More than 7 years ago, I returned to India after spending the previous 3 years in the City of Angels a.k.a Los Angeles.
As part of the settling back process in India, I wanted to go in for a big screen television set. A 29" TV, at that time, was considered to be a slightly up-market item and since I was the typical "US-returned" guy, I sure wanted to own one.
So, I dragged my folks along to the Sony World showroom in R.A.Puram and looked around for big screen TVs. They had one 29" TV with Picture-In-Picture and I decided to go for it.
The problem, as my parents saw it, was the TV cost almost Rs.80,000.00. Yes, Rupees Eighty Thousand only. But in my thought process I was, like, "Haey, that's just $2,000.00". And much to the chagrin of my parents, I was very firm on buying it. And I did.
Please note that it was a regular picture-tube based TV and not any of those LED/LCD/Projector TVs that had started making their appearance in the market. But all that I saw in those initial days of returning from the US, was having lot of money and some freedom to spend it!
We have had that TV till today. It was very much in working condition till about a couple of years back, when a small patch of green started appearing in the left bottom corner of the screen. It wouldn't really be visible, unless the program being watched had an image in white color in that area. The Sony service folks couldn't do anything about it and so we just let it be.
Around that time, I decided to have a second TV and got me a Panasonic. This one too was a 29", but cost me only Rs.17,000.00. So, the Sony was left in the first floor of my house for the occasional viewing. That too, was done mainly by my mother, who after the "thief incident", stopped going upstairs except to sleep.
So, the TV was lying idle for more than a year and a couple of months back, we found that it even refused to switch on. The Sony service guy checked it and said that it was time to scrap it. And that, at best, we could get around Rs.2,000.00.
We checked with some of the guys who buy used TVs and the best offer we got was Rs.2,000.00. So, finally, the great Sony 29" 80K INR TV was sold off for a whopping amount of 2K INR.
I have learnt my lesson very well. There is no point in spending that much money for any of these electronic equipment because there is absolutely no return for the investment. And worse, the cost of the product drops sharply every month and even worse, they drop sharper the minute I buy something.
I have pretty much stuck to that resolution and would of course be breaking it when the Apple iPhone 4 gets officially launched in India soon.
1 comment:
You should be happy that you got 2K. A saying goes like this: The best time to buy electronics item is day after tomorrow' With technology changing rapidly, like US/UK we may need to either resort to garage sale or throw it in dustbin
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