Leather Bags in Florence

Surrounded by stands selling leather bags of all sorts of colors, my friends and I slowly walked through the market streets of Florence in search of the perfect leather bag. I was eager o by one but I was even more determined to purchase one at a very low price, as I reasoned these bags are knock-offs as it is. Each man selling the bags would try to entice my friends to stop knowing they had a good chance of enticing a couple American girls to make a purchase. They would tell us how beautiful the bags were, the quality of the leather, and always flash a smile at us. I was not thrilled at their salesmanship as I did not feel I could trust any of them at all.  I saw a style of bag I liked at two different sands that were catty-corner to each other. I decided I would use the two in order to get them to bargain with me in competition against the other. One man gave me a price and I asked him to low it and he did. I then said I would come back after checking with another stand. The next stand could not match their price so I went back to said I would buy their bag. Yet, the man decided he could not remember offering such a low price and upped his offer. I was interested still but my friend was outraged at his dishonesty and pulled me away from the stand, annoyed at his blatant dishonesty. Thus, ended the sale and I did not end up buying a purse (spoiler: my sister went the following year and bought me one as a present so there is a happy ending). But, my situation was a beautiful example of a poor sale conversation. The man thought he could deceive me with their incredible sales that were better than everyone else’s which did not prove to be true. They wanted to take advantage of any incongruity of information the buyer has. This manipulation ended up with them losing my purchase. The price was not gonna to stop it but their dishonesty did. Moral of this sales story: give the customer full disclosure of the information because when people do their research and know the truth, they want to purchase from the one who is honest.