When buying Radeon HD 4770 in India

Radeon recently came up with 4770 card priced at an unbelievable of $99 (which translates to Rs.5K approx). However in India it is being sold at Rs8.9K, I understand the import duty and the margin to retailers/wholesale dealers adds up the price. So I decided to buy this card and I almost got fleeced.

Now we all know how computer spare parts are sold in India. In Bangalore they are sold at SP Road, which is where most Bangalorians head to buy computer spare parts or to get their rig assembled.

Now back to my experience, I had made up my mind to buy this card and approached one particular dealer who I go to regularly. He said that they haven’t got stock as yet and asked me to come back two days later. When I approached them two days later, they gave me the same excuse and told me to sell me GeForce 8800 instead, which I politely declined. He asked for two more days at the end of which he told me to come back later. I bid alvida – not so politely though – and walked to another dealer I have dealt with in the past.

He immediately called up a few wholesalers and told me that the card will cost Rs.10K. What the F? I gave him the “eye” and told him that I KNOW THE REAL PRICE of the card. He immediately brought down the price to 9K+taxes — which brought the final price to around 9.2; still high — after a lot of bargaining he agreed to sell the card at the correct price+VAT. But what me feel like slapping him was what he told me when I was leaving.

“Please don’t tell anyone what price you got the card for. If anyone asks tell it’s for 10k okay?” Now that’s ridiculous; why should I say it’s for 10K or why should he sell it over priced? The funniest part was when I reached home, I saw a sticker on the box which posted the price of the card at Rs21K!

The dealer was Aditya Infotech who are based in New Delhi. I did not verify if they are the ones putting up these fake MRP tags or someone here in B’lore is trying to make easy money. Either way they tried to rip me off. Period!

So come to think of it, I just bought a card with an MRP tag of 21K, but costs only Rs5K in US for 9K approx in India, from a dealer who tried to sell it for 10K!

Well when I spoke about to this to a small scale retailer near my home he told me that there are other things one should worry about while buying anything from SP Road.

A lot of time second-hand goods are passed off as brand new, especially harddisks, motherboards, RAMs. They buy PCs which a lot of sell off to upgrade, dust it up/repair and sell it to YOU!

The sad part is there is no way to figure out if the goods are old or new. So all I am saying is be careful they are out to get you!

UPDATE: MSI is offering the same card for around Rs6.5K. So ask for their card