It is one of those rare days when you go to a store to buy a bunch of electronic products on a single day.
Today was one such day. Given these tough economic times, stores must be working harder to convert fewer footfalls into sales, or so you think. Read my experience in the Croma Store on Linking Road, Mumbai today.
I wanted to a buy the following things:
An all-in-one printer
A Monitor
A Wet grinder
A Portable Air conditioner that I have seen earlier.
Before going to the bay where they had the printers, I looked at the Mobile enclosure to have a look. There were two guys there and I asked to see the Apple iPhone. These guys were in the world of their own. They didn't hear me. They didn't even ask the customary questions 'may I help you'. Since a mobile phone was not my agenda I moved on but amused at the indifference these guys were showing.
My experience in the Printers bay was good, although I had to wait for sometime before the concerned person could reach me. His name was hemant, he gave some good advice and I quickly zeroed in on the product I wanted.
My Decision: Buy
Next is Monitors, and buying them could be tricky. I wanted to know what the aspect ratio was on the monitors on display. No had any clue. How does Samsung 19" compare to a Viewsonic 19". No clue. They pointed me a Dell person who had no clue either. All he said was I should book it online, which I think everyone knows.
My Decision: Not to buy
Then I moved on to the Wet Grinders. The person here was the most useless. When I asked for a wet grinder, he asked/said 'Mixer? I went around few aisles and I found the Wet Grinder. A Maharaja Whiteline. There are two options 1.5 and 2 ltr. I wanted the 2 ltr. And then I saw that there were optional 'Atta kneader' and 'Coconut Scraper'. I asked them does optional mean I should buy them and if so from where. Now this man had no clue what I was asking. Simply because he wasn't even reading the packaging on which this was mentioned. Then we asked for the Maharaja contact person's number. He went and brought the card and was happy to have us go. We called the Maharaja guy and after many calls he said that we need to buy them separately and they will have them delivered to our home. So, even though the sales person was useless, we decided to go ahead, since we needed on badly.
My Decision: Buy
This is the final piece. The Portable Air Conditioner and a clincher.
There was only one in the store and it was on display. I requested them to bring it down so we could have a closer look. They didnt appear too keen to do that. But they finally got it down.
We discovered that it has a single hose pipe that takes the hot air away. Now this means that we need to keep a window/door partially open to let the air out. Our concern then was would it cool the room enough then. Concern No 1.
There is a side attachment to it that collects the water. Neat. But how often do we have to empty it.
If it is once in a day or even twice in the day, it is ok. But what if I have to do it every two hours of use.
Pretty dumb right. I asked them about it. They said "itna nahin hoyega". They didn't sound convincing to me. I asked them did they use the unit to see its performance. No. So whatever they were telling me is at most a calculated guess. I didn't want to buy a product worth RS 17000 on somebody's guess work.
That was Concern No 2.
I asked does the store have a return policy. No they don't have. I then asked if they could call a customer who has bought it before and ask them if they'd like to talk with me about the aircon. They said their policies don't allow them to. I didn't get that. As a customer, yes I would be annoyed if the store gave my number to someone. But if they called themselves and asked me, I will either say yes or no. But no the store wouldn't do it.
Then we spoke to Karim, the second in charge, or so he said about the situation and that we want to be convinced about the product. He said all the customer satisfaction surveys were already done and they have been selling this chinese product for 3 months without complaints. May be true but when you don't get answers to your basic queries you are in doubt. When we expressed the same thought to him, he said - "then don't buy". Splendid advice. I cursed myself for not getting this thought earlier.
When you type in Croma in Google, this is the first result you see..
"At Croma, well-trained store advisors, who have an in-depth knowledge of the products, guide, advise and help you choose a product that's just right for you ..."
you only have to go to the store to see how specious this claim is. And to top it this is a Tata Enterprise
So here is the ending of the story. I took Karim's advice. Not only for the aircon but also for those that I decided to buy from Croma. That was one and half hour of a beautiful day spent quite uselessly in Croma.
advice.
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