Eating our own Dog Food

Shruti and I moved to a new home last week. Given the nature of both our work, neither of us has much income and we need to save every buck on this move to minimize damage. The perfect case for using Chaupaati. Here are my experiences so far.

1. Bought a used Washing Machine: Harish Vyas (name anonymized) was upgrading to a bigger washing machine. He found out about Chaupaati from a Gujarati newspaper ad and decided to advertise his washing machine deal by calling 922-222-1947. He was asking for Rs.5,000 for a 6.5KG LG Fabricare washing machine, originally bought at Rs.18,000 one and a half years ago. After Shruti found this deal on Chaupaati, she visited for an inspection and then made an offer of Rs.4,500. The following weekend, I went with the car, completed the transaction, loaded it up at his home and transported it to our home. Before making the payment, I made a cursory inspection, got a promise to return if there were any surprises, and understood all fittings and settings so I could have it up and running the same day back home. Harish lives in Andheri West 2km from our new home, and it sure helped that his engineer dad is hands-on and knows his machines. Sure enough, the washing machine was up and running the next morning with all fittings. No surprises. Except, Harish has not yet paid Chaupaati and does not feel obliged to! As we have discovered the hard way, the individual advertiser does not like to pay after use. If the deal does not happen, they feel no obligation to pay for responses received, no matter how genuine. When the deal happens, they behave just like my mom does in the mall. In a buy-four-get-one-free deal, she always asks the shopkeeper for the free thing, WITHOUT buying the four paid ones. Consumers, after much coaxing, are willing to pay for that one response that translated to a deal, and have something nasty to say about all others and feel no obligation to pay for them. Now Chaupaati collects money in advance, after a FIRST AD FREE trial.
2. Bought a second sale Microwave oven: Rahim Khamisy (name anonymized) is a wholesaler of second-sale LG products and a customer of Chaupaati’s century plan (100 contacts). He has built relationships with LG-corporate and gets bulk stock of LG seconds products, which he supplies to many local entrepreneurs across Mumbai. These products are typically showroom pieces with minor external damages or excess inventory of a discontinued series, and are covered under parts and service warranty (non-replacement) by LG. The asking prices are usually 30-50% off MRP and make it great buys for the value-seeking consumer. Besides supplying to dealers across Mumbai, Rahim does retail sale in his locality. Because of Chaupaati, he has now extended his retail network to rest of Mumbai, as long as customers are willing to visit the little corner of Khar East where his workshop is located in the periphary of a slum. Shruti was looking for a new microwave oven (convection+grill) in her neighbourhood and found Rahim’s deal for a 26 Liter LG. The asking price for a Rs.11,500 MRP microwave was Rs.7,800 in seconds. Shruti brought this down to Rs.7,500 before we made a visit. After inspecting and testing the machine at the workshop, and understanding the warranty process in detail, we haggled a little more and picked up the machine at Rs.7,000 even. We baked papads in it the same evening.
3. Signed up an AMC for two air conditioners: As part of my rental agreement, my landlord required that we sign up an annual maintenance contract for the 2T split AC in the living room and 1.5T window AC in the bedroom. This way he is sure his machine gets serviced (a compulsary activity in polluted Mumbai). I called Chaupaati to find technicians who offer AMC in my neighbourhood and got connected with five technicians. Within the next 10 minutes, I had spoken with each one of them, without making a single outbound call. Each one relentlessly redialled before they could describe their deal to me themselves. Each offered a slightly different rate and service package for the combo deal. The interesting discovery was that there are multiple AMC contracts - service AMC contracts (basic) and parts and spares AMC contracts that cover all replacements (comprehensive). A few hours later, I struck a deal with the landlord by e-mail that we would sign up a comprehensive AMC and he would pay the difference between comprehensive and basic. Everyone wins. The technician visited the same day, inspected the A.C.’s, signed the contract, picked up the cheque and scheduled the first service appointment for next weekend. The interesting part is that technicians on Chaupaati get a chance to specify all their service plans (about half a dozen in case of air conditioner repairs), complete with the pricing and description; something they cannot do in any phone yellow pages where they simply get one business listing for the service offered. They can get creative about their keyword selections so they show up in multiple categories, but nothing differentiates them from each other besides location. What made my day was that one of the technicians introduced himself as a technician calling from Chaupaati Bazaar!

Incidentally, Chaupaati completed a full year of operations (since first employee) last week. One year later, this was all in a weekend’s work…