Agree the price before it starts

This is about timing rather than the number. Once the ride is over, the photo is taken or the service is done, the price is whatever the other person says it is and your only options are to pay it or have an argument in a language you don’t speak. Before it starts, you can still walk away — which is the entire source of your leverage.

It is the companion to haggle with a reference price, and the two solve different halves of the problem: that page is about knowing what a thing should cost, this one about when saying so still counts.

How Harry applies it

The version where he forgot. On his first day in Karachi he and Mac got into a rickshaw without discussing anything, and were asked 1,000 rupees at the end for a five-minute ride. He paid 400 and blamed himself out loud rather than the driver: they should have agreed the terms before getting in.

The version where he didn’t, and it still went wrong — which is the more useful one. At Clifton Beach the next evening, Mac agreed 200 rupees for a horse ride. At the end the owner asked 1,100 and took 500. So the agreement did not hold.

Harry’s conclusion is not that agreeing first is pointless. It is that the agreed number is the thing you argue back from — without it the ask was 1,000 and he paid 400 with no ground to stand on; with it the ask was 1,100 and it came down to 500 on the strength of “we said 200”. He then hired a beach buggy and stated the price twice before getting on.

The amounts are small on purpose: two dollars, a pound. His interest is in the attempt, not the loss, and he is explicit that being overcharged by a pound is not the thing that spoils a place.

When asking doesn’t work

The hardest case, in Colombo, and the one that shows the rule is not a complete defence.

Harry sits down for a shoe clean and asks the price about ten times. He is never given one — each time the question is answered with something else, about England, about the man’s thirty-five years of experience, about his years working abroad. Meanwhile the shoes are off his feet and the work has started. At the end he is asked 3,000 rupees for something he reckons costs 200, and pays 2,000.

Refusing to quote is itself the technique. The rule assumes the other person will name a number if you ask; when they won’t, the leverage the rule is supposed to preserve has already gone by the time you notice — which makes this a close relative of the gift that isn’t free.

The practical version is therefore harsher than “ask first”: if you ask twice and get no number, the answer is to stop, not to ask a third time. Harry’s own verdict pre-empts the comments — yes, he should have had a price, and he tried about ten times to get one.

One thing he does get right is the line he holds when the man asks for more on behalf of his children: he is paying for the work, and if help for the family is wanted, that is a separate request made outside the price of the job. He says it twice, and it is what lets him refuse 3,000 without an argument.

The failure mode that isn’t in the rule: paying for an outcome

In Ella he does the right thing and it still costs him, because of what he agreed rather than when.

Racing two friends to the Nine Arch Bridge in separate tuk-tuks, he settles the fare before setting off — 1,200 quoted — and then offers 1,500 to go fast, and tips 2,000 at the end. He loses. Mac’s driver takes the direct route, arrives first and charges least.

Harry’s own reading, said on camera: the bonus bought him the long way round. A price agreed for a journey is a price for arriving; a bonus for speed is money attached to an outcome the driver controls and you cannot see, on a route you don’t know, in a vehicle you are not driving.

So the rule needs a second half: agree the price, and agree it for the thing, not for how the thing goes. The friend who simply took the quoted fare got the better ride, the lower bill and the honest driver — and Harry says afterwards he would have paid that driver double.

The version where the agreement holds — and his own explanation why it nearly didn’t

Aqaba, on a boat trip out into the Red Sea, is the third outcome the page needed. The price was agreed in advance by phone. At the end of the trip an extra 20 JOD was asked for, and because they knew exactly what had been agreed they refused on the spot; the original price stood.

What makes it worth its own section is Harry’s diagnosis, which goes a step beyond this page’s rule: he thinks it happened because they hadn’t paid upfront. His advice is to try to pay in advance, or at minimum to make sure the terms are nailed down and not just the number.

So the page now runs across three outcomes — no agreement and no ground to stand on (Karachi), an agreement that didn’t hold but gave him leverage (Clifton Beach), and an agreement that held outright because it was clear and they said so immediately.

One thing he is careful about, and the page keeps it. He goes out of his way to say the boat’s captain did nothing wrong, was struggling with English, and was good company throughout — the extra 20 came from one other person. He adds that he doesn’t think a visitor would normally meet this. An entire cluster in which he calls Jordanians the most hospitable people he has met is not overturned by one attempt at twenty dinars, and he refuses to let it be.

Demonstrated in

• First Impressions of KARACHI, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰 — the rickshaw boarded without a price, and his own verdict that the mistake was theirs.
• Craziest Pakistan Beach 🇵🇰 — 200 agreed for the horse, 1,100 asked, 500 paid, and a buggy priced twice over before he got in.
• The Most BEAUTIFUL place in Sri Lanka 🇱🇰 — the fare agreed and then a bonus attached to speed, which bought the scenic route.
• Avoid This Sri Lankan SCAM!🇱🇰 — asked about ten times, never answered, and the work started anyway.
• $180 Boat Scam in AQABA, JORDAN 🇯🇴 — the agreement that holds, and the refinement: pay upfront if you can.