Depends on the branch IME. Nottingham shitty centre branch, horrible attitude from the ‘expert’, I walked out.
The Daybrook branch was a completely different experience, within 10 minutes I’d bought the laptop I was after, the assistant seemed keen enough but without going over the top, tried a little upselling but gave up when I said no thanks.
And why wouldn’t you do a bit of research before buying a highish ticket item? Shirley the last place you will get impartial advice is a place that wants to sell you something?

i’ve never had a problem with them, but i may need to buy a chromecast in the near future so may visit
if they try sell my antivirus or backup i’m going to pull out some ultimate warrior wrestling moves on them!

someone find me an appropriate ultimate warrior gif lol

This thread not filling me with joy – Off to PC World in Inverness in the morning to pick up cheap laptop and printer for my mother. I would normally order online but it would arrive after I have left and I want to set it up and give her a few lessons so it’ll have to be a store visit.

Will ponder if I’m going to go for the polite&firm, the death stare or the roll around in stinky crap beforehand and act a bit mental approach to speed the inevitable hassle along.

To return to this thread I did go into PC world today.

On seeing I was after a laptop the little lad on the collection desk said I needed to speak to a Sales consultant before he could hand it over.

The sales consultant started with a “Good afternoon – I’m afraid I have a little problem; we have only got one of the laptop you want in stock and we have already performed a………..’. I cut him off, explained to him what I had already read on the internet about this latest little scam, that it would start at £35, if I made a fuss he could drop it too £25 and if I hung out he was empowered to drop it to £10. Calmly explained I didn’t want it and I was going to buy it for the ticket price. I did fib a little at this point that I was going to put linux on it so it was all useless to me anyway. Quite surprised that he was so surprised but he didn’t bother with any more waffle and toddled off for the manager who gave me a few dirty looks across the store and my little mate came back with an affirmative to having the fee removed completely. It took the manager to come and authorise on the computer and it took him 20 minutes to bother to come and do it. The authorisation had to happen 3 times as the price dropped from £35 to £25 to £10 to removed so these are obviously the 3 price points. Whilst waiting I wandered around a bit and heard 3 different sales lads explaining in very clunky terms why 3 different sets of customers needed to spend this extra £35. I felt guilty not butting in but didn’t have the energy.

To the credit of my little sales dude he did have a cheeky grin when he said ‘probably don’t need to talk to you about extended warranties, anti virus or software bundles do I?’

The whole experience of going in the place did make me feel a bit dirty though – don’t plan on returning in a hurry.

btw they had to give me a laptop with the recovery usb as it appears they have done it to all of them.

thats shocking

Bought a MacBook Pro from PC World a couple months back and got treated really well, suspect it was due to them having an paid by Apple employee dedicated to the Apple section and then the sale itself was handled by the PCW business team even thou I was buying it myself and have to say they knew their stuff, were super nice and didn’t try to sell me any extra’s. Then again I probably reek of Alpha Geek.

Also was in another nearby PCW branch just before Xmas as they still had Chromecasts in stock and had a right laugh with the lad on the till outdoing each other with Minion impressions.

On that Reddit link there is a contribution from an ex Dixons person. He paints it in a slightly different light, which I kind of accept. 5-6 years ago they were offering this setup service, but you had to come back 24/48hrs later to collect, which is a big barrier for many as they’d want to take it home there and then. Seems they are now just cutting out that big barrier by having some of the computers ‘set up’ beforehand. Problem is, it appears no one would know without doing a visual stock check, how many units are boxed/untouched or opened/setup. The emphasis is clearly on selling the pre set up computers. The retailer would probably argue they are responding to a demand (from people like my Mum).

Former Dixons Retail colleague here, so If I may offer an explanation (not an excuse)…….It’s not done entirely in bad faith, it’s done in the interests of time saving and unrealistic expectations on all staff over Peak Season.
They get hundreds of laptops in at Christmas. Sales people (including new Christmas staff) are unreasonably expected to sell almost every single one of these with some kind of extra shit (whether that be “product support”, a set up or just some Knowhow Cloud bollocks).
So to save time, many (it was a third last year, I imagine it’s higher this year) of these are pre set up to save the “less competent” customer time and ensure the laptop is “user ready” when opened on Christmas Day.
This, of course, means that the rare people who are technologically competent and are simply after buying a laptop and getting the **** away with the least amount of hassle will take the small amount of unopened laptops that the store has. So, once those are gone all that’s left are the pre-setup ones…whose condition is not changed on the stock file, causing so many **** headaches with reserve and collect …I always thought it was a bad idea (especially if the laptop already has a recovery partition), but I also understood why they feel they need to do it. They make next to nothing on laptops at Christmas (hell, they make next to nothing on them all year) because of the massive discounts so they need extras on the sale.
Of course the problem is, once you’ve done a set up, a laptop is no longer “unopened” and work has been done on it…meaning to sell it without charging for setup (and the USB stick) means time has been wasted.
It’s a terrible system and I don’t know who actually thinks it’s a good idea in store, but it’s direct from head office and the managers generally tell new staff that “the laptop needs this set up doing, so if we do it beforehand then we save the customer time” which is obviously bollocks. I often wondered how many staff knew they were lying to customers and how many were too ignorant to know any better or question it (and I’m also not sure which is worse).

