One guy acting strangely is a nut. A bunch of people doing the same thing is called a church. - Shawn Mahaney
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Are you being served?
WITH THE credit crunch hitting hard, you'd have thought retailers would be biting your hand off to sell a laptop. Not so with PC World in Surrey. The INQ was forced to demand that somebody sold us a notebook.
Having to wait around 20 minutes for a sales assistant to arrive, you might have thought the INQ would simply have taken its custom elsewhere. Unfortunately, our hands were tied.
We'd been given an insurance replacement card for a lost laptop which was only valid in PC World or Currys. Our first choice would have been Tesco, of course.
Shortly before Xmas, Tesco was selling a perfectly serviceable Acer laptop for £122.50 (inc VAT) which was exactly half price. Checking online this offer seems to have been very temporary.
There was one positive aspect to visiting PC World, however. Having selected an Advent 4211c netbook for £274.02, a freelance consultant in PC World pointed out that the Samsung NC 10 was a better choice.
That's because the Samsung claims a battery life of 7.5 hours rather than around three hours with the Advent. Given this INQ hack's itinerant nature, the longer battery life was worth the extra shillings.
A shame really because the Advent features the ability to accept an embedded SIM and the INQ would have liked to test out that facility. We'll just have to stick with out trusty 3 broadband dongle for now. µ
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"a lost lappy"? and so close around Crimbo? You lot should work for the Home Office! Wait until that M. Ballard works your case! No. Really. Tony, did you check the Wheatsheaf? It is probably at this very minute, snook beneath the cushions down the back of the sofa. Itinerant... Indeed!
How does that work, then? Is there some cosy deal between the insurance company and those retailers, so they get the business and offer some kind of kickback to the insurance company? Why aren't you allowed to get a suitable replacement from wherever you like? Particularly if you can source an equivalent model at lower cost, or spend the same money on something newer and better?
I stand in a que at Tesco's for 20min to watch it take three CA's to workout how search the product that doesn't scan.
Does anyone belive that Tesco's will be any better once they've killed off the competition? It will be upto the small indies to show us how customer service should be.
As it stands these days the last remaining independant computer shops in my area that PC World has yet to kill off are all exceptionaly unwilling to interract with humans let alone try and sell something.
The look of distane as I look through their out dated ranges is no worse than the trying to find a sales person who knows what they're talking about in PC World.
Next time a review would be more appreciated...
I was at my local PC World branch (Worcester) on Monday and I had an even worse experience than the author of this article.
I was shopping for a new laptop and found a nice one with £200 off. After asking a passing sales assistant I was told they were very busy and I would have to put my name down on a list of people waiting to be served.
After a 15 – 20 minute wait a sales assistant finally came and started to do his sales speech about the laptop. He then decided it would be a good idea to go and check if the laptop was actually in stock.
It wasn’t.
Why couldn’t the guy with the list (who I told I was interested in that particular laptop) tell me that it was out of stock instead of making me wait for ages?!
I will never shop there again!
Was buying a printer cartridge in PC World recently and noticed 'we match any price' posters.
Given that 1GB of system memory was £39, I decided to ask the cashier if the price match was true.
"No chance. Only a handful of products where you see the sign. I wouldn't buy this stuff. Last thing I got was a power supply and I got that from YOYOTech in Tottenham Court Road. They're well cheap and know what they're talking about".
Nuff said.
why would you shop at tesco for a laptop. tesco should be boycotted for everything except beans. Do you really want to support them for pc products? imagine having to wait that 20-30mins for someone to finally turn up and say "pc? I'm a butcher".
Notice PC Magazine from ZD Stopped Printing,This Month,Forever, for Press: that Serious Stoppage, NOT PC World.
In Last issue, Dell offered Desktop Vista Ultimate 64 Warrenteed for less than 2 thousies. However Warrentee was bit )( Blurred. Break Em Back, Shek Em Back, Its Rough & Tumble Sissors Fight.
Drashek
How about letting us know how you get on with the NC10, I just bought one myself and am trying to plum up courage to install Ubuntu on it - some googlng shows that this is a not entirely easy process, at least not for the inexperienced Linux user.
The problem is interesting really, during my university years I worked as a Technincan in PCWorld and they always ran our store with the very minimum of staff... it was strange because the store is quite big and I'm pretty sure gamestop staff their stores better.
The heart of the problem though is that everything PCWORLD sells requires some sort of contact with the customer. For instance buying a web cam will involve a customer dragging a sales person away from the laptops and to selling some £30 webcam - this happens for everything from ink to CD's.
If they just sold PC's you'd probaly have a ton of staff!
Mike
I had a similar experience in the Fulham store. I had to get a laptop on short notice but could I ???
PC world staff were in hiding, I waited 25 minutes before having to track down someone to help, this was in an empty store (no wonder!).
I finally got a laptop but was told I had to hand over my address and telephone details, I refused to divulge said details and the assistant (turned ou tto be the manager) said that they were unable to sell me the laptop without my address and telephone number
I refused a second time and after 5 minutes of sparing he relented and sold me the laptop.
People who go to PCWorld are the uninformed or the desperate, I was the later.