Three of my grandparents came to Indonesia from China almost eighty years ago. While I don’t speak any dialect of Chinese, my family still follows many of Chinese rituals. One of these is the frequent visits to the cemeteries of our ancestors – my grandparents in my case. I usually visit my grandparents’ cemetery whenever I go back to my hometown, and my mom usually takes me there as is the case this time around.
After buying some flowers to scatter on the tombstones, my mom and I looked to hire a car to take us to the cemetery. In my hometown, there are many privately-operated public transportation vehicles called “angkot” (angkutan kota, literally city transport, as opposed to “angdes”, rural transport). These are small vans that are outfitted to fit 10 passengers at the back sitting on the left and right sides of the vehicle facing each other. While these angkots are public transportation vehicles, they can easily be hired for private rides if the vehicle has no current passenger and the operator agrees to a price.
The price for a regular ride on one of these angkots is Rp 2,000 (or about US$ 0.22). Given the oversupply of these angkots*, one can usually negotiate an hour-long private ride for about Rp 20,000. Or at least that is what I thought the going price was.
While my mom and I are both fully descended from Chinese immigrants, we look like the native people in our hometown who are relatively fair-skinned. Seeing that I was carrying a lot of flowers, the first angkot driver that we tried to hire greeted us and immediately said “Oh, you guys are going to the cemetery? I’ll take you there for Rp 10,000.” My mom, the inveterate negotiator, automatically tried to bargain the price down … to Rp 10,000. I immediately stopped her and told her that the driver has in fact offered the same price. We were completely astonished as we had never paid less than Rp 15,000 for the same service. So we immediately got on the car and told him to start driving before he had a chance to change his mind.
The cemetery we are going to has several sections. It used to be a Dutch cemetery, so it has a Christian section. After the Dutch left Indonesia in the 1940’s, the Christian section was taken over by the affluent Chinese for their burial sites. Right next to this section, there is a newer Moslem section. As we get closer to the cemetery, the driver pointed to the Moslem section and asked, “Where should I drop you off?” When we responded that we’re going to the next section, he had a quizzical look on his face which disappeared within a few seconds. I guess he had come to the realization that we are related to Chinese, and more importantly that he had given us the wrong price for the ride.
We spent about 20 minutes in the cemetery to pay our respect and scatter the flowers. When we got back to the car, the driver immediately started driving back to town. After a few minutes, he picked up three passengers, which meant that he made an additional Rp 6,000 from what was supposedly a private ride.
When we got to town, we asked the driver to drop us off near where we first hired him. He responded by saying, “Oh, do you mind paying me a bit more since Rp 10,000 was too low? Just to take you both back and forth on regular rides should cost Rp 8,000.” I immediately agreed and gave him Rp 12,000 as I felt bad about the low rate he offered and I had told my mom that we should give the driver more than the price we agreed on.
I guess the low rate he offered was the rate he reserved for the native people, and he would have offered a higher rate had he realized that we were Chinese. Given the higher reservation price of the Chinese people in my hometown AND the ease of identification, a price discrimination strategy with two different prices is an optimal strategy. The only problem is that now that we know the reservation price of these drivers (Rp 10,000 or even less), my mom will never agree to pay more than Rp 10,000.
* My wife joked that there are one angkot for each passenger in my hometown. While I’m sure this is an exaggeration, it sure does look that way.
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