Madness

The BPI installment madness showcase in Glorietta held every quarter of the year is a haven for gadget freaks. What used to be an APPLIANCE sale has become an electronic gadgets extravaganza. There still are remnants of what the SALE was initially planned out to be. Household appliances from stores like ABENSONS and Automatic Centre still get some fair billing and they actually get the best location(The activity center) but the small kiosks of Laptop and Mobile Phone stores littered everywhere when accounted by their sheer number will tell you that the people who come in droves will largely skip the refrigerators and washing machines to salivate for the smallest and cheapest laptops from ACER and ASUS or the coolest and multimedia functionality loaded camera phones from NOKIA, HTC, and Apple among others.

What's good about this quarterly sale is that when the Gadget stores converge in one place for one event, they nose out the competition by offering the cheapest package. While it is not yet the norm, here you can haggle for the lowest price although most stores won't admit they would budge in to a customer's whims for a slightly reduced cash outlay say 1k to 4k less. Where one is likely to take the price of a particular item at face value inside the participating shops' regular stores on a regular day, here, where they are all cramped up occupying Glorietta's walkway in their makeshift kiosks, one is at liberty to get a bang for his buck by simply asking " What is the lowest price?" I guess the environment and the limited time allows for some bending of selling/buying rules. It's OK. You won't be sent to the gallows by haggling or being cheap.

The sale runs up to next week and already I was able to get some interesting info which helped a lot in my quest to arrive with an informed decision everytime I venture into buying something big. Already I got the lowest price for my targeted E71. I was able to get a cash offer of 3500 pesos less from the average ---1200 pesos less from the lowest ---and 5000 less from the highest all referenced on current market prices. That's already something considering that the lowest market price is not an authorized NOKIA reseller store. Silicon Valley offered E71 the cheapest. I can always count on them for the lowest price which is at par with the tax exempt electronic goods in Hong Kong. I don't know how they do it , perhaps they've already a strong foothold in the electronic goods market and they've good sources where they get their items the cheapest but one thing that I'm glad they have is recognition from the brands they carry, authorizing them as a reseller. I've gone through several prominent( by prominent it means they have several branches and they have websites and they are located at the malls) electronic goods stores in the country but only Silicon Valley by far offers not just the cheapest prices but authorized reselling at least in the brands I've purchased from them.

I got my second notebook from them for 5k less than the average market price. This does not include the additional freebies which probably amounted to 2k considering the hefty price of the original IBM optical mouse they chipped in for free(not part of the package. The leather bag and the 256Mb RAM though were part of the promo though). They also gave away a branded flash thumbdrive and a USB-A hub among others but that took some haggling on my side though I didn't break anyone's arm in the process. My E61, while I didn't get any freebies I was able to haggle for 4k less than the average price. While the price discounts look astonishingly low, these are based on average market prices. On their side it doesnt seem like a huge drop cause they are already going like 3k less(on the notebook) and 2k less(on the E61)on the SRP to begin with.

This has been proven for more than 3 years now since I first bought my notebook. I could always count on Silicon Valley pricewise and they're no fly by night retailer by any means. Most people I know don't know about this. I've tried telling them to try the store out but they'd mostly end up purchasing their items from another fancy looking shop. I guess some of their branch stores' set-up, which borders on looking stockroom-like, and the few customer traffic inside their shops contribute to Silicon Valley's anonymity. This store really sells cheap. Consider this, E71 is sold at Hongkong for 2500 pesos more than the cheapest SV offered me. While Fortress(HK store) is chipping in another free battery, screen protector, and USB charger outside the package, Silicon Valley's 2.5k discount is far better considering the freebies of Fortress would have probably amounted to 2.5k also or maybe less. But the dealmaker is that, Silicon Valley is based here on Pinas. Even if Nokia has an international warranty, the local stores' warranty is still something you'd gladly trade for about the same price.