Buying a PC/Laptop

While buying something, it has become a habit for me to see the level of customer service, being offered by my vendors - from small grocery shops to big retail chains. Sadly, my experience has been not so great in Bangalore, barring some flashes of brilliance here and there.

From the last two weeks I've been shopping for a branded desktop PC - a commodity that might become extinct very soon. To start with only big retail chain stores in Bangalore have something on display. I visited the stores of Tata Croma, Reliance Time Out, eZone and Metro cash & carry. In almost all the places, the sales staff were not interested in answering to my numerous queries and infact most of them didn't had answers. Typical response was "I think it should work" and when I insisted that if they'd take back if it doesn't work, the person used to run away with an excuse that he/she would bring in a superior, who used to read from the box and tell what you already know. In all the four places I mentioned, no sales person bothered to have my number. Worse, when I called them back for some more clarification, I had to start all over again. The only spark of customer service, if I can call so, was from the salesman of an MNC brand, in an MNC outlet, who pulled me aside and in a hushed voice, recommended his brand without an OS and offered services of his friend who'd install XP or Vista and all the rrelated drivers for only Rs.1000. He also admitted that the brand he was selling had several missing drivers which would take enormous time for anyone to search and download from the net.

Next I thought of exploring smaller neighbourhood stores that were proudly displaying the logos of major brands on their shops. The interaction got better, but there was not a single piece of a desktop PC on display and they were only too eager to sell me an assembled one. They were good at it and 3-4 shops where I enquired came up with several confusing quotes on the assembled ones.

Tired of all these things, I thought I'll directly contact these big brands. I was put-off immediately as Dell's online "make your own PC" blew up the price by several thousands comparable ones from HP. I struggled all over the place to get the contact of local HP dealers from hp.com. Same with Acer and Lenova. I gave up and have now started looking at buying a laptop instead, as there are too many laptops on display and on the face of it, it looks lot easier to buy one.

In the process, I've got a product idea, which is reverse of standard yellow pages approach. Lets say, I want to buy a PC, I'll "broadcast" my requirements through an app installed on my mobile. This request can be caught by interested sellers who are tuned into getting such requests through the app. All such people can contact the buyer through email, SMS or a simple call. You may argue it sounds like eBay, but I feel its little different. Planning to write an Android app.