Expat Community > Ecuador

eidsness
Joined 2009
Posts: 71

Gringo prices

13 years ago

On Friday on the way back from the supermarket my wife passed a shop window with a little figurine of a tiger. She went in and asked for the price. The little old lady told her $4. My wife doesn't speak much spanish, but definitely understood "cuatro dolares". She'd spent all at the market so couldn't buy it right then. Yesterday I went back with her and explained we wanted to buy the tiger in the window. At 6'4" its hard to disguise that I'm a foreigner. As she was getting the tiger out I laid $5 on the counter. When she looked around she said the price was $10. I said that couldn't be, since she had told my wife 3 days prior the price was $4. She said she "couldn't remember". As I was putting my money back she said she'd let it go for $5. We still left, with all our money, but no tiger.

This is only the latest of scores of examples I could cite where they tried to "take" us because we are gingos (here any non latino foreigner). I usually catch these attempts, but I'm sure I've been had a few times as well.

I'm sure not all Ecuadorians do this, but a very very large percentage do. It starts with a mango at the feria libre, the knick knack we wanted, suits, services, furniture, cars, houses, fincas and anything and everything else for which money has to change hands (yes, some doctors have tried it with me as well).

North Americans allow themselves to be taken advantage of very easily (as a rule), Europeans are much more careful. When this happens you hurt not only yourself, but we other foreigners here as well, and eventually the big majority of the local population tool. (When prices have been pushed so high they can no longer compete).

So please, everybody reading this, be careful. Do your homework. Investigate ahead of time. Get a local friend to help or call for you. What you have to pay for the same thing in New York, or Toronto, or Frankfurt is irrelevant. Even if its half what you'd pay there it could still be 4 times what it should cost here. Too many expats are coming too quickly and buying helter skelter with too little information to know what they are doing.

Over a 14 year period in Costa Rica I watched the price stucture be totally destroyed. It seems to be progressing even faster here now. Please don't contribute to destroying one of the main reasons you probably came here for in the first place.

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