Me and my friend visited Lamington road today, a place for all technology freaks; or rather, a place where all computer hardware lovers would love to spend a lot of time...
So, try and remember whether this has happened to you, when you were at a PC peripheral shop? You go to the shop/ retailer, ask him for something, say an LCD monitor or DDR RAM... the retailer quickly picks up his phone and makes 2 phone calls, one for the LCD and 1 for the RAM. Now, some expenses conscious users like me and my friend thought, how the hell can he afford to sell this stuff at such a low price, make these contingent phone calls and even make profit and run his shop...
The answer to this is, he does not make any normal outbound calls. The entire Lamington Road is actually connected on an Inter Com. The phone call he makes rings at the brand distributors warehouse directly, who by the ways is in some remote unknown place... some khufiya jagah. E.g. If you wish to purchase an LG LCD Monitor, the retailer makes a call to the LG Distributor, who by the way is just 1, in the market. There is 1 unique distributor, for almost all products. The Transcend guy, the ViewSonic guy, all are sitting at such remote places, which we ain't aware about, and that's where all the intercom calls are routed!
The price difference you notice is because the retailers define their profit margins. Off late, these guys don't really have a big profit margin. He might be selling an LCD monitor for a profit of INR 100, or might be selling RAM modules for a profit of INR 50.
Just make sure, you bargain! The best way to negotiate and bargain is to do shop hopping! Yes, do that. Visit every shop you can, which you find looks nice & is crowded. The more the crowded it is, the best & the lowest price is what you'll pay.
Me & my friend visited a couple of shops today... Terabyte, Hardtrac Computers (We got our stuff from here), PC Guide (Is actually, perhaps the biggest & most easily recognizable shop @ Lamington, Perfect Electronics... to name a few...
Anyway, happy shopping at Lamington :-)
By the wayz, I got two 1 GB, 800 FSB Transcend RAM for INR 1500 each. i.e. INR 3000 total. I was first quoted a price of INR 1650 each. You see, after hopping around 7 shops, I finally got it for INR 1500! My friend was quoted INR 9450 for a ViewSonic 19" wide screen monitor. We finally got that price down to INR 9150. Of course, he eventually purchase an LG Wide screen monitor for INR 10K, but I just wanted to give you an idea of how well you can negotiate!