Surely trading standards need to jump on this? PCWorld are forcing additional sales on their customers.

I’ve bought 2 recently for family members from the Chatham branch – one was simple, but the other tried to tell me that I should have windows 8 set up by them for £25 – when I told the guy that was a total piss take they had great difficulties in finding the laptop I’d pre ordered without a pre set up version of windows.

yep that all sounds like my experience the other day, it is described as something you ‘need’ rather than an optional extra which you may or may not want. I am not a technical numpty, but then again I am not completely savvy when it comes to the world of laptops this being the second one I’ve ever bought. I imagine they are getting a lot of the older shoppers saying yes to this because they think they have to. Its not really on.

(still haven’t actually got round to it yet, so I hope I don’t have any actual issues with the machine….)

This must be a new thing. I bought a small laptop from them a couple of months ago. Very helpful chap offering good advice and guidance on what I needed. The only strange thing was the lack of stock – massive warehouse with nothing in it except what’s on display. We ended up going to Curry’s three doors down!

Ha funny that I went in to pc world in Bracknell today to pick up a kettle (half price in the sale)… Was 20 squid. Had to refuse twice the extended warranty for something like 3 quid a month for a 20 quid bloomin kettle. Don’t blame the guy behind the desk…. As I could see on the screen the promts to ask the customer for extras.

I bought a laptop from Junction 9 Currys today and wasn’t even offered any extras or anything. Just took the laptop to the till and asked me to pay. Excellent service.

Bought a laptop from them, got the £35 restore on a memory stick story. Ended up signing up for the £8 a month cover which got me a £50 discount and an additional £20 off because they’d not got stock even though I’d done a click and collect. As soon as DD appeared on my online bank site I cancelled it so got the memory stick with the restore point setup and with a total of £35 off the laptop.

I just say no thanks. Seems to work quite well, without the need to post half a page of diatribe on here. Doesn’t take that long either.

B.A.Nana – Member
On that Reddit link there is a contribution from an ex Dixons person. He paints it in a slightly different light, which I kind of accept. 5-6 years ago they were offering this setup service, but you had to come back 24/48hrs later to collect, which is a big barrier for many as they’d want to take it home there and then. Seems they are now just cutting out that big barrier by having some of the computers ‘set up’ beforehand. Problem is, it appears no one would know without doing a visual stock check, how many units are boxed/untouched or opened/setup. The emphasis is clearly on selling the pre set up computers. The retailer would probably argue they are responding to a demand (from people like my Mum).
Former Dixons Retail colleague here, so If I may offer an explanation (not an excuse)…….It’s not done entirely in bad faith, it’s done in the interests of time saving and unrealistic expectations on all staff over Peak Season.
They get hundreds of laptops in at Christmas. Sales people (including new Christmas staff) are unreasonably expected to sell almost every single one of these with some kind of extra shit (whether that be “product support”, a set up or just some Knowhow Cloud bollocks).
So to save time, many (it was a third last year, I imagine it’s higher this year) of these are pre set up to save the “less competent” customer time and ensure the laptop is “user ready” when opened on Christmas Day.
This, of course, means that the rare people who are technologically competent and are simply after buying a laptop and getting the **** away with the least amount of hassle will take the small amount of unopened laptops that the store has. So, once those are gone all that’s left are the pre-setup ones…whose condition is not changed on the stock file, causing so many **** headaches with reserve and collect …I always thought it was a bad idea (especially if the laptop already has a recovery partition), but I also understood why they feel they need to do it. They make next to nothing on laptops at Christmas (hell, they make next to nothing on them all year) because of the massive discounts so they need extras on the sale.
Of course the problem is, once you’ve done a set up, a laptop is no longer “unopened” and work has been done on it…meaning to sell it without charging for setup (and the USB stick) means time has been wasted.
It’s a terrible system and I don’t know who actually thinks it’s a good idea in store, but it’s direct from head office and the managers generally tell new staff that “the laptop needs this set up doing, so if we do it beforehand then we save the customer time” which is obviously bollocks. I often wondered how many staff knew they were lying to customers and how many were too ignorant to know any better or question it (and I’m also not sure which is worse)

tbh thats a pile of pish, there is no set up required, all the laptops comes with windows installed, all that is needed is the usual windows setup. the extra that they are trying to sell is a recovery disk for about 40 quid, basically a pre-installed usb, that anyone can get if they have a usb, their serial number and an internet connection to download windos.

