By Nimish Dubey
I have just discovered why the grey market in tech products is thriving in India - it is because the “real” market players just do not seem to care enough. I have seen three major product malfunctions - all three devices from very well-known brands - over the past three days and in each case, the user was unable to get timely support from the manufacturer, even though his/her product was still under warranty.
One of my friends’ BlackBerry Pearl stopped functioning altogether a few days ago but when she went to Vodafone with it, she was told to leave it behind and collect it a week later! Another of my friends found that a few keys in his Nokia Communicator were not responding - he went to the service centre and was told to leave the device for a fortnight. I myself woke up one fine day to discover that my N95 8GB no longer had a vibrate alarm, and that a chip had come off its lower portion. The solution: The care centre told me it would take at least four days!
As if the delay was not bad enough, the service centres also assured each of us that because we had damaged the devices physically (is mental damage possible?), we would also have to dish out some cash, as the warranty had been “voided.” Of course, all of us strenuously denied damaging our devices but it is clear the folks in these centres have special powers. So we were not just being deprived of devices which were a close-to-indispensable part of our lives (no, no substitutes were offered) but were also being asked to pay additional sums of money for them!
The result? Well, my two friends have gone and got their devices repaird from unauthorised service providers, who were able to fix things within a few hours. As for me, I am using my chipped N95 8GB without a vibrate alert. So much for warranty and support.
If that is the price one pays for buying high-end devices legitimately, I am not surprised people opt for the grey market.It is cheaper and heck, one can always head to the friendly neighbourhood repair guy to fix matters when they go wrong!
February 4th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
A couple of days back, even I had some problems with my E71 and I felt it was a battery issue. Though, the problem was resolved within a hour’s time with a software refresh, I was told that if the battery still gives trouble, they’ll replace it but would take a fortnight to do so…I asked them if they’ll provide a standby, but they refused…how can they expect you to be without a phone for over 2 weeks and then they try to say that they’re offering ‘Enterprise phone’!!!…I want to know in which part of the world, enterprise devices can tolerate a downtime of 2 weeks!!