Warranty Issues Keeping Belgaum Distributors Up At Night

As financial year ends and dealers get settled into this New Year, The DQ Week thought we’d share observations from conversations we’ve had with distributors and local IT dealers recently. There are few issues that are keeping them up at night.

Talking to The DQ Week some local IT dealers in Belgaum region, Karnataka shared that the region’s market for manufactured products is a potential opportunity to expand revenues. In the last few years, manufacturers have sought ways to expand their sales geographically in the region. To compete in these markets, companies need to strengthen their distribution networks, especially for intensive technology products.

For good distribution networks, the regional as well as national distributors should be taken in confidence by the companies/ manufacturers, but the story in Karnataka’s Belgaum region is totally the opposite.

The dealers are facing some issues in dealing the IT products for the state and now least interested in working on the same.

Anil G. Chavan (IT dealer) of Arrow Computers in Belgaum says, “There are certain issues which dealers are facing while doing business in the state. My business is all about hardware and while selling the same, I face lot of issues like customer satisfaction towards the product. When it comes to schemes/offers and of course   ‘pricing’, we as dealers can’t help it. There is a certain amount fixed for the market in retail and we have to sell accordingly, and thus we get defeat from e-commerce”.

“The customers get attracted with the offerings from online portals, be it in festive season or otherwise also. We are now just waiting for GST so that under organized taxations, pricing will be better of products and we could get our customers back”, Anil added.

Gururaj R Kalghatgi, IT dealer in Belgaum, Karnataka owns Compu AID shared his recent observations and experiences while dealing IT products in Belgaum.

Gururaj told The DQ Week, “Warranty policies have been affecting the business from a while now. The companies/manufacturers now have strict warranty policies which affect the business. The date of arrival of the products to us and the date of departure from the manufacturer always vary which results in expiry date of the warranty. If its 15 months warranty from the manufacturing date, we get the product after 3-4 months of manufacturing then warranty period gets over early thus we should get it by time near to its manufacturing or companies should increase the warranty period”.

“On the other hand as the purchase date always varies, Service centers don’t give us services beyond dates. The product lies with national distributors for months and then comes to us thus date gets expired. The service centre issue is a major concern. The complaint is from principals (manufacturers), who create such norms which passes to the national distributors and then to us. The customers also shout asking for longer warranty products.  Price factor is also there, depending on the volume; price varies but not now”, added Gururaj.

According to Gururaj, “Online portals have also created a lot of disturbance in retail market, but now it’s becoming better after cutting off margins the customers are coming back. Now only during festival season these portals get active”.

“Also we are hoping best from GST. As of now we believe that after GST the layer of Tier 1/ 2/ 3 will be vanished among distributors. The implementation will be a boom for us, let’s just hope for the best now”, added Guru.