S77

Back in 99 I didn’t have a PC to google VCRs.

I’d still expect the staff to know their products in ’14, so no knowledge is still inexcusable.

Worst of all was their aftercare. Dismal. I’ll never go back.

tbh thats a pile of pish, there is no set up required, all the laptops comes with windows installed, all that is needed is the usual windows setup. the extra that they are trying to sell is a recovery disk for about 40 quid, basically a pre-installed usb, that anyone can get if they have a usb, their serial number and an internet connection to download windos.

Pish? you over estimate the average consumer…

I went into my local yesterday to buy a laptop and the guy who served me was very informative but did lean a bit heavy on the “buy the new McCaffe Security its great” and having it “set up” which he explained as having to make a “recovery disc using a 32gb usb stick that takes about 5 hours to do” for £35.

A quick google tells me a 32gb drive can be had for around tenner and I’m sure that Windows has on all the on screen prompts I would need.

The McCaffe set up would cover “up to 15 devices, offer 2 years of updates and free recovery and 5 years of secure cloud cover” for the princeley sum around £80.

They do offer a rental system which seems half way sensible. In essence you lease the device for 2 years and then get the option to buy it for another two months payment or upgrade to a new model. There was some mention of a cashback amount if you stay to the end of the two years as well which roughly equates to the last to months money back.

On a £400 laptop it worked out as something like £22 a month so while you are paying over the odds in the long term you have the option to upgrade every two years should you so desire.

the extra that they are trying to sell is a recovery disk for about 40 quid, basically a pre-installed usb, that anyone can get if they have a usb, their serial number and an internet connection to download windos.

I don’t think it’s even that. It’s the recovery partition, which comes with every new laptop I’ve ever seen, copied to a USB stick. They tell you that because HDDs fail so often it doesn’t make sense to store it there. They’re selling something the computer already comes with as standard for £35, and I’ll wager they’ll have opened the box and probably agreed to some kind of EULA in order to do so. You’re effectively paying £35 more than RRP for a second-hand laptop.

It was this kind of up-selling useless warranties that lost our custom for Currys when we went in for a tumble drier. We had the money to spend there and then, and suddenly out comes the “extended warranty” pish. 30 seconds of fag packet maths allowed us to work out it would be cheaper to get the more expensive drier with manufacturers extended 5 year warranty than it was to get the one Currys were offering with Currys extended warranty, and we’d be getting one roughly 50% more efficient to boot.

i witnessed there heavy sale style the other day went in to see the acer laptop at 199.99 fine for internet but i had a couple who with the salesman stood for must be 15 minutes who were being harrased they to wanted the 199 laptop but this trumpet was not happy with that and wanted them to take out an 139.99 warrenty on the item really a laptop at 199 if it breaks after a year bin it or strip n sell for parts simples i got feed up left as i guess my money wasnt welcome reserved the unit online but still havnt been back i hate that group of stores i was a comet buyer and they should never have went

Should’ve taken it back and got one that had a keyboard with some punctuation keys on it.

You have just reminded me of buying my dad a satnav there on behalf of my mum.

On getting to the payment they insisted on taking my postcode for the warranty – i refused, saying I didn’t need to give it, I would contact Tomtom myself.

The sales assistant insisted. I then asked him if what he was saying was that he couldn’t sell me something without my post code? Yes, that is the case.

Fair enough, I’ll go then. He then said he would speak to his manager, manager insisted that I needed to give my postcode as well.

I got some really cheap cable or connector and asked if they needed my postcode to buy this then, and then may have, whilst being a bit of a twunt, picked up a few dozen other things off the racks and moved them around asking the same question.

Eventually got bored and left.

Went to Tesco and bought the same satnav there, without giving my postcode, strangely enough, and I think I saved a fiver as well.

Just went in there today after the laptop (with 3 months remaining on warranty) decided to not switch on, charger inlet light on but pushing the power button does nothing. Anyway, said to them I’d like it repaired under warranty and would prefer the same laptop back as there were documents, iTunes etc in it that I wanted. Was then told it would be £80 to make sure I got all my files back, ridiculous. So even when there is a clear fault in the warranty period they will try and make money off you. What if they don’t go near the memory, ie, just replacing a faulty power button, do you get your £80 back since they won’t have actually done anything with the memory?

Anyway, said to them I’d like it repaired under warranty and would prefer the same laptop back as there were documents, iTunes etc in it that I wanted. Was then told it would be £80 to make sure I got all my files back, ridiculous. So even when there is a clear fault in the warranty period they will try and make money off you.

Not entirely sure that’s unreasonable. It’s your fault for not having backups. If truly concerned whip the cover off and return it sans-disk with a covering note.

I have a £50 PC worl / curry voucher that I use as a coaster. I’d gladly never set fott in there again. Our local branch is like a ghost town – everyone goes to tesco extra where even the fruit and veg staff know more about IT and customer service.