No discounts for early birds in Korea.
Korean life April 22nd. 2006, 9:48pmOn the way to my Grandmother-in-law’s birthday breakfast party, I saw a man yelling very loudly at an elderly woman. The old woman had asked for a discount on some fruit. She was old, hobbled with osteoporosis, and didn’t look she was trying to a pull a fast one on anyone. I was a little confused. Most people don’t start screaming at old people. Also, street vendors don’t tend to shout,"NO! GO AWAY!" to potential customers. I sought answers for this very odd scene.
My wife explained that when people sell things out of trucks, or have their own business, they dislike giving discounts to the first customers of the day. It’s bad luck. It supposedly sets the precident that the rest of the day, or week, will be very slow and bad for business. While people in flea markets love to arrive early to try to get the best deals in the United States, going early to a market early in Korea might not get you the best price if you are someone’s first customer. This has been another cultural lesson in cheapness by Torgodevil.
4 Responses to “No discounts for early birds in Korea.”
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April 22nd, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Good post! Very interesting.
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:09 am
Thanks for the tip, both highly amusing and useful at the same time.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:41 am
I thought in East Asia it was generally beneficial to be the first customer as the storekeeper would give you a good bargain for an auspicious day. Maybe that only applies to China…
July 1st, 2006 at 10:38 pm
[...] They had errands to run, so we were dropped off in the rain to wait for the stores to open. We were the first customers in every store. Oddly enough, the first place we checked gave us a discount. We looked at about half a different stores, but really only wanted to purchase furniture from one store. We might like a sofa at one location and a wardrobe at another. Eventually we nailed it down to two places. The first place we visited was the favorite for price, but the other place had better designs and quality. We tried to knock down the price of the quality store, and even did a dramatic walk out, but got nothing in the way of a discount. This guy was a tough salesman. [...]