AS a veteran participant in retail therapy outings, it takes a lot nowadays to astound me when we are talking about prices. However last week, I was truly shocked. Having ordered a duvet for my husband at a hotel shop selling bedding, I expected it to be a little more expensive than normal when I went around to pick it up.
“Dh29,000,” said the shop assistant without blushing.
“No,” I responded, “I am sure you meant Dh2,900, which seems awfully expensive.”
“Sorry Madam, the price is Dh29,000, but I could give you a five per cent discount! It is filled with eiderdown feathers from Greenland.”
“Well”, I said, “it must indeed be a rare bird, but I cannot afford to pay Dh29,000 for a duvet, nor do I want to rest my head on the feathers of a bird, which is obviously becoming extinct. Goodbye.”
Living in the Middle East we are often involved in price discussions and bargaining. I once spent a delightful hour sipping tea and wheeling and dealing with a charming gentleman in the soukh in Tripoli in Libya. In the end, I paid in dollars at a rate, which I discovered later made the camel chair even cheaper than I had bargained for.
On the other hand, a large Thai teak elephant was bought at an exorbitant rate of exchange, which I should have turned down, but I had spent so much time in the Bangkok store that I wanted to leave with something… and the elephant was exquisitely carved. Exchange rates are always emphasised, when travel agents are offering a vacation destination. From the UAE to a pound sterling destination creates some very attractive prices at present, the pound being way down against the UAE dirham.
However, hotel rates in London and air fares do not seem to be so tempting, when they are translated into dirhams. A charge of £300 pounds per night per room in a four star London hotel is equivalent to Dh1,581 when we went to press.
Back to the UAE and shopping. There has been quite a flurry of Letters to the Editor in one of the local dailies complaining about the arrogance of expatriates living here, who expect their grocery shopping in supermarkets to be packed for them by young people.
“Pack your own purchases!”
“Are you some sort of royalty?” have been some of the less rude comments. Well, I can tell you, I enjoy and appreciate having my groceries packed for me. Pity, though, it does not work as smoothly at the other end of the shopping trip, when one has to unload the car full of bags.
Many times during the summer period in the town where I usually spend my summer vacations in the UK, boy scouts and girl guides act as packers, in some local supermarket for a small fee contributing to their ‘overseas trips’ fund. Most shoppers appreciate this extra service.
When it comes to extra services by store owners in the Middle East, I think the investment in permanent canopies in a certain supermarket’s parking lot must have attracted many extra customers. It is wonderful being able to return to a warm, rather than a hot car, in the middle of the UAE summer and the hardworking car washers always seem to find me a parking spot.
However, the American system of valet parking adopted by many establishments in the UAE is definitely my favourite… now that is some thing I miss in the UK, though I know, it is pretty common in the USA.
For visitors to the UK who have hired a car, parking in the multi-storey car parks can be a nightmare. I speak from personal experience. Last summer I visited a shopping centre in Grimsby called Freshney Place. I took my parking ticket on entering, paid the fee on the machine, when I was leaving and everything was hunky dory, until I arrived at the barred exit gate.
Inserting my paid parking ticket, I waited for the bar to rise, a queue of cars building up behind me, as I waited patiently. Nothing happened. I inserted the ticket the other way. Nothing. I turned the card upside down, still nothing.
Then I tried to reverse, difficult when you are in front of seven cars, but after much grumbling from my fellow car parkers, I managed to get out of the queue and return to the parking lot.
I was told by a kindly car parking attendant that the fee had registered at £1.50 and I had only paid one pound. My advice is to make sure you check the parking fee amount closely when you pay that parking fee.
Back to the duvet. Although the hotel shop did not get any business from me, the following weekend I visited the largest department store in Festival City in Dubai and bought a Swedish duvet for Dh275. In fact I was so pleased with my “find” that I bought three, one for Sir and two for the house in Cyprus, now that is a real bargain compared to Dh29,000!
SPEAKING OUT by Jonna Simon
