PC Shows

PC shows, or IT fairs, however you call them, are not good places to buy good IT stuff.

Cheap stuff, maybe, if you are lucky, and if you manage to avoid being trampled to death by the huge throng of IT enthusiasts. But not good stuff. And certainly not good and cheap stuff.

I have my fair share of IT shows. I used to go just to catch a bargain, but almost never did buy anything. The first time I did buy though, was last year when I went there to buy a laptop for my sister. There was a promotion, for students only, for an immensely cheap HP laptop, with great stats at only 1.3k. I braved the crowd with my Mel on the tow, heroically and paranoiacally fending off the crowd from her, queuing up and enduring incompetent salespersons, finally to close the deal with a promise from the supplier that the laptop will arrive in 1 week.

It took 2 weeks to come, and slightly more than a year later, it crashed. Yap and jianzhong who bought the same laptop had worse luck: they are having problems with the "super bargain buy" laptop even earlier than i did.

Undeterred by that, I went to a PC show this year again. Supposedly the telcos will have "great bargains" up for grabs at the PC show, and since I am looking for a new phone with a new contract, what better place to apply for one than at a PC show?

So I dragged mel with me again to the PC show. There was a damn long queue at the starhub booth, but luckily one of the salespersons told me that I do not need to apply for my cable tv subscription there (which I am intending to as well), since all other starhub shops give the same package, just without the freebies. Since the freebies is just an anti virus which I don't need, I chose not to queue there and then, much to the relief of mel.

The phone queue was much shorter, but I had to endure incompetent salespersons again, and a mel who was alternating between dozing off on my shoulder and trying to bite the head off the incompetent salesgirl.

Mel bought a motorola phone for me as a birthday present, the latest model. Since it was pretty expensive, I was quite careful about buying it. I asked specifically what happens if there is something wrong with it when I go home. The salesgirl told me that they would do a 1 for 1 exchange for me. That settled me, so I went ahead and made the purchase.

Turned out that there IS something wrong with the phone when I brought it home. Instead of charging up, it discharges when I connect it to the power socket. So I tried to do the 1 for 1 exchange. Turns out that starhub won't do it. They say that motorola insists that we bring the faulty phones to them. I don't know if they are lying, but that sounds like a damn lame excuse from starhub. what is the difference between starhub bringing the phones to motorola and us bringing the phones instead?

So I had to go to motorola. There is just ONE motorola service shop in the whole of singapore. and it is located at The Cathay. Look, if it is not just next the MRT, then it is a ulu shopping center in my dictionary. And looking at the number of people that frequent the near empty building, apparently most singaporeans agree with me.

At the one and only motorola shop, there are seven counters, but only ONE service staff. And she is the cashier, service, collection all rolled into one. Even though I was the next in line, I have to wait 30 minutes before I can even speak to her.

And, surprise surprise, she refused to do a 1 for 1 exchange. Said she had to send it in for testing first, according to the company's regulations. So fine, I left it with her. Few hours later they called to tell me that the phone is fine, and i should just bring it back with me. I was flabbergasted, and no way am I going to take the phone back only to have it discharging on me again. Is it so hard to change a phone for me on the spot, when I have not even used the phone for one day? So I demanded that they change the phone.

They said they will get back to me. And they didn't. Further attempts to call them for 2 consecutive days are futile. Presumably the cashier cum service cum collection is also the phone operator. Mel managed to get them once though, and I have no idea what she told them (hopefully she didn't walk them through the image of her chewing on their entrails), but she managed to convince them to change a phone for me. They called me at the end of the second day to tell me to collect the new phone.

So far, the newer phone is working fine. But as far as I am concerned, motorola's service is absolutely terrible. Starhub's service is lousy too. Moral of the story is: never to buy bargain stuff at the IT show. And always check out the service shops before buying into a new brand of IT products.