Consumer Electronics Purchasing Woes
Posted on July 23, 2008 by S Osako
Culture, Tech
I recently purchased a new monitor for my home office and boy was it frustrating. The thought of buying something new is fun and exciting and I’m envious when I see others getting boxes of goodies at work. Of course I couldn’t just buy the first monitor I saw, I had to do tons of research to avoid buyer’s remorse. I started my exploration for the right monitor with high spirits. By the end of one week, my spirits were crushed. Not only was I drowning in conflicting reviews from “experts” and users, but the manufacturers seem to number their products with the goal of confusing consumers. Why can’t they just number their models intuitively and make it very clear what the differences are?
Especially with electronics, consumers can have dozens of products with dozens of features to choose from. Having to choose can get overwhelming and confusing. It would seem like making the buying process easy would benefit everybody. I had an easier time buying a new car than buying a new monitor. It came down to asking some very tech savvy friends for recommendations to narrow things down. My buying adventure ended a few weeks later on a weekend trip to Costco. I saw what I thought was one of the recommended models. It’s wasn’t even on the Samsung website at the time yet it’s an update to a previous model. See what I’m saying? After all the frustration there was a happy ending, I’m very pleased with my choice.
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So, True! When researching the purchase of a laptop a couple of years ago (and its time to go through it all again) I was so confused. Not only did the site change its prices continually, but all the specs…geez. My solution? I hit Best Buy and found exactly what I needed. Some times the human touch is what is needed!