Cell-phone dealers giving fake warranty

KARACHI - The number of cellular phone warranty providers has climbed sharply in the last few months as no registration is required for the business.
Muhammad Saeed Qureshi, Chairman Adhoc Committee Karachi Electronic Dealers Association, while talking to The Nation revealed that a certain number of mobile phone dealers were providing warranty for handsets in the market.
"Most of the companies providing warranty, except a few big names, do not even have customers care and service centres. Sales centres are being used as warranty claim centres. They are not authorized to offer warranty since there are already few reputable companies claiming their partnership with major brands.
According to my knowledge, no registration process is there for hand phone warranty providers and that is why small companies are freely operating their own warranty business, which is anyhow troubling the buyers", he further added.
He also said that some dealers alter original company labels and fix their self-made stickers and due to the ignorance of the government, business is going towards wrong direction.
"Customers prefer to buy mobiles with genuine warranty, even if they are buying used phones, and the prices fluctuate with accordance to the life of warranty. Few years ago, we have a small number of companies providing warranty for handsets but now circumstances have changed. Dozens of dealers are offering their own warranty for all kind of handsets in the market," expressed Muhammad Saeed Qureshi.
When asked about snatched handsets, he said that CPLC is very sincere in this regard. Whenever we recover snatched phones, we handover it to Police and CPLC acknowledge the receipt. In addition, data of recovered snatched phones is available both with us and CPLC.
On the other hand, sales of mobile phones have declined sharply due to high prices and the current economic meltdown. Govt imposed Rs 500 tax on all kind of imported handsets few months ago. The other factor involved is surging US dollar, as the PKR has depreciated and the local currency is unstable.
Sales of China-made mobile phones have dropped due to its poor resale value. Other imported sets are still popular among customers because they are more durable and worth keeping as far as resale value is concerned, said a mobile-phone dealer.
Earlier, PTA data depicts that subscribers addition which turned negative in November 08, continued this trend in December 08. Overall subscribers declined by 0.6 percent in December 08 compared to negative growth of 0.1 percent in November 08 and clocking in at 89.9m. Net deletions registered 500 thousand subscribers in Dec 08 compared to 118 thousand in the previous month. This has also pushed down the industry's average addition rate for a rolling 12 months period significantly to 1.1m subscribers in December 08, versus 1.3 million in November 08.
Duty on mobile and calling cards has already been increased by the government and approximately Rs 15 is deducted from Rs 100 mobile card. Furthermore, tax per minute on calls has also been elevated that was puzzling the subscribers.