Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not a fan of PC World. In fact, I strongly dislike PC World.
Why, you may ask? Well, here’s why.
- Whenever you take a PC in to be repaired at PC World, they will invariably dump their purple and orange bloatware on your machine (along with a few adverts) under the pretence of being a ‘performance test application’.
- As they connect your machine to a different monitor, it occasionally comes out of it thinking it’s got two screens and letting the cursor veer off into non-existence.
- Contrary to what their advertisements would have you think, 80gB is not ‘massive’ by today’s standards. True, 80gB is a respectable amount, and massive in comparison to the 20gB disks you used to get a few years ago, but massive is more like 500gB (or two such disks in a RAID array, making 1tB). (Oh yes, and don’t forget the fake hard disk capacity counting system.)
- Don’t be fooled by the Tech Guys service – you’d be much better off asking your technically-minded friend from down the road to do it, as he/she will probably provide a friendly, reliable and informal service, is less likely to patronise you, and will almost definitely do it for a fraction of the price PC World charge (if they ask for a fee at all).
- They seem to have some kind of vendetta against Linux. They won’t sell any out-of-the-box Linux-compatible WLAN cards, and refuse to repair hardware if Linux is installed on it (presumably because they can’t put their bloatware on it).
- They still list items on their website that have been discontinued.
- Their staff feel undervalued – you can just see from their facial expressions when they serve you.
- The only machines on which Windows isn’t installed are the Macs. But can we not have some kind of option? Can’t we opt out of the Microsoft tax?
Tags: don't be stupid, I hate PC World, Linux, pedantry, retail, shops, Windows
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“Their staff feel undervalued – you can just see from their facial expressions when they serve you.”
The staff feel undervalued, eh? Perhaps that’s because they are almost all incompetent and are fundamentally without value.
Around 11 years ago (when I was but a teenager), I stopped off at PC World to hand in an application form. While I was there I was able to witness – for an entire 30 minutes – something truly stupid.
In the soundcard section there stood a customer and a sales assistant. They were looking at two similar soundblaster (live) cards. One was a bog-standard SB Live and the other was an SB Live Gold. The SB Live Gold, was of course, more expensive – but neither the customer or the sales assistant could figure out what the differences were between the two products. They debated this for 30 minutes.Can you guess what the difference might be?
Well, the SB Live Gold had GOLD audio contacts, something clearly visible on the picture on the front of the box. The fact that the assistant didn’t know it was bad enough, but the fact that they missed an enormous visual clue was enough to make me realise what idiots they employ, and what retards shop there.
Now, 11 years on, I know many of the people who work at my local PC World. These are people with very little PC experience (have only had a PC for a couple of years), who regularly require my help to clean spyware, virii, etc, from their PCs, and who can’t operate a PVR without calling me up in a state of confusion.
Incidentally, I never did get that job at PC World, all those years ago. Frankly, I’m glad.
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Teenagers across the nation are making mental notes not to work at PC World. Thanks, Jubal.
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