Occasionally, just once in a while; a misinformed customer would come into our showroom and claim that our prices are high. Although he has every right to challenge our prices and get every bang for his buck; we are hurt.
The reason is simple.
There are many such ‘hardware showrooms’ in Bahrain who only care about the money. We do not wish to name them, as most people probably know them after their first purchase itself. Deceiving the customer has become a tradition of sorts here within this industry. We at ADVANTI, however, believe and have been putting into practise a different ideology since day one: inform the customer; give him fair and honest deals, and he’ll be back for more. While all of our core and frequent customers realise this and have blessed us by referring us to others and giving us repeat business; many of the newer customers think we’re like the rest. We beg to differ.
We invited people to match our online prices to those of Newegg.com and Amazon.com, wherein shipping and taxes are included. Newegg is the cheapest place in the world to get best hardware deals; and that’s only within the US. Their prices do not include shipping, taxes, customs levies or DHL regional transportation costs. Therefore, only those fortunate souls in the USA can get such deals.
And you know what they found? Our prices were matching Newegg’s AND Amazon’s prices on many hardware components!! On the others, there were differences, but the margin was minimum. Imagine being in the Middle East; making an on-line order in the US in the hope to get cheap deals, and end up paying for all the extras we talked about. But here, you buy the same product off our shelf in our showroom or online store, and you pay only a small percentage in excess. Infact, we challenge anyone to find a better place in the entire Middle East, let alone the world; to match our prices in terms of quality and service. It helps when people do their own research and not be guided by prejudice.
Radeon 4870 X2 on Amazon.com
Here is the cost of Radeon 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 on Amazon.com. It comes to BD 225.000, excluding shipping to Bahrain. Our price tag off the shelf IS THE SAME; while the very same card is being sold in Kuwait for BD 308.000.
The ultimate testament to us has come from a reputed middle east hardware forum, whose users are all over the GCC, and they compare prices from each region and come to one conclusion, day after day, an unanimous and universal voice,
“ADVANTI GIVES IT AT THE BEST PRICES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”
