode and it’s all a done deal”. (Even with the stove and fridge, I’m only just beginning to feel warm and fuzzy about having them …a week later and they’re still working!)
Daz, gorgeous boy replied, “No, it’s all good babe, don’t worry”.
And shame upon shame, my negative thinking must have seeped out into the ether because sure enough in an hour’s time, we received a phone call from the woman of the house. “I’m sorry, my husband made an error when he gave you a discount. He gave you 10% instead of 5% so the price is wrong…”
Darren, ever-calm negotiator, queried. “Well, this is a little bit unusual. We agreed on a price, we shook hands, had a receipt written up…”
“Yes, but my husband made a mistake…he meant to give you 5%...”
“So what is the final price you want us to pay?”
“Well, we meant to give you a 5% discount…”
“Now, we didn’t ever speak about 5%-10%-20%. We spoke about numbers. So what is the final amount you want us to pay?”
“A 5% discount...”
“How much?”
“An extra $100”
“Right, so you gave us $160 discount, but now you us to pay $100 of that back to you?”
“Well 5%...”
“Can I speak to your husband please – he is the person who gave the discount and made the mistake…”
“No he doesn’t want to speak about this…”
“Can you just put him on the phone please…”
“No, he didn’t want me to call you, but I wanted to call you about the mistake of 5%”
“I need to speak to your husband because he is the one who offered the discount – and he didn’t say 5% or 10% or whatever % - and I need to find out what total figure you want us to pay so I get the money out of my bank account. Please put him on”.
Daz has a quick chat to the husband who is mortally embarrassed and says he is happy for the $100 to be a donation to FWS as it was his mistake and we are doing good work.
Daz agrees and hangs up feeling good. Negative Nelly, I just feel weird. We have a conversation where I reveal I feel like WE are ripping people off because all we do, left, right and centre, is pressure for discounts. Daz says patiently, but emphatically, “Nooo, actually we are combating being ripped off. We are protecting our money and the money Australians have donated to us. This is a bargaining country, it’s our duty to bargain, get involved and come out the best we can each time…and when we have shaken on a deal, a deal is a deal and that’s that.”
Wise boy spik da wise words.
So I begin to feel more comfortable after our conversation and the next day am totally okay with the highs and lows of bargaining world, when Mudi, our Kesho Leo assistant manager, pops up out of nowhere and pipes with this one: “Sorry guys. I am trying, but sometimes I’m still getting the rip off, even when I am African. Yesterday, I bought the rope for you and I got it for $7. And today, you ask me to buy some more and I find the same rope in another shop for $4. I’m sorry, I’m trying to ask around a lot, like you, and get the right price so we don’t get the rip off, but sometimes I am making a mistake”.
So yeah, if you were ever worried that we weren’t trying to get bang for your buck, please don’t! We are all TOTALLY amongst it, even if we are stumbling occasionally. But so far, the stumbles have only been a few dollars here and there. Not so bad, in the scheme of things.
Till next week,
Bargaining Beck, xxx
PS – Non dollar related stuff: Daz & I suffered our first bout of Deli Belly (good to get that out of the way!), Daz got saw dust in his eye (pretty badly when making our kitchen bench, pictured below, but recovered in 24 hours), and I got bit on the bumski by some kind of bully ant. We’re trying to work out if this is why I’m insanely itchy all over. It could be the bite, or it could be an allergy to the hard-core soap they use to wash clothes here, or the change in diet (from low-fat soy milk to natural cow’s milk with cream included!), from light-spray olive oil to heavy palm oil (so bad for you!) or coffee? I haven’t drunk coffee in years, but it’s sooo yum here, I can’t help but go a cup a day! Could coffee make you itch all over? Who knows. Meantime, I’ll do some experiments and see if I can ditch mystery itch within the week. Will report back soon!
Oh…der. You probably want to know when we will start building Kesho Leo. Next 15 days, we reckon. We’re setting up to sign contracts on land this week. I have contracts in my hot little hands (actually they're cold, we've got a crazy-cold African winter going on here), we have the money in the Christian Brother’s Account… and we have the land owner ringing us to say that he is sick and wants the money before he dies please! We think he is joking…but aren’t real sure.
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