This is issued in the public interest who go to these retail outlets to save some of their hard earned money and come out as a slaughtered goat. this is not only with context with the mobile store but all those huge chains like spice hot spot, reliance and big bazaar. I being a partly tech savvy purchase a mobile at least twice a year for myself and if include the counting of my family then it is easily 4 mobiles a year. I have visited every store and writing down my experience from it in points:
1)the price is most costly and they offer a maximum bargain of not more than rs.100 even for a 24k set.
unlike a local store like nokia priority offer a cheaper price and bargain can go down to around 500-600 along with a free gift that comes with the set.
2)schemes which comes by mobile company like nokia/samsung are often very late or never arrives at all
3)poor schemes are here and if you are a nokia or a blackberry customer then they will nt entertain you. they will give a scratch card which will bring you a cutlery set or an unpaid thailand vacation which is again a fraud which mostly is not given by the store but is to be sent to some place to claim it so that they can have your data base.
4)they will insist on you buying the set which they want to sell not the one you want to buy
5) ask for bargain they will show you the a price on their system and show there inability while a neighborhood store will do it.
6)instances have been found (referring to several posts made in mouthshut about this) they have given used cell phones as new sets.don’t be a fool when he opens a seal of mobile box in front of you as they have many duplicate hologram seals given by the company itself.
7)the staff is also impolite as they are doing a favor selling you a sell at a premium price, i went there once to buy a nokia 5230 set the salesman says nobody buys the cell phone as its a big flop and told me to buy some micromax or a lg set, irrespect of the fact nokia 5230 is now among the largest seller in its class..
8)they are so much interested in selling sets like fly/micromax and these local mobile that in front of me a customer came to buy a 3g set for video calling he showed him a 3g cell of a local without a front camera, when he asked how will he do the video calling then he told that you can do it putting the cell infront of the mirror.
then you will say what are the options, i will recommend you to go for local store or some famous store of your locality, try out websites like flipkart which now offers you cash on delivery option.