Warranty woes

I have always been particular about buying gadgets with a manufacturer's warranty, that is, until I bought a mobile phone without warranty. Before I actually made the payment, I thought a lot about the pros and cons of buying gadgets without warranty.

Many of my techie friends in Twitter said they usually bought phones without warranty for several reasons. One reason was that they came cheap. The second was that most of the gadgets they bought were not available in India. They did not have the patience to wait for the launch in India. So they ended up buying imported phones from Web sites such as eBay. Since they buy mostly unlocked phones from abroad, the price is almost 50 per cent less than what it would cost in the market here.

They use it for a few months, and sell it for almost the same price. And they find ready buyers because of the same reason - the cheap price.

Why do they do it? They say that this way, they keep the stream of new gadgets constant, without losing much.

This may be ok for techies, but what about others? Can they afford to buy phones without warranty? “Nothing happens within one year if we handle gadgets properly,” says one of my Twitter friends who has made it a point to buy phones only without warranty. He is not a techie. He generally buys from eBay or uses its Global EasyBuy platform to buy unlocked phones from abroad. This way, he says, he is able to flaunt the latest high-end gadgets at the fraction of the price in Indian markets.

Buying gadgets with warranty has its own advantages, but if you are ready to take the risk, just remember that cheaper options are available.

And if you're looking to be on the safe side, make sure you get the manufacturer warranty, and not dealer warranty, which is useless.

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