I think you're missing his point. In a lot of parts of the world, including mine, this would be rather offensive behavior. The problem comes when you automati

I think you're missing his point. In a lot of parts of the world, including mine, this would be rather offensive behavior. The problem comes when you automatically generalize what happens to be offensive in your part of the world to the world at large. It seems conceivable that in a foreign culture, such as the parent poster's France, this type of criticism might be considered a path to a sincere and personal relationship because it shows that you're willing to interact with your host on a personal level. And it might not even be offensive if the criticism is normal and expected. The host might even join in mocking his own "foolish" purchase. The larger issue is that there's no conceivable way to know all of the ways you could offend someone else without spending a significant portion of your life immersed in their culture. I lived in a major city in Spain for a couple of years, and there's a seriously pluralistic culture there with large immigrant populations from a number of continents. My observation was that they tended to sidestep the unintentional-offense problem by limiting inter-cultural contacts. Their interactions tended to focus around well-defined interfaces like buying something from a store. It's a sad state of affairs but I'm not aware of an effective solution.