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January 25, 2005
Consumer anxiety
The life of a gadget addict is often an unhappy one. All desire may be illusory but that doesn't stand up when you can see a new shiny gadget that'll replace your current, perfectly-fine-but-a-bit-bashed gadget for a mere three hundred euro.
True gadget addicts never buy from high street shops. Usually what's being sought can't even be bought in high street shops, at least not in Dublin. And if they can, it's usually at a ridiculous mark-up, and it's hard to persuade yourself to buy from a shop that invariably knows less about what it's selling than you do.
So, what we do is, we research the gadget exhaustively on the internet. This includes obsessively reading and re-reading every review, news item, and every piece of manufacturer's bumpf you can find. Then, after you justify the price to yourself (easy in this case: it's a reward for finishing my part-time masters! Yay me!) you go ahead and order it.
I placed my order on New Year's Day. Afterwards, crisis struck: they were out of stock. There were more being made, but it'd be (as it turns out) nearly a month before they'd send one out to me.
This was Very Bad News. That's 25 days for reading every forum post about the new toy. The problem is, only the unhappy post about their new toy. There are hundreds of posts out there about how this is a crappy phone. And not enough posts about how it's great. This is not unusual for a fancy gadget, seeing as how those for whom it's working fine are off playing with their gadgets and not posting enraged comments in internet forums about how they've been completely screwed over by companies who unpardonably fail to drop everything to sort out their obscure problems.
But, y'know, all that negativity can get at a person. And slowly wear away their conviction that getting the gadget was a good choice and - quickly now! There's still time to cancel!
But, just in time, my order's been shipped. On balance: hurrah! Brief review to follow.
Posted by Oliver at January 25, 2005 01:57 PM
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