Bargaining 101

When it comes to bargaining in the market, the experience can be unpredictable. Some days you get lucky to buy things cheap while others days you get cheated on or your bargain tricks fails.

I remember one particular day when I went to our community’s market to buy some tubers of yam. The market is small, so everything is neatly arranged and easy to navigate. Each type of commodity is grouped together in its own section, and the sellers are organized in rows according to what they sell. This way, if you are looking for yams, you will find all the yam sellers lined up in one row, while vegetables, grains, and other items are similarly grouped.

On that day, I headed straight to the section where the yam sellers were gathered.
I stopped at the first seller, his yams looked bigger and he had many customers buying from him. I thought his might be cheaper since he had more customers so i joined the queue. When I asked for the price of the yam, he said ₦3,500. I told him I would pay ₦2,000. I bargained with him, but he refused. He said the last price he would sell it for was ₦3,500. I was willing to pay ₦2,500, but he said no. I moved a bit as though I wanted to go elsewhere, hoping he would call me back. This man didn’t even look at me, he just continued attending to other customers.

I went to the next seller, who told me his yams were ₦5,000. After much bargaining, his last price was ₦4,500. I ended up bargaining with all the sellers, but theirs were more expensive compared to the first person who insisted on ₦3,500. I was ashamed to go back, but I had no option.

I quickly removed my head tie to disguise myself so he wouldn’t recognize me, but immediately I went back to him, he smiled and said, “I know say you go back, na so everybody waka come back.”

Images are mine

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