Shall I bargain for service fee?

I was very exciting since the last week. It was not because we had a 7-day "Golden Week" National Day (Oct. 1) holiday, but because I did an very expensive shopping: shopped an apartment.

Congratulations, Grigo!

Rumor said the real estate bubble in Shanghai would break since the former Shanghai No.1 political figure Mr. Chen was broken. We consulted friends, read news online and offline brainstormed each other (with Grigo's Mr. Right) on the trend.

Our findings were: 1) people are more conservative on buying new apartments; 2) people are even more conservative on investing in real estates; 3) More used apartments were listed for sale (Later we found a plausible reason: start from Aug. 1 2006, new national tax regulation requires people to pay 20% tax of non-regular income, but this regulation hasn’t been effect in Shanghai. Rumor said it would be in very near future.) . Thus, our conclusion is: we didn't plan to buy a new apartment, nor as an investment. We should have more advantage to bargain in a buyer's market.


We contacted 4 real estate agencies, picked 10 apartments to check out, considered locations in 3 districts and closed to 4 metro stations, but turns out that we only visited 3 apartments since most landlords went out for vacations.

We made an offer within less than 24 hours and our agents helped us to bargin the deal to our offer also with 24 hours. The efficiency was amazing and unbelievable. (It is a Taiwanese company.)

Let's see what I need to pay besides the price of the apartment:

• 1% - service fee to my agent
• 1.5% - tax to house management department
• 2.5 rmb * the area of the apartment -forgot what kind of charge
• 0.05% - another tax to a government department

We signed the title transfer contact and I paid the 1% service charge to my agent afterwards but before I get the apartment title (of course before I pay for the apartment.)

My aunt, a Cantonese who lives in Shanghai longer than her stay in Guangdong, found out that we paid 100% service fee and felt very very upset. Her argument was: NEVER PAY BEFORE YOU GET THE STUFF! BE SURE TO BARGAIN FOR EVERYTHING.

It's a motto of living in China. People believe if you don't fight to bargain, you would get rip off. If you trust others too easily, you would be cheated. I agree/disagree!

My concern is shall I bargain for service fee? If I am buying some tangible stuff, I can see and feel the quality. But what if I am buying something called SERVICE? You can't tell the quality before you make the decision.

We read stories about people fighting too hard to bargain for the apartment renovation labor fee resulted in getting a very very bad quality renovation. So far, we were very satisfied about the service quality and we were evaluating the "trust-worth index" of the agent from the very beginning. The company is No.1 in my district and I can tell why they make the No.1.

We were labeled by my Shanghainese aunt that we have "a different way of thinking", i.e. "lack of Chinese experience". But, honestly, we really hope we can survive without being "defensive" every day!

Wish me good luck in the following transations.

要去“中文网志年会”

老板转发来链接，问我要不要去参加CNBloggerCon (Chinese Blogger Conference), 我还一头雾水，原来是“中文网志年会”，今年是第二届了，在西湖畔上的杭州.

时间： 28-10-2006 28-10-2006 28-10-2006 28-10-2006

地点 中国 浙江 杭州 余杭塘路388号 浙大紫金港校区国际会议中心 310058

浏览了一下官方网页，似乎都是由志愿者组织的，内容还在陆续更新中。找了半天也没有找到开会的费用，结果只能发电邮问了，答复是：在线注册现场交费100元每人，现场注册现场交费150元每人，包括两顿饭，不包住宿。其实对这些公布与￥有关的信息也不必那么害羞，开会交费，天经地义啊。

我参会的目标是什么呢？

1）Grigo 开始blog也一年多，前半年跟着AMTeam在blogspere 里好像也认识不少人发生了不少事，后半年开始荒废了。借这次机会可以重新看看blog和blogger的发展；

2）中文博客到底都喜欢blog什么内容呢？浏览了报名的147个人的档案，当中有前辈有新人，发现有三大主流：a) Web 2.0 及科技发展的信息评论，此类文章以翻译编写国外新闻为主；b) 不同的关注领域，类似管理知识的AMTeam, 有个做天文地理教学的教师blog让人印象深刻；3）针砭时弊类，特别是博客/网络社区的各种行为，例如 Daniel Chan 说了自己要报名参加博客大赛，竟然因为报名邮箱爆满了，而无法递报名表的故事，有意思。

3）对网络社区（Wiki, social search 等）很感兴趣，想了解更多的知识：如何建立一个社区，如何活跃社区，需要什么样的人才技术资源，一切一切的细节，期待各种交流。

有同去的朋友吗？

Grigo @ YellowStone NP