Thane traders want onsite warranty from Vendors 

IT trade members in Thane District want major vendors to set up a service center and provide onsite warranty in the interiors of this district. Traders from Ulhasnagar, Ambernath, Kalyan, Dombivli, Bhiwandi find it extremely difficult to take back IT goods for replacement and repair. This is mainly because they have to pay octroi twice. Octroi rates also vary from place to place, as they are 4, 4.5, 5 and 2.5 percent respectively for Ulhasnagar, Dombivli and Kalyan, Thane and

Bhiwandi. 

"Most of the vendors have their service center at Thane or Mumbai which becomes too far. LG, Microtek and Wipro are few vendors who provide onsite warranty, which solves the problem to a large extent," said Shailesh Pamani Sanghvi, Proprietor of Kalyan based Aditya Computers. 

In onsite warranty the vendor comes to the respective customer or dealers place and replaces or repairs the product.

"Vendors are doing this mainly because their volumes are less here compared to cities like Mumbai. But vendors cannot ignore us just on the basis of volumes. Infact, Samsung has started realizing the fact and has become more supportive than earlier. Products like monitors and printers are the ones, which often give us problems," said Dilip Mangtani, Manager of Ulhasnagar based Computer Campus. 

The channel had problems with most of the vendors like HP, Epson, Intel, AMD and also local players like Zenith and others.

The Thane channels are of the opinion that it's also the lack of unity, which has encouraged vendors to treat in this manner.

"Sometime back around 15 to 18 dealers from Ulhasnagar had got together to form an association but nothing worked out.

This is because of the lack of unity and interest among the dealers," added

Sanghvi. 

Nancy Sudheer