PC World problems - inept staff

PC World!!!!! Grief what a company! No customer Service that's for sure. They came to replace a CD drive on my Desktop Ok my computer is old but it does for me and works. That was the start of it. they put a DVD drive in and broke a USB port and in doing so disabled the A drive and told me I had to buy another version of XP as there was nothing on the recovery disks or they were damaged! Went on about leaving 'cause they now have to deliver white goods as well as being a tech guy! When he left I went into DOS and enabled the drive and it all worked! Another "engineer" turned up with 2 wrong parts. It was booked in for a service and was taken away by courier. That was nearly six weeks ago!!!! After 9 phone calls to them they told me the computer was dead on arrival!!!!! Wrong I had downloaded stuff to my external hard drive the morning of pick up. Then they said it needed a new CPU and Motherboard! No mention of the drive! One girl told me it was repaired and would be returned. She must have been a ghost 'cause they can't find out who she was. Probably the cleaner! Well it came back last night by courier. No paper work. The first thing was the case was different. Ok so I thought they couldn't fix my original and replaced it. Wrong! I had to install it and the power section was all loose with screws missing. Couldn't get the keyboard working then noticed they had blanked out the USB ports so had to ease them out and low and behold behing one was the Keyboard port! Plugged that in, worked. Then the 2 ports on the front, which is one of the original reasons it went in for, aren't working. Guess what Monday the engineer is coming back!!!!! Where's my oringinal case!!!! Yet another phone call.

The other thing the staff do in these type of place is to ask "can we have your name and address", (even if you pay cash) when I questioned why they said "it is for the guarantee" to which my response was "all I need for the guarantee is proof of purchase which is the receipt that come out of the till" (or if I was to pay by card, the card statement) needless to say the reason they want your details is to sell them to marketing companies, which is actually illegal under the data protection act....

Good one, PC. The goods ought to be good for the purpose they were sold for for 6 years under consumer law irrespective of the "guarantee" or warranty. You have a great case here. Be sure to stick it to Browett.

Copy of letter sent to PC WORLD - I have had no reply - I guess you know what to do when you are next thinking of buying something from them.....


John Browett
CEO
DSG Retail
Dixons House
Maylands Avenue
Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire
HP2 7TG

Dear Mr Browett,

I bought an HP laptop from PC World Medway a while back. In less than a year the mouse pad had stopped working. PC world fixed it, but it went wrong again within a few months. They then told me that repairs were only valid for 3 months so it was tough luck, despite the fact that the item was not fit for sale in the first place. This loophole makes it possible for you to absolve yourself from responsibility for shoddy goods. I am not a heavy user of the mouse pad and have an 8 year old Dell laptop in perfectly good working order, so there is no excuse for this.

I have attempted to contact you via your blog, but nobody replies. The store manager at Medway promised to get me a reply within a week. He did not. I have cancelled my business contract with you and have already now commenced a public campaign to expose this flagrant breach of consumer law and the poor service and wonder if you have any comment. I am so annoyed about this that I will make sure that it will be the worst decision not to honour a customer service request that you ever made.

Yours sincerely

Peter Cook

It feels to me that people at these company maybe training assistants more on selling that item, getting the sale, ticking those boxes so their manager will give them a pat on the back and say they can keep their job for another day, than training them on advising the customer correctly. It seems they might be more interested in selling customers the items they want, raver than the customer walking out with the products they need. Yes, they might now be having new stores and all that to get more money from out of our pockets. But the store is no better than the assistants and company that walks its floors. If you don't like them, go elsewhere.

PC World Sales Pressure
Just bought a laptop at PCW - what a terrible experience. Only wanted the laptop, a bag and MS Office but the salesman kept on about Norton and support to the point where I accused him of inertia selling. This was after he said to take out the support but then to cancel it. What a way to get the boxes ticked. I am sorry to say that my daughter had the very same experience when she recently bought a netbook for her daughter. She was so pressured that she bought Norton and the support but when she cancelled the support she discovered that they direct debiting her for two levels. She is currently trying to get back her money for the extra support she didn't know they had assigned to her. Surely they can't go on like this.

I bought an expensive printer on line from PC World and believed the delivery would take 3-4 days. However, DHL were the carriers and did not deliver or lost my order, after contacting PC World they cancelled my order, but said I would have to wait for the return of my money until they had received the printer from DHL. I said as my order has been lost or whatever, it may even have been stolen by the someone at DHL; PC World said yes, but I would still have to wait until this was confirmed and agreed I may have to wait weeks for a refund. DHL did not respond to initial email and PC World advisors are of little help and keep referring to company policy, with hardly a care for the paying customer.

Result...... PC World on-line + DHL= DISASTER

I was ready to punch a member of staff in PC World, they mis-sold me a wireless router, when I took it back they wouldn't refund as it wasn't faulty, they could rectify the problem but it would cost me £20 (I'd already spent £60 on the router).

Their customer service is terrible and yes their staff are inept!

We went to PC world in Cambridge and walked out after 40 minutes. 37 minutes was spent stood waiting on them. During this time we had been tossed between three members of staff.

If you are looking for a good service then you must avoid PC World at all costs! Their customer relations are three below crap.

I went into a shop once a couple of years back with £900 in cash in my hand and asked for a laptop I had picked the day before, the sales guy spent nearly an hour trying to gode me into keeping the cash and sighning up for a 2 year credit agreement, I ended up shouting at him and he wouldnt give up,I told him I have the cash here and I want to pay now, after I paid the checkout girl for the laptop he tried to get me to take master cover for £299 for a year, I had to really lose it before he went out back to the store and got my computer out for me.
Only thinking about his commision payment and his boss grunting sales targets to him...

