When I traveled to Iceland in 2006, they had the most expensive prices I’ve ever seen - A value meal at McDonalds was about $18, a jacket was about $400. Well Iceland, you’ve been one-upped! Sao Paulo is absolutely the most expensive city in the Western Hemisphere! This past Sunday, Valentines Day here in Brazil, I went to the Morumbi Shopping Mall near our hotel with my coworker C… her bag was lost on the way here, so she needed some new kicks, and I really wanted a new pair of jeans. The mall was insanely packed, almost like it was Christmas Eve, and it was also insanely huge. I was so overwhelmed by all the stores and styles and people that I couldn’t even get a grip and start to look at clothes. Finally, on the basement level in a not so crowded corner, I saw a Levi’s store… Score! I thought I would be able to get a decent pair of new jeans for not so much money. I found a pair of skinny jeans that I really liked and they looked pretty cool when I tried them on – but when I looked at the price, they were 259R, or about $165. I’ve seen expensive Premium Levi’s in the USA before, and they were about $140, so I thought that these were most likely a premium pair of Levis. So against my better judgment, and due to the fact that I get extremely grumpy if I waste time shopping and don’t buy anything, I decided to buy the Levis. If you know me well, you know I don’t mind spending money if its something really nice, but you also know that I always try to get a good deal, and that I hate to get ripped off. Well, I should have just left well enough alone and enjoyed my new ‘expensive’ jeans… but of course I had to look them up on the Levis USA website – and they are selling for only $45! I was shocked. The pants I bought in Brazil cost 4 times as much as they do in the USA! I totally got ripped off. So what did I do? I immediately ordered the jeans from the USA website to have them shipped to my friends who are coming to visit me here in a few weeks, and I thought I would just return the jeans to the mall ASAP and get my money back. Problem solved.
Wrong. Brazil is just like Italy – buyer beware. The next morning when I told my local Brazilian coworker M of my plans to return the pants, she said ‘I don’t think so, not here in Brazil.’ She said she’d come to the mall with me and try to talk to the sales people. So that night I went back to the mall C and M and we brought the pants into Levis. The sales people pretty much acted like I was insane, and the first person to ever ask for a refund! The told me I could exchange the pants for something else, but everything in the store is super expensive – so I’m pretty much paying 4 times the price no matter what I get.
So I’m onto plan B now, where I emailed Levis in the USA and Brazil, and posted messages about them on both Facebook and Twitter. Tonight I got a Facebook message back from Levis Brazil to give them more information – so I’m going to have my coworker M email them tomorrow in Portuguese. Hopefully I’ll get lucky and they will help me out, but I am doubtful. But mark my words… I will not spend one more penny of my own money in this country! That’s actually not true, but I feel really strong about this… haha. Time for a consumer rights revolution in Brazil!
To round out the listing of other overpriced items in Brazil: Drinks at the bar are $15 each. A Honda Civic costs $40,000. A North Face jacket is about $650. An iPhone is $2,000, with a 2 year agreement. And dental floss is $8. And yes, and I paid the $8 because I ran out of dental floss on day 3!!!
And... get this: The average starting salary out of college is only around $1,000 a month! And after 10 years of work the average salary is only around $55,000! I don’t know how these people do it. I would have gotten arrested a long time ago for stealing if I lived here... seriously people!
So I feel a little taken advantage of now, but I am pushing it aside and having a good time anyway. My trip to the mall sums up what I think of Sao Paulo so far – a big, confusing, overpriced, mess – but I still kind of like it! Tchau for now. That’s Ciao, in Portuguese :)
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