CRI听力: Home-Appliance Replacement Scheme Saves More

Appliance markets are offering numerous types of discounts on home appliances to attract customers before Spring Festival, but now with the old home appliances traded in, customers can get further discounts when purchasing the new ones.

Let's take a closer look with reporter Liu Min.

Reporter:

Before the Spring Festival, many electronics stores are offering big discount to attract customers. But the home-appliance replacement scheme further cut down the price. A manager is promoting refrigerators.

"The original price of this fridge is 9800 Yuan, and the discount price is 4999. Plus if you trade in with your old appliance, then we can give you a 300 yuan discount at 4699."

This home-appliance replacement scheme will continue till May this year.

Customers can get a 10 percent discount when trading in old ones on five items like TVs, computers, fridges, air conditioners, and washing machines. The qualified electronic manufacturers and recycling companies would collect old appliances at the customers door and give subsidy coupons for them to buy new ones. TVs and PCs bring the highest subsidies to customers of up to 400 Yuan, and washing machines are 250 Yuan.

Even though the subsidies on home appliances are the same, appliance manufacturers are playing different cards to win more customers. Yuan Honggang is the sales manager from Hair Group.

"We have an integrated system including manufacture, sales, and logistics as well as maintenance services. In the trade-in program, our service can save three days of time for our customers to get their new products back home."

Some brands like Gree claims that they can provide one-stop service for customers.

Manager Zhao Feng.

"When we bid for the home-appliance replacement scheme in 2009, our company got double certificates. We have qualifications to both sell our products and collect the old ones from the market. Customers just need to dial our phone number, and then we will bring the new product to install it at their home, and then carry the old one back at the same time."

The trade-in scheme allows customers to use any one item to trade for other four appliances. For example, customers can trade in a PC with an old fridge.
With such policies, electric appliance sales are skyrocketing.

A sales manager from Tsinghua Tongfang Technology Company is very satisfied with their sales record.

"In the past, our store can only sell 200 laptops per month. Now we can sell 300 per month. One third of total sales is from the trade-in program. This policy indeed increased our business."

Before Spring Festival, the home-appliance replacement scheme may save customers money when purchasing new ones.

For China Drive, I'm Liu Min.

Talking Points:
1. In order to get the 10% subsidy in purchasing the new appliances, some speculators buy in a huge amount of old appliances and trade in with new ones. Some sellers also encourage customers who don't have any old home appliances to buy an old one from the second hand market and then trade in new ones.

2.Most of the old appliances are totally broken but no accessories and parts lost. An old TV only costs 50 yuan while the highest subsidy for a new TV is 400 yuan. (take the advantage of the loophole of a policy, the new for old subsidy doesn't appear the same for every city in the country, thus, creating room for speculation.) Beijing asks buyers to provide ID card info before enjoying the subsidy, solves part of the problem. Another problem i encountered when purchasing a brand new washing machine, i've got an old machine sitting in my home waiting to be dumped, i bought a new one in Gome, saleslady says you need to wait at least a months to get someone take your old machine away. Then, i thought, A. i don't want to wait, the old machine took too much room, B it;s a waste of time to get all the documents printed, so eventually, i just let the garbage collector take it downstairs for 100 yuan.

3.Now there are 9 provinces carrying out this home-appliance replacement scheme. Zhejiang province is one of them. Recently some speculators buy in lots of home appliances and and trade in to get new ones, then they resell the new ones to other provinces where such trade-in policy was not implemented. Such speculation could cause price increase in the local home appliances market.