Bargain in Euros, pay in Rupees, get charged in Euros…

May 11th, 2006

While in India, I witnessed an interesting phenomenon. Since I’m more comfortable with sums in the European currency, I always bargained in Euros when trying to buy something like a piece of cloth or a carpet. Of course, the merchants always charged my credit card in Rupees, the Indian currency, but the rate they gave me was lower than what my bank did. Thus I ended up paying about 7% less than what the settled at price was and since we bargained in Euros originally and I did not let them go above the sum I wanted to spend on the particular item, I in effect got the things I wanted to buy at a seven percent discount.
Yay to currency speculation

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized