Tipping, Johannesburg

This is a tip that will serve you well and prevent you from being the focus of a shop keeper's frustrations and anger.

It may be your culture, it may be the culture of a vendor, but under no cicumstances should you start haggling with a salesperson in a large mall in South Africa. You may ask for discount if you are buying for a large amount (ie R3000+) but to haggle shows much disrespect when rentals are so high. These shops pay very high rent and are completely different to a vendor in the street who pays nothing to have his stall there. Go crazy haggling with vendors, but try and haggle for anything more than 10% discount in a mall and you will notice the level of service you receive fall drastically. This is Africa, but not all of it is run the same. Would you ask for discount at your local mall's supermarket? Then why ask at a supermarket in another country?

The funny thing is that the vendors will often make you pay more for your haggled item than what you would pay for it in the mall.

Also do not take photographs of anything without at least asking the shop owner or vendor before hand. This also causes a lot of anger and some vendors will charge you for photographs. It is very disrespectful to take photographs of carvings or artworks someone has spent hours making and then leaving the store without buying something, all without asking in the first place.