An Expensive Accent

My last a post was about how lovely life can be... but today I’m going to post a rant about this stinkin’ country and how everyone is always trying to rip off foreigners. Really! Taking advantage is an Argentine specialty.

I am moving soon, so I need to arrange for a little moving truck to come get my bed and my small collection of possessions and take them to the new apartment. So I called a moving company close to my house to ask about prices. They quoted me $400 pesos for the move – which I knew was ridiculous. I asked the lady on the phone, “What exactly does that price include?” and she was like, “Oh, don’t worry! Everything! We’ll send three people and move everything.” What? Three people to move a bed? $400 pesos for an hour or two of work? You have to be kidding me. She refused to give me an explanation of the the pricing breakdown – no, that was just the price.

So I asked my male Argentine co-worker to call. For him, the price was $40 pesos an hour for the truck, $18 pesos an hour for workers to help move (he was able to request just one) and $3 pesos for a flight of stairs. Yup, grand total will be under $150 pesos.

Sorry, but that just makes me mad. So I’ve got an accent. That doesn’t mean that a) I’m rich, nor b) I’m an idiot. I can communicate perfectly fine in Spanish: I understood everything said to me on the phone, and that stupid woman understood everything I said, even if it included a couple grammatical errors. I’ve been here long enough that this treatment is simply infuriating, for crying out loud!

It’s a well-known fact the Argentines love to “aprovechar” or take advantage of us foreigners. What makes me mad is that I’m not running around with dollars: I’m as poor as any of them are. Apparently I've just got an expensive accent.