Had to write about an interesting set of experiences recently. I spent the last week assembling a new PC for work. It was an adventure and a lesson of sorts.

Mr G
I was introduced to a PC guy who worked at Video Pro. His name is G. Talked to him in Feb about the items I wanted. He told me that he didn’t have a particular video card I wanted but he’ll try.

He calls me back 4 weeks later and tells me there’s stock. I was pleasantly surprised that he called and told him I wasn’t too sure but I’ll have a think and let him know. I walked into his shop and had a chat with him about the parts again.

In the end, I bought the parts from Video Pro, he gave me a small discount and was nice to deal with. But I wanted to get a casing he didn’t have. I wanted a small aluminum case with a side fan.

Fuwell
I saw the case at Fuwell and got served by a nice guy. But they didn’t have stock and wouldn’t sell me the display case.

Cybermind
I saw the same case in Cybermind and ask the guy if I could get a set. He checked and said there wasn’t any stock. I asked if I could get the display case and he was good to go. I did a ‘btw I am using a big graphics card’ and he got a bit worried and asked a blondish hair dude. This guy OPENED UP a brand new box, took out the said graphic card and tried it out for me. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Video Pro
I assembled the PC and got some serious disk.sys BSOD error. I checked the net and thought it was a DVD writer issue. I took out the DVD writer, ran to Video Pro 1st thing this morning and asked the girl for an exchange. She checked the DVD box and found out I was short on a SATA cable. I asked if I could bring the cable down later as I was in a rush. She said no and told me it was a $3 extra charge for the missing cable.

Video Pro could have taken a $3 loss to earn eternal customer loyalty. But they didn’t. Too bad. PC parts are commodity items. Customers aren’t.

Apple
A friend called up 2 days ago to tell me that his ’silence’ button his 3G iPhone broke. He took it down to Singtel and had a no questions asked exchange for a brand new iPhone. Over the phone, I knew that Apple had a new convert and probably a new evangelist.