The Founding Principles of Vella Technology.

There are many things that you need to do in order to start a business that has any chance of success in today’s current financial climate.  There are significant start-up costs and detailed systems must be put in place for keeping records of every transaction.  The whole thing is a rewarding adventure from having a business plan approved and opening a business bank account to satisfying your first paying customer.  However, even with the most perfect set-up there is a determining factor that will contribute largely to whether a business will succeed or fail.  This factor is something that is developed before opening a business banking account is even thought of,  but what could it be that is so important and developed so early?  What I am talking about is of course a concept, an idea, a belief.

Vella Technology (before any name was given to it) was created at idea level in partnership between two people who like computers.  Computers are our hobbies.  It is not as if we have had nothing to do with them in our spare time and then have chose to embrace them due to some kind of business potential.  Instead quite the opposite is true.  Over a number of years we have built our own computers, built them for friends and helped rectify a number of computing solutions.  Along the way it has come to our attention just how much the large popular computing businesses take advantage of their customers.

High street shops are over-charging customers for mass produced computers with poor components and little room to upgrade the computer at a later date.  It is unfortunately the nature of computing technology that things move quickly.  Depending on what you use your PC for it is quite normal that a top of the range PC today may be mid-range in a year’s time and low range in two years time.  This is a problem that hits PC gamers particularly hard, but affect all PC users.  High-street stores are aware of this and they operate on the basis that a customer may well replace their entire PC system when it becomes low-range and has fallen behind the times.  Essentially this means a customer may be looking at purchasing a machine for £700 and then buying a completely new one in 2-3 years time.  It is a situation that the user is forced into buy the retailer due to the fact that a PC should be “upgradeable” and yet the high street machines are usually not.  If a PC is built correctly then as technology advances and newer/better PC’s are created and sold, the old PC should be able to be “upgraded” with additional hardware in order to make it as good as the newer PC’s.  The cost of doing this is far less than buying a new system as it is likely that not all of the components within the PC are going to be replaced, just a selected couple (wherever the market has advanced).

A PC user should be able to pay £700 for a new PC and then spend £150 in a couple of years rather than buy a new system and spend £700 again.  PC manufacturers are selling PC’s that are purposefully difficult and costly to upgrade in order to force the customer to purchase an entirely new system when thier old system no longer suites there requirements.  As PC enthusiasts this upsets us.  A further thing that upsets us is the quality of components that are usually used within the mass produced machines that high street stores sell.  When buying a PC all that the customer is presented with is the specifications list.  There can be a great deal of difference between components of different quality despite appearing to have the same specification.  A prime example of this is usually found with RAM (memory).   The quality of RAM on a mass produced machine from a high street store will not be good.  They use the cheapest components they can source and even though the specification of 2GB may be the same with higher quality components the lower quality RAM will have greater failure rates as well as running at lower speeds ultimately effecting both the performance  and reliability of the PC.  This is an attitude taken by most mass manufacturers and retailers and is something we find upsetting as we believe all PC’s should use quality components to ensure that they are running at their optimum.

As you can see, in terms of raw PC sales there are many areas where customers are taken for granted by popular retailers, but this is not where the exploitation ends.  Most retailers offer certain post-sale services for astronomical prices.  Many new PC owners would be unsure as to how to set up their new PC or how to get online.  Asking high-street retailers about a set up and delivery service is in many cases a bit like asking just exactly how much they are willing to take for doing very little.  An unsure customer should be provided with reassurance, advice and if required a cheap method for delivery and set up of their new PC so that they are raring to go.  It seems unreasonable to take advantage of a novice PC buyer in this situation, especially as they have just parted with a large amount of money for the system itself.

Leading on from the astronomical cost of getting somebody into the customer’s home to help with set-up with a new PC is the price of actually managing to get any kind of support with a computing problem.  Obviously if the problem is hardware based then it is possible that any damage or fault may be covered by warranty or insurance.  The problem is that many computing issues are not hardware related.  The charge of getting an “IT expert” to listen to or look at any issue you may be having seems unreasonable all round.  Many “IT experts” offer a call-out service, but the customer can then be expected to pay a call out fee plus a high hourly rate.  This is something else that upsets us and appears exploitive of the customer.  Why should the customer be forced to pay an hourly rate to somebody who is doing a job that could take any amount of time? In this situation the customer has no way of checking if the serviceman is performing efficiently or drawing the process out in order to get an extra hours pay.  We don’t believe it is a position that anybody with a Computing issue should be put in.

Vella Technology was created as an alternative to everything we felt was wrong in the market.  As computing enthusiasts we wanted to build the business that we would have liked to have dealt with, offering low prices, high quality and a good relationship with its customers across the board.  As a result we aim to maintain a number of key principles:

• To sell PC’s that use high-quality components and are not mass-produced.
• To sell PC’s at reasonable prices despite the high quality.
• To offer free delivery and set-up within the Essex area and affordable alternatives to those further away.
• To offer cheap call-out services at low fixed prices so that the customer knows the final cost prior to agreeing to any work.
• To adopt a friendly and helpful attitude towards customers.
• To respond to any contact from customers promptly and efficiently.