As you can guess by the title, I am not a lover of PC World. Why? Because I am a computer enthusiast and computing is both a passion and a hobby. PC World stores are designed totally for the none-computer user and that is the segment of the population that they are aiming at with their TV adverts and in-store advertising.

I have personally had three bad experiences with shopping in PC World, have a friend who turned down a job there and another friend who bought a computer from the Lincoln branch.

My bad experiences:-

Bad Experience #1
My mother-in-law recently finished an introductory computer course and after much wringing of hands decided to bite the bullet and buy a PC. Because it was just before Christmas we decided that buy now pay later was a good option, so off we trotted to our local PC World. We chose a PC based on an AMD Duron 700Mhz, stopped a salesman and started asking questions about the system. He wasn't very helpful at all, in fact the only things he could tell us were quite clearly displayed by the side of the machine on a point-of-sale card. He couldn't tell us what speed the memory was, whether the graphics card was an ATI 128 or an ATI 128 Pro and what sound-card was in it. (The sound card bit was a trick question, as I had already checked the PC case and determined that it was using onboard sound). In fact all of the time that I'm asking about the machine, he was trying to sell my mother-in-law an extended warranty for her peace of mind. The impression he gave was that every major component in the tower WOULD fail just after the twelve months was up. He wasn't too happy when I said that she would save the money instead of buying an extended warranty, and that if anything did fail use the money to buy a replacement, which by then would either be bigger (hard drive), faster(processor) or better(graphics card).

The clincher, and incidentally the reason I dragged my in-laws out of the store, was when he told me that the operating system was stored on the hard drive in a seperate partition. When I asked why, I was informed that Microsoft didn't ALLOW pc system builders to distribute Windows on cd-rom anymore. I knew this was a blatant lie and told him so. Microsoft cannot stop system builders from supplying cd's with the operating system on BUT would prefer system builders to create dedicated backup cd's tailored to the individual machines. The reason PC World don't supply the software with their Advent machines is to save money/increase profit. I don't like being lied to so off we went to Tiny and bought a good machine there with a system restore cd that included Microsof Windows Millenium!

Bad Experience #2
About two weeks after the above, I happened to be in PC World again, looking for a new printer when I walked past a sign advertising a top of the range 1Ghz system. I looked at the sign closely and was amazed to read that it had a 56K BROADBAND modem. Anyone that knows about the internet, knows that Broadband refers to ADSL, Satellite cards or Cable modems. I asked a salesman whether it had any of the above, and typically he didn't know so went to fetch someone else who turned out to be the store manager. I explained what I was asking about and he admitted that it had a bog standard 56K V90 modem inside. Whule the point-of-sale card was not illegal per se, as there isn't any true definition of Broadband, I believe it was unethical and misleading the customer. I left the store, went next door to Staples and bought a printer from there, even though it was slightly more expensive (only £2 but it's the principal).

Bad Experience #3
Even though I should have known better, when I was building a new PC I went to PC World to buy some components because I'm very impatient and wanted my nice new PC as soon as possible and didn't want to wait for delivery from online stores. I was looking for 128Mb PC133 Ram, a decent graphics card but not necessarily the latest and a DVD-Rom drive. The memory was over 60% more expensive in the store than any of the online hardware stores at £149.99. The graphics cards were at least a third more expensive and the DVD-Rom drives also. Now I understand that they have overheads but that is way too much. At a time when a 128Mb stick of Kingston memory (one of the top brands) was £63 including VAT and delivery what excuse can PC World have?

Friend's bad experience #1
My friend went for a job at PC World as a customer service manager. During the interview he wasn't asked if he had any knowledge of computers, which he reasoned would be an integral part of the job. Instead the interviewer spent over half an hour explaining that it wasn't company policy to give cash refunds and that his job as customer service manager revolved around persuading disgruntled customers to either exchange the defective parts or accept credit notes. A cash refund was an absolute last resort. He was glad that he didn't get the job.

Friend's bad experience #2
Another friend was unfortunate enough to buy a PC from PC World, and after about two months the modem failed. As she had bought an extended warranty she rang the customer support line which cost her 50p per minute. They diagnosed the fault over the phone and told her that an engineer would call on the following Wednesday morning (she rang at 6pm on a Friday). After arranging a day off work, she waited for the engineer, who turned up at approximately 2.30, with a new motherboard! She explained that it was the modem that had failed, and as the engineer didn't have a modem with him, he would arrange for another engineer to call but it would take two weeks. She did get the modem replaced and as far as I know everything is ok but the service is terrible. Even after paying nearly three hundred pounds for an extended warranty, she still had to phone a premium rate phone number, the engineer was late, didn't have the right parts and what should have been a simple task took nearly three weeks to correct.

I know that there must be people out there who have had good experiences, but the people I talk to, who are also like me passionate about computers, all know someone who has had a bad experience. Don't go to PC World to buy a computer without first reading as much as possible about computers. The only items that are worth purchasing from PC World are printers and DVD's. Everything else is over-priced.