PC World, was Re: [Gllug] SCO Stuff

[Christopher Hunter]

On Sunday 08 Feb 2004 12:45 pm, Alistair Mann wrote:

> I was recently in PC Worlds at Staples Corner, Tottenham Hale and Romford
> looking for networking gear.
>
> Staples Corner had very, very little stock on show except for Belkin, so I
> moved on. Tottenham Hale had the Netgear PCMCIA 802.11g on sale at 40 quid,
> and PCI 802.11b's on sale at 70 quid as well having all their stock mixed
> up on the shelves. I conclude from this that PC World have no inkling of
> the true value of what they are selling. Romford PCW was stocked up tidily;
> the pricing was as idiotic as at TH, so I guess the prices are ordained in
> on high, but at least it had at least one of everything (and suspicioulsy
> many goods with "previously returned" stickers on them).
>
> I also noticed that the ink cartiridges I was after were priced comparably
> to what I had paid recently through mail order.
>
> I feel not at all troubled about having visited the place!

Fair enough, but having just bought a PCMCIA 802.11g card for <£27 (DABS, 
delivered to my door), you can surely see that not only do they not 
understand the relative values of what they're trying to sell, but they're 
wildly overpriced too.

In common with many retail outlets, they pay their staff a pittance, provide 
little or no training, and demand long hours.  This results in a rapid 
turnover of poorly motivated, ignorant staff.  The equipment they sell is 
largely overpriced rubbish - ever tried a "Packard Bell" computer?  

They have a penchant for selling returned equipment as "new" - a colleague of 
mine had to buy a laptop from them last year, and found that the 30 Gb HDD 
had 26 Gb used, with personal documents, emails, webcache files and so on 
from its previous owner!   (His Insurance company would only allow him to buy 
his replacement laptop there - he's since changed his insurance company).

The previous owner (who, it transpired had returned the thing as "faulty") was 
a well-known East London female Labour MP, and some of the contents of the 
HDD proved very interesting to folks at certain satirical magazines!  It had 
been returned because it was infected with a variant of the "blaster" 
virus....

PC World get the computer retail industry a bad name!

Chris

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