We would be nowhere without our house operations manager Eva. She has worked tirelessly since Christmas getting the Estate ready. The interior is beautiful and it’s thanks to her.
After almost nine years living in Italy, I still get frustrated when I get what I call the “foreigner gouge.”
This is where Italians assume that because I’m from somewhere else and chose to live and do business in their country, I have more money than brains. So, they put a huge premium on a good or service, put on a little razzle-dazzle and wait for my money to flow into their pockets.
I’m sure this happens to expats in many countries. Afterall, being an asshole isn’t nationality dependent.
But I live here, and I know I’m painting with a wide brush and risking stereotyping my adopted country’s people, but I think Italians might be especially proficient in the field of foreigner gouging compared to other nationalities.
The gouge used to happen to us more when we first moved to Italy’s Abruzzo region to open an all-inclusive tour company in a restored historic villa. There was the €5000 quote to paint a few rooms, a €300 quote to mow a small lawn, a €1000 quote to change a few locks, and a €600 oil and filter change. (More on that later.)
These gouges became less frequent as my wife Lisa Grassi-Blais and I learned the language and culture and, more importantly, found great, trustworthy people to work with and help us.
But it happened again over the last couple of weeks as we were completing the task of getting our second location ready to receive guests. In fact, we got the rare double-gouge treatment.
The new location is a Baron’s Estate, which we’ve turned from a bit neglected and little used into a first-class vacation destination. The finishing touches are just about done and we will be welcoming our first 16 guests April 13.
Our jack of all trades Domenico spent the week planting flowers, bushes and grass. I can’t wait for things to green up.
One of those finishing touches is getting internet and wifi services installed. The double gouge came when we went in search of companies to do this in the more than 160-year-old main building. It’s a big, spread out and impressive building with brick walls almost three-feet thick in places. So, I knew it would be a difficult job to get good, blanket wifi coverage.
The first gouge came from a well-known internet service provider in our area. They first sent a technician wearing overalls to give an estimate. He took one look at the place and me and said he needed to speak to his bosses. The next day, a spanking new BMW SUV that smelled like speed and €1000 bills pulled into the driveway and two smartly dressed guys got out. They smiled widely and introduced themselves as engineers here to put a “project proposal” together.
They made a big deal of letting me know that the “project” was a very big, complicated, highly technical and big, big, big undertaking that could only be matched by their impeccable, astounding, and world-class talents. They said they would need some time to put together a fantastically engineered plan that would guarantee our wonderful guests would get the high-quality internet services they richly deserved.
Romolo, our main contractor, pitched in last week as delivery after delivery of stuff arrived at the Estate.
Now, I’ve been around long enough to know that such a massive degree of ass kissing usually comes with a big price tag, but even I was left breathless when three days later they delivered a slicker-than-grease, 14-page “project report” complete with schematics, blueprints and enough potential internet service to enable a thousand gamers and 500 graphic designers to do their things at the same time.
Price tag: €10500 with tax.
Right.
Next up was a company suggested by one of our trusted friends who has been supplying us with top-notch electrician services for nine years.
His guy took one look at the Estate and me, and it seems like he decided I was one of the dumbest people that world had ever produced.
Our master electrician and lighting expert Gianni intalled the last few lights aroud the yard and pool last week. We will reveal the amazing results of his work in a couple days.
He said he couldn’t give a proper estimate because he needed to do a bunch of work before he could even come up with a number for this incredibly challenging situation that would require quasi-herculean efforts on the part of him and his team. He said he could start the work and by the time it was about halfway done, he might know how much it would cost.
Price tag: Sign a blank cheque and he would fill in the numbers later.
Right.
Our electrician friend apologized and asked if I wanted to tell the guy to eff off myself or should he do it. I said he should do it. When he did, the guy actually gave an estimate.
Price tag: €10000 to €12000 plus tax, which is 22% here.
Right
So, our trusted business agent and project consultant, Francesco Volpe, asked around for a reference for an honest internet expert, and we were referred to a young computer/tech dude who lives in the next town. We asked him what we needed and how much it should cost. He showed up in a beat-up work van with tools and wires spilling out of it. He wore dirty work pants, dusty boots, a ball cap, and his nose looked like he’d been in a bar fight an hour earlier. He surveyed the Estate, left, did some research, phoned a bunch of places, and came up with a plan and a quote the next day.
The local fiber optic company would bring the signal into a router in the middle of the building for a couple hundred euros and then the wires and equipment to shoot the signal all over the building and grounds would run about two thousand and take maybe two days to install.
Price tag: €3000 max and he would provide a year of free service to make sure it works.
I almost kissed him.
So, what were the first two companies thinking? Why gouge like that?
Groundskeeper Angelo spent last week putting together poolside furniture, the barbeque, pizza oven, and much much more.
I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the years. The motive is greed, but why did they think they’d get away with it?
I think people think that people coming from somewhere else don’t know the things they know, like how much something should cost. And I think they are right about that. Expats are on unfamiliar ground. The locals have the homefield advantage, and they know it. That allows them to give into their inner asshole tendencies by using that advantage to turn it into money. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
But here’s the thing, even when it works, and they pocket some cash, the gain is short-term.
This is a small town and word travels fast. A lot of people have heard about these companies trying to rip us off. They damaged their reputations with several hundred people. Nobody in our circle, which is basically everybody who might need professional internet installation services, will now recommend either of those first two internet companies to anyone. In fact, they will tell people not to bother with them, and they will recommend the local guy.
Those companies also lost the service provider contract that would be more lucrative over time.
The foreigner gouge is just not worth it, and I have a great example showing this. It’s the oil and filter change I mentioned earlier.
In 2016, we bought our first tour van. It was used and it needed an oil change and new filters. I asked around and took it to a young guy down the street. He did the work and presented me with a bill for €600, which was about €450 too much.
L to R: Tiziana, Eva, Francesco and Mirella have worked for months getting the Baron’s Estate ready for its first guests.
I gritted my teeth, paid it and felt like a sucker.
The next time I needed work on the van, I took it to another mechanic, and hoped for the best. He did honest work for an honest price. We have four tour vans now, and we spend about €12000 per year keeping them well serviced and reliable.
That first mechanic made €450 in gouge money. Maybe he had a nice night on the town.
The second mechanic has made tens of thousands of euros in honest money and will make tens of thousands more euros from us. He’s buying his daughter a house.
The lesson is simple:
We all have an inner asshole.
DON’T GIVE INTO HIM!
€12000 plus tax for wifi?
Right.
There must be a picture of me beside the word sucker in the English-Italian dictionary.