Huh! After 6 months of hard efforts, yahoo messenger chats, advises, debates and the long wait for our Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s interim budget I made up my mind. I finally invested in a Laptop and could join the list of Tatas and Birlas who use their notebook to do business.
Nah, I am not just talking about astrology - it isn’t a business for me, it just happens to be a service I can do for the people who want to know their future.
I have joined the yet-to-be Nasdaq listed company, which is into making websites for Indian conglomerates. I Zone, which Globalizes Your Dreams is the newest endeavor taken up by my sister, and I happen to be its consultant. I Zone was launched last month by two people with hell lot of experience, hope, confidence, a mobile phone and now a laptop. The magic is yet to BEGIN!
Buying a laptop wasn’t an easy decision. I got in touch with most experts in the market, and one among them was a smuggler. ( I really dunno how my friend and me happen to blog on the same topic most of the time. We honestly don’t discuss these things )
The smuggler gave me the best deal, so far. The configuration of the comp he provided was 90 k ka new Toshiba laptop for 44 k, which had 256 RAM, some 40 GB HDD, CD & DVD reader and writer. The deal was extremely mouth watering, but the process of taking it from him was a bit scary.
The Process to buy goods from a smuggler
*You need to meet him in person and hand over the cash beforehand
*You can take the delivery of the product after 6 hours
What happens behind the scene
*The smuggler has a deal with the customs’ guy, who have snatched the goods from the passengers
*He just pays the custom duty, some money to the officials, keeps a margin for himself, and walks off with the good
*He delivers the goods to you
Risk Involved
*You will never know the authenticity of the snatched goods
*You won’t get a guarantee or a bill
*You never can trust the smuggler completely
*And of course the legal issues
There is another way to get goods from the custom guys. They run auctions regularly, which they never advertise. There is a deal again with the buyers, and also they don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry to rush to the airport to buy things.
I obviously wanted to buy the laptop from the smuggler but then decided to go against it, because I thought it wasn’t morally right. Or may be I was too scared to hand over 44 k to him!
The decision of buying the Compaq Presario 2157 AT from a showroom, and not illegally was told to me by my wife. And this happens to be the first advice I have ever taken seriously, which has come from my better half!