Why’d you buy PC components online?
1. Availability
2. Affordability
If there are a few major reasons, then there should be some minor reasons such as
1. We can read real user reviews
2. Delivery at doorstep
3. 7 – 30 day replacement or money back guarantee
4. Unboxing and assembling thrill / suspense
5. No hidden costs or marketing executive cheating
6. Original and new products
7. Warranty for each and individual items
8. EMI facility
I’m not compelling you to go for online shopping. Why?
Because there are some downsides too.
Are they really unavoidable?
No. You can easily get pass through it.
Why people fear to do online shopping?
Because, they have 3 fears lying deep inside them. Let me pull them out one by one.
1. What will I do, if the seller doesn’t ship the item after I pay for it?
Can that really happen?
Yes! It does.
Then how can I find some websites that I can trust, to buy online?
There are no magic rules to find such sites.
EBay, Tradus, Flipkart, Bitfang, TheITDepot, Techshop are some of the reliable sites to buy.
Some other sites are also there but I haven’t purchased anything from them yet, so I didn’t mention them here.
Desidime.com is a deals sharing website, which has a helpful community in its forum. Members of that community are called by the name Dimers.
The forum allows any new dimer to post deals or ask questions about reliability of shops.
Normally I prefer the above said websites, to buy computer components. But if I had found any attractive deal from a new website, then I would post that deal in the forum. Dimers will vote for that or reply. From that I can judge about the reliability of the website easily.
You can wipe out this fear easily by buying any smaller component like pen drive or mouse etc. to do a test-purchase from the website.
2. Cancellation of order or refund of money
I wish to share my experience (in this regard) with you.
A few years back, I was searching for AM2+ motherboard for my desktop AMD Athlon 7850 X2 processor. Since they are very rare to find, I was compelled to buy from new websites, which I hadn’t heard before. At those times, websites like Flipkart and Bitfang were not selling AM2+ motherboards.
Accidentally I found a decent AM2+ motherboard in AnythingInIt.com website. So without any research about the website, I ordered and paid the amount through debit card.
For about a week the order was in “processing” stage. After that I lost my patience and sent them an email, reminding about that order. After 2 days, I received a call from them saying, “Sorry sir, we don’t have that model. But we have another one which is costlier than that, but we will give you for the same price you paid”. Actually a normal PC user would think, wow! This is a great deal. I too thought the same. They asked me to check it on the website before confirming.
So, I proceeded to their website, the alternative board was priced at Rs.400 more. But it doesn’t seem worth, for the price mentioned in their website.
It’s quite natural that some range of components would be cheaper in one shop and some would be cheaper in another shop. Another reason, why I rejected that board was it had NVidia chipset. I was looking for AMD chipset, to use AMD overdrive software.
I called and informed them that I don’t want the alternative board. Then I asked for my refund. They also said that my money will be credited back to my account in 10-15 days. But even after 30 days, it didn’t appear.
Then I called them, since it was weekend they didn’t attend. A woman (may be his wife) or someone unrelated to his business attended and asked me to call later.
Then I sent him an email, addressing this issue. After a few days, he replied, “I didn’t accept the money you paid, so it should have been returned by now. The money is not with me”.
Then after 60 days from the order date, when I went to my bank for another work, I asked a representative about this issue. He asked me to fill up a form. After that within 4days, the amount got credited back to my account.
This type of experience has not happened just once or twice but many times. Of course not only in online shopping – it happens even in an ATM, if your time is not good.
When you buy 100 times online some 5-8 times it goes like this. We should understand such things and maintain our patience.
3. Returns and Replacements
Websites like eBay.in gives 7 day return policy. It doesn’t mean you have to return it within 7 days, but you have to inform about the damage or not-working condition and should have filed the return process within 7 days, whereas websites like Flipkart allows 30 day return policy.
To return such damaged or unsatisfied goods, call and tell the seller about the issue. They will ask you to send the goods back in the same condition as if it was received (packing, invoice and all). Some shops refund you the return shipping charges too, in some cases the buyer should bear that. But once they receive the product, they will refund you the money or send you a replacement.