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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Now it is time to question the high repairing fee of famous brands

Have you had such experiences with the "world famous brands": you can afford to buy but not to repair? From January to August, Statistics from the Shanghai Consumer Association show that from January to August, this organization received over 700 complaints about the maintenance of household electric appliances, an increase of 57 percent year on year, a record high.


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Have you had such experiences with the "world famous brands": you can afford to buy but not to repair? From January to August, Statistics from the Shanghai Consumer Association show that from January to August, this organization received over 700 complaints about the maintenance of household electric appliances, an increase of 57 percent year on year, a record high. The focus of complaints was on the excessively high maintenance cost of world-famous brands of mobile phone, air conditioner and computer.

Repair costs more than purchase

The quoted price for the repair of Miss Tang's two-year-old Samsung mobile phone is 1,800 yuan, whereas the selling price for a new one of the same fashion is only 1,380 yuan. It's really unreasonable that an accessory costs more than a complete machine! To this question, a Samsung official in charge of after service gave this explanation: the price of an out-dated cell phone will go down sharply, while the price for an accessory was fixed several years ago, the production cost was that high at the time.

Buying what one feels "name brand, and valuable"?

When Ms. Wang took her 10-year-old unworkable Panasonic-brand air conditioner remote controller to the aft-sale service department for repair, she was told to buy a new imported one for the original-type imported air conditioner, which cost 250 yuan for each. However, the next day, she happened to learn that in a remote controller shop, the selling price of an applicable remote controller cost only 25 yuan.

Panasonic after-service department explained to the reporter that the price of an imported remote controller of that type, originally set at 486 yuan, had now been reduced to 250 yuan, "absolutely a losing price". However, the department also admitted that a remote controller, produced by Panasonic joint venture factory and sold at a price of 148 yuan, is also serviceable.

Since there are new selectable products, why did Panasonic recommend one worth "250-yuan" for Ms. Wang? Since the market price for general remote controller has dropped to 25 yuan each, why then Panasonic insisted on the "imported price"?

The Panosonic Shanghai office drew analogy between a remote controller and an imported one as between a product in a plaza and that in a street stall, saying in the plaza what one buys is a brand name product which he feel "valuable".

Silence means gold?

When Mr. Jin asked Dell staff to come to his home to find the trouble of his computer which broke down three months after purchase, he was asked to mail the repair cost of 569.4 yuan first. A repairer would be sent upon receipt of the money.

Why this high repair cost? The person in charge answered: This is the Dell-set price.

The price of any commodity or service should be within a reasonable scope in light of a particular social environment, and should be compatible with the level of local productive forces, average social price and consumption level. A serious dislocation of price is inexplicable. In addition, the after-sale service quality of domestic home name brands is clearly superior to world brand whether in terms of maintenance cost or service attitude. What is the reason for the "carelessness" of these world name brands, is it that they do not worry about their brand image?

Chao Gangling, Director of the Modern Marketing Research Center at Shanghai Finance and Economy University holds that two possibilities can not be ruled out easily. First, high repairing fee may not be the original idea of the top level. Maybe it is the Chinese staff in charge of actual market operation who bully consumers by relying on world famous brands. Second, transnational companies are too big to turn about. The repair price, once set, can persist in use for several years.

Li Huizhong, Professor with Economics Department of Fudan University, says that Chinese consumers usually only pay attention to one-time selling price to the neglect of the "sustained consumption expenses" after purchase. Consumers lack access to information and are often in a disadvantaged position in making representation.



By PD Online staff member Gao Lanrong




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