I recently bought a new laptop from pc world only to find its reconditioned. I rejected it immediately and two weeks later I still have not got my money back. luckily I paid with my credit card and they are chasing for a refund. I will not be buying anything else from them and would recommend anyone else whos thinking about it to check out the hp direct sales sites etc. where bargains can be had with staff who are helpful and honest..

I agree. It does seem that PC World staff are few and after you have struggled to find one, you find that they are incompetent. I recently purchased a few gadgets from them, the sales person was unhelpful and uninterested as he was not even listening, repeatedly put together the wrong items in the package. I got home to find some of the goods were not in their boxes. I travelled 15 miles back to the store at Middleway Birmingham, found the sales person, he laughed and said it was an 'unfortunate oversight'. The store manager was equally as arrogant.

PC world made my life hell, I wanted to get credit for a laptop and did but they got my details mixed up with my mams and she got the bill to her house, when I told pc world they said it was fraud and were going to call the police now after 6 months its sorted out what a mess of a company
s cole

I went to PC World to return a product I had bought earlier - no one assisted me in my purchase at the time, and I ended up buying the wrong thing. I went to the shop assistant, who told me that I needed to go to the PC repairs section, as they would have to test the product to check it was still working. There were already three people there, and not one staff member at the desk. After 25 minutes of waiting, only one person had been served. Eventually I went back to the sales assistant and demanded that she take the product back herself and give me a refund, which she finally did. Won't be going back!

Hmmmm ... when I read this kind of thread I get to feel a little guilty. Y'see, I used to poach PC World techies - and I wasn't alone.

The problem is that that PC world pay their staff utter peanuts ... and treat then like morons to boot. Naturally, being a highly visible organisation, they get all sorts of newbies looking for jobs, most of them several buttons short of a full tunic. On the principle that, if you throw enough manure at a wall, some of it will stick, a few bright ones walk in as well. They were my target.

I got one kid by accident while I was working as an IT manager for one of the big oil companies in Aberdeen. I'd just popped in for one of those stupid little things that you don't have in stock, your stores will take an age to get to you and the boss is screaming for his PC - and there was this spotty kid offering to help.

It turned out that not only did he know exactly where the part was (a 3Com 3C509 NIC if you're really interested) but also knew enough to ask me if I had a flexi drop cable as well. I got talking to him and found out that he was being paid £8k - this was back in '96. I needed a hardware techie so offered him £13k to come and work for me there and then. He took my arm off.

He started a week later and never looked back. He's now a network manager in his own right so don't blame the kids in the store. It's the mindless money-grubbing company culture they work for, that hires chimps and then fails to train 'em .. and prats like me who then cherry pick the good ones. ;-)

I bought a laptop from PC World in April. I needed it to run a specific software programme for my work and the ones on the shelf didn't seem to meet the necessary spec. Someone suggested I ask in the business centre. Helpful advisor found an appropriate laptop, and didn't explain to me that if you buy through the business centre you give up all your consumer rights under the Sale of Goods Act! Eight weeks later, the hard disc died. Manufacturer's helpline diagnosed this, but said if I wanted to try to get some of my data off before they swapped it, to try in-store. Helpful tech guy agreed to try to get data back and stated categorically that PCWorld would then send it to the manufacturer for repair. I'm now six weeks further on. No laptop, and it appears that it has been sent to PCWorld's tech repair centre, not the manufacturer, despite being repeatedly told that I cant have a refund or a replacement computer because my guarantee is only with the manufacturer, because of the 'business sales' thing. Manager of the local business centre in Portsmouth was completely unhelpful, basically told me it served my right for not taking out extra warranty. I think they should refund or replace my laptop immediately as a goodwill gesture if nothing else, but I dont know how to get any further. I recommend you dont buy anything through PCWorld Business without thinking very hard first. I know I will never buy anything else from them again. Meanwhile, if anyone has any good ideas how I can get up and running again, I'd be grateful

Matthew Ward (response)

New Laptops don't come with 56k modems. This a manufacturer decision and nothinf to do with PC World. You DO NOT need a wireless router to go on the internet just an external modem. Laptops are never particularly good for gaming because of the constrictions of fitting all of the hardware into such a small case. To get a laptop capable of running high graphics games you would expect to spend thousands. As for the iTunes issue that will be sorted out by apple when they update there software.

My experiences of buying a computer from PC World have been so bad I want to help prevent anybody else from having to go through the same nightmare.

PC World sold me a computer knowing that it would not work for the purposes I bought it. Just two days later, they now refuse to give me a refund and threatened to throw me out of the store when I dared ask for my money back!

I paid £800 for a laptop, accessories and software which I later found were incompatible when used together. At no time during purchase did the PC World advisor tell me of the incompatibility issues - he was simply focused on making a sale and selling expensive help line services.

It seems that there are several things PC World doesn’t want you to know about the computers it sells:

- They don’t play 9 out of 10 games
- They don’t let you play music on iTunes
- They won’t let you go on the Web without a wireless router

All these problems are down to PC World selling computers running Windows Vista (the new standard operating system) without warning customers that their new PCs will be virtually useless when they get them home!

Thousands of other people are almost certain to be experiencing the same PC World nightmare!

PC World is fine if you're confident enough about computers to NEVER have to consult them again. I bought my computer from them and got an absolute bargain. About £500 cheaper than anywhere else. I know what I'm doing so if I were unlucky enough to have problems there's no way I'd take it back to the store unless it was a manufacturer fault.

Basically if you want a computer and you have little knowledge of them you're better sticking to an independent dealer who can give you professional advice.

To "I used to work at PC World".

If you think Firefox is a machine and you used to work at PC World, I shall be quickly moving whatever business I may have had in the past with them, well away from that monopolistic institution. Clearly, if that is the advice you gave customers it's little wonder that they end up dissatisfied.