Learnings from buying an ipod?

“An i-phone!”

“Or I pad!”

“Or I pod Touch”

“That’s what I need for my Birthday!”

Steve jobs would have had a tear in his eye and a smug smile on his face if he heard my daughter give me the multiple options of what she wanted for her birthday. Well since the phone and pad were definitely out of the question I had no option but to settle on the i-pod. Now some time back over work related matters I had met up with the agents for apple products in Sri Lanka which was a company called Future world. Not BT Options which is generally associated with Apple in Sri Lanka. Anyway when they were making their sales pitch what they were telling me was that their prices would be cheaper than any other supplier since they were the main agents in Sri Lanka after all. This information made so much sense I accepted it unquestioningly. So much so I went and bought her ipod from future world without even checking the prices of other suppliers.

“Never believe a sales guy completely” these were the first words which went through my mind as I realized that the price of the same model was a couple of thousand bucks cheaper at BT options. And what more they fill the ipod you buy with over a 1000 songs a couple of applications and movies absolutely free. A service which I had to pay 5000/- for since I had not been wise enough to compare the prices before and buy it from them. But what I really appreciate is they were really nice to me. I expected them handle me with a bit of surliness as I had not bought the equipment from them. But that was not the case. The sales lady who served me would have spent a good three hours loading the ipod with all the songs and stuff but she cheerfully told me that if my daughter did not like the music on it she would gladly sit with her once more and go through their database of 50,000 songs and reload it without any additional charge. I must confess this floored me. Naturally I couldn’t ask my daughter what she liked cos this was a kind of surprise and I was willing to pay again if necessary if I had to change the collection. Somehow I had thought BT Options were extremely expensive and quite uppity but my experience completely changed my opinion of them.  I was touched by how nice they were to me. So much so it will be to BT options I will be running when I have to make another purchase which is going to happening quite soon.