---
type: Video
title: "Avoid This Sri Lankan SCAM!🇱🇰"
description: Harry asks a Colombo shoe cleaner the price about ten times, never gets one, has his trainers painted black without being asked, and is then quoted 3,000 rupees — having been ready to pay 5,000.
tags: [sri-lanka, colombo, scams, haggling, honesty, markets]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T17:20:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpt_7rQ5Feo
video_id: Wpt_7rQ5Feo
upload_date: 2022-03-08
duration: 1023
---

# Avoid This Sri Lankan SCAM!🇱🇰

The one thing that goes wrong in three weeks in the country, and it is worth a
page because of how precisely it goes wrong.

Harry sits down for a shoe clean in [Colombo](/places/colombo.md) with
[Ali](/people/ali.md). **He asks the price about ten times.** He is never given
one — the question is deflected each time — and the work starts anyway. When it
is finished he is asked **3,000 rupees**, refuses, offers 1,000, and settles at
**2,000**, roughly $10 for something he says would cost 200 elsewhere.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. The man is not named or
described here beyond what happened; the title is reproduced verbatim in the
frontmatter because that is how the video is cited.*

## What actually happened

- **The shoes were taken off his feet** before any price was discussed.
- **He asks, repeatedly, and is talked past** — questions about England, about
  the tools, about the man's 35 years of experience and his work in Saudi Arabia
  and Dubai.
- **He asked for a clean and got a paint job.** The trainers were sprayed black
  without being mentioned first. Told the colour might revert in two or three
  days, he says on camera that he doesn't understand what that means and has no
  choice but to accept it.
- **The trainers were ruined.** They were about two years old and cost around $70,
  and he retires them.
- **The price is argued down and family is invoked** — the man asks for more on
  behalf of his children.

## The line Harry draws

The clearest thing he says, and the reason this page exists rather than a
paragraph:

> He is paying for the work. If the man wants help for his family, that is a
> separate conversation, and he should ask for it outside the price of the job.

He makes the same distinction twice, and it holds his temper together while he
refuses 3,000 and pays 2,000.

## What the dishonesty cost

**He was ready to pay 5,000** — he says so, and Ali confirms it on camera. An
honest quote of a few hundred rupees would have been rewarded well past the 3,000
he was eventually asked. So the man asked for 3,000, got 2,000, and lost 3,000 by
not answering a question ten times.

See [reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md), where
this is the quantified version of the rule, and
[agree the price before it starts](/tips/agree-the-price-before-it-starts.md),
which this video complicates rather than confirms.

## What he does with the shoes

He nearly bins them, decides against it, and takes them to **Pettah market** to
give away — on the grounds that they are perfectly wearable, that recycling beats
throwing them out, and that he would rather turn it into something. A stallholder
takes them.

## His own framing

- **The first bad encounter in two and a half weeks** in the country.
- **He asks viewers not to generalise from it**, explicitly, and adds that people
  may be desperate and he doesn't know what is going on in the man's life.
- **He accepts part of the blame** and pre-empts the comments: yes, he should have
  had a price first — and points out that he tried about ten times.

## Key moments

- `[00:30]` The shoes are off before a price is discussed.
- `[01:02]` Asking for a price, the second time.
- `[02:03]` Asking again, and noting to camera what the silence means.
- `[04:48]` "Are you painting them black?"
- `[09:59]` 3,000 asked.
- `[10:29]` "I asked you to clean them and you painted them."
- `[11:00]` The line about paying for work, not for family.
- `[11:30]` The 5,000 he would have paid.
- `[13:07]` Don't generalise from this.
- `[15:40]` Giving the shoes away at Pettah market.

## Extracted pages

- [Sri Lanka](/countries/sri-lanka.md)
- [Colombo](/places/colombo.md)
- [Ali](/people/ali.md)
- [Agree the price before it starts](/tips/agree-the-price-before-it-starts.md)
- [Reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md)