1 Service & Warranty Plans
You might have heard it
before; most (if not all) electronics come with a 1 year warranty, and if
anything is going to happen, it will happen in the first year. Well there’s a lot of truth to that, but I’d
include an important caveat: Is this technology something I rely on so much as
to cost me money if it doesn’t work?
A computer might make sense to buy that warranty for, but
maybe not the printer, and certainly not the flash stick.
2 Accessories
Many box
stores will offer items at a highly discounted price only to offer you much
higher-priced accessories. I saw this in
the phone store I went to recently. They
offered a Bluetooth headset on sale at $150 that I could get on Amazon with
free shipping for less than $75.
3 Price
This takes us
to pricing. You should definitely shop
around for the best price-to-value ratio you can get. I have seen the same thing sold at different
stores (both locally and online) at over 50% differences in price. Just because your favorite store has it,
doesn’t mean it’s a good price.
4 Feature Creep
No
this isn’t a weird guy hawking add-ons, this is where you get pulled toward a
device that has just a few more features for what seems to be a minimum of
price increase. Technology is growing at
a pace where you can buy so much more than you’ll ever use. For example, most people could use an i5
processor but end up getting an i7.
Generally it’s unnecessary to upscale that much, so save a few dollars.
5 Bait and Switch
Both online and in the store, you will see ads for what seems like
amazing price reductions, only to find once you get there, they’ve run out of
product. They are eager to show you
something that might be an off-brand for a decent price instead and claim it’s
“just as good”. So you have already
wasted your time to go there and you need this thing so you buy it anyway. Turns out to be the worst thing ever. Better to just walk right out the door. Stand firm on what you want and what you’ll
pay.
Wade Stewart is the Managing Member of Stewart and Son Computer Services, LLC in University Place, WA and serves as a trusted partner to many local small and medium sized businesses.
You can read more from Wade at Stewart and Son by visiting the following blog sites:
http://stewartandson.wordpress.com/
http://smokingwires.blogspot.com/
Content Copyright Wade Stewart (C) 2013
Labels: advocacy, computer, hardware, industry, IT