It’s two-nil to PB Tech in the home-and-away online shopping games.
But you know the rules – let’s not talk about the war.
Instead, let’s talk about buying phones online. The fast decline of my old phone started when I pried off the back cover to do some surgery with blunt instruments.
A few weeks later, the sim card slot no longer slid out, and my attempts to wrangle it back into shape resulted in a banana-shaped back cover. Go figure.
With the upcoming escape to Oz, my daughter suggested the inevitable had hit the fan, and it needed replacing.
After poring over specs and costs etc at gsmarena.com, I settled on a Redmi 9 ( no “Note”) , cheap at Dick Smiths.
I bought that online on June 15, thinking that even if it was being imported from Australia, it would arrive in time.
Whereabouts Unknown
Not. When I hadn’t heard, or received, anything a week later, I looked up the tracking. It was nowhere to be found.
Since Dick Smith’s is now 100% online, and one doesn’t get to talk ( even by text chat! ) to a real person, a busyness of emails followed.
They were “opening an investigation”, which may take “up to 10 working days”. After repeating myself a few times, I think it dawned on them that what I wanted was a phone, and not an investigation. Thank you.
They did eventually refund the money, leaving me to scramble about again.
I found a Redmi Note 9T at PB Tech.
They had delivered within two days an SD card I bought soon after the Dick Smith’s Redmi buy.
And so it was with the phone, which arrived less than 24 hours after I’d ordered it.
So here’s to PB Tech, which delivers stuff pronto with no palaver.
Unlike some other outlets. Which suspicious minds might think advertise products knowing that their delivery tracking is broken, and they don’t have to stocks to meet demand.