A clue and how to get one.

Land Rover; makers of the most accomplished and prestigious off road vehicles in the world - driven by Sultans, Kings, outbackers and farmers the world over. Also employers of the most useless advertising agency in this time zone - on the evidence to follow the agency could not find their own backsides with both hands and a map. Today on page 25 of The Times there was a new advertisement for the latest Land Rover Freelander. The advert showed an Arabic Souk or market place, with various carpets, bowls and ethnic goods on display (OK - it was probably filmed in a studio in Staines or something, but that was the image). The headline was "You won't need to barter for this" - implying that the vehicle was already reasonably priced. I don't know whether it was lazy copy writing by the advertising agency, or loose supervison by the Land Rover branding and marketing people, but one way or another USE THE CORRECT WORD! Bartering is one person agreeing to swap goods for another item of similar value; no cash changes hands at all. The word that should have been used is haggling - where the buyer and seller argue over the value of the goods, and the remuneration for their purchase before coming to a mutually acceptable price.

SO many people use the word "barter" when they mean "haggle" - lazy and WRONG!

Don't forget that you can view my online photo gallery here (people in my company - you will not be able to see these images as anything hosted by the Flickr gallery website is blocked by the WebSense content filter - sorry!)