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HomeYour LettersHonesty in business

Honesty in business

Prior to the twentieth century virtually everything on sale could be bartered down in price, even the local bakery’s products.
Along came the ‘Quakers’, whose honesty is, to this day, absolutely sacrosanct. They priced things fairly with a reasonable margin of profit, refusing to change their prices one penny. It was laughed at, with all and sundry predicting they would go broke. The opposite happened, with people flocking to them, knowing they weren’t going to be exploited.
Today so many businesses have reverted to this dishonest trading method. The first price is, invariably, an overpriced dishonest one, and people, who themselves are inherently honest, very often pay too much.
One year at the Apple and Grape Festival I heard, with astonishment, my late wife trying to give more money for some pastries she had bought at a Greek community stall. The elderly Greek lady was adamant she had calculated it correctly but my wife insisted she hadn’t charged enough. In the end my ‘Quaker’ wife left a donation; there was no way she was going to be even the tiniest bit dishonest. Pity a lot of businessmen aren’t the same.
Name withheld

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