|
Small merchants can’t be bothered to post prices
Sellers are supposed to post prices, but they typically ignore the requirement. Government management agencies have more pressing problems than punishing small merchants for failing to put prices on their wares.
At the Saigon Square shopping centre on Ton Duc Thang Street in District 1, a lot of goods available here do not have price tags. Sellers and buyers have to bargain about the final price. For example, a seller asked for 520,000 dong for a skirt, but after negotiation she sold it for 450,000 dong. She agreed to part with a handbag for 330,000 dong, though she started at 550,000.
Vu Thi Thuoc, a customer from Hanoi, told Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon that she had expected the products at the Saigon Square shopping centre would have fixed prices. Not a tag was to be seen, however. “As I am not a local resident here, I am afraid that I am being overcharged,” Thuoc said.
Mai Lan, a Manager at HCMC’s huge Ben Thanh Market, found on an inspection tour that nine out of every ten stallholders here do not post prices for their goods. In some other cases, though vendors show a price, they still may sell goods for more or less than the quoted prices, depending on demand that day and how tenaciously a customer bargains.
“We cannot control the prices charged here at the market. If remind them (Sellers) to post prices today, they will forget about that tomorrow,” Lan said, adding that “because the sales prices are not clear, many people have been overcharged.”
Even for ‘big ticket’ items like steel, gas, fertilizer and medicine, prices rarely are posted. The HCM City branch of the Finance Ministry’s Market Management Department says that every week it discovers tens of cases where sellers violate the laws on price quotation.
According to the management boards of neighborhood markets, price posting regulations are regularly and universally flouted, whether in traditional markets or modern shopping centres. They give many reasons for this.
Particularly, at many markets and shopping centres, owners of goods do not sell goods directly to customers. They hire clerks to do that. The owners of goods do not post prices, so the sales clerks can sell products at the best price they can get. Doing this, the clerks can profit from the margin between the actual sales prices and the prices the owners of goods set.
Moreover, it seems that both buyers and sellers enjoy negotiating over prices.
Market management boards, which are closest to the markets’ activity, do not have the right to fine sellers who violate the laws on posting prices. “We can only remind sellers to post prices. They know we can’t fine them, so the vendors just ignore our words,” Lan said, trying to explain why sellers do not follow the current regulation on posting prices.
In fact, only the Market Management Department can levy fines. However, they have too many other things to do. “We cannot keep an eye on everything,” one official admitted.
The fines established by law for violations of the regulations on posting prices range from 500,000 dong to 30 million dong.
vetnamnet, TBKTSG
|
