PC world can't fix PCs, apparently

[Steve]

Oh, the hilarity.

Consumer magazine Computing Which? carried out an undercover investigation of independent and major stores that offer a computer repair service.

It targeted PC World because it's the only major store that offers to fix computers even if not originally purchased at one of its stores.

The magazine's researchers deliberately "broke" computers in order to assess the level of service at various repair centres across the UK.

On half of the computers they simply deleted a Windows start up file to prevent the operating system from er, starting. On the remaining computers they loosened a hard disk cable.

The "faulty" computers were then taken along to a total of 20 PC repairers and the results of the investigation showed that the independent stores performed much better than big boys PC World.

Diagnosis of the faults at PC World ranged from reinstalling Windows to advising the "customer" to replace their computer. In some instances the reinstallation led to personal data being lost as work had not been backed up.

Full story over at The Register.

Oh, and Steve always asks what data users want keeping in the event a wipe is required. In fact, Steve tends to ignore them and take a temporary disk image of the whole drive anyway... you know what lusers are like .

[Sim0n]

"PC World's skilled engineers have fixed more than two million PC problems for customers in the last year, and in nine of 10 PC repairs there was no requirement to fit a spare part," she said.

Yes, because when you convince the customer their PC is beyond repair, and offer them a discount on a new base unit, you dont even need to open thier PC at all.

And once that "happy" customer has paid and gone, you have a full PC worth of parts, for that one out of the ten that really needs a new part...

[chuckskull]

£350 to tighten a cable...

/me goes to open a PC world franchise.

[BEANFro Elite]

My friend recently started working in PC World...well they're currently struggling with that as well, as they've failed to contact her about her work days and hours after promising that they'd do so on serveral occasions.

Anyway, she told me that on her induction day that she knew loads more about computers and technology than anyone else there, now, my friend knows no where near as much about PCs as I do, but she CAN hold her own but for her to say that to me in a serious manner was rather shocking.

I'm going to say something most of us probably already knew, but PC World employs people on the basis of how well they can sell something and not actually know about what they're selling.

[DeludedGuy]

My cousin took his PC to PC World about a year ago.

Hes computer would freeze or shut down after a few minutes. He took it to PC World, who charged him £50 and said he had a virus but that they were unable to remove this virus.

Anyway, he asked me to have a look and I found that the CPU fan was not spinning and made the CPU overheat.

Bought a new fan for £5 and problem was fixed.

[Russ]

i kid you not, girl at works laptop power cable broke. it was just the connector pin at the end, £4 jobbie off ebay, charged here 130quid. :|

[[GSV]Trig]

So, wheres the news in the fact that PCW cant fix PC's?

[MSIC]

So many horror stories. I have a couple myself.
In a way, i kind of feel sorry for the staff on the ground floor who blatantly have not enough training, and for the management they won't exactly pay $$$$ to get however many thousand people MCSE qualified or anything.
You all heard about the 'geek squad' in america? We should count our blessings with PC World....

[jackvdbuk]

tbh theres just no room for retail shop computer hardware anymore.. online is just too cheap for them to compete and their range is welll... poo

ok so they overcharge, but most of us ehre can fix a pc.. but imo there just taking advantage of the evreryday average pc user and charge them 200 times too much

[[GSV]Trig]

I fix PC's out of work hours, I'll charge £20 to go out n do stuff like clean people's PC's up, setup broadband etc if they cant.
£60 for a reinstall of windows inc backup, updates, drivers etc...
I've had PC's brought to me that have been to some places that are meant to know what there doing, one had been taken into a shop as it had a virus on it, it was reinstalled, no backup was taken and when it came back it didnt even have drivers on it, if XP hadnt picked up the hardware it wasn't setup, they hadn't even used the XP code that was on the case they had used there own...
Needless to say if you live in/near Loughborough dont take your PC to Miracle Micro's

[vicar]

What did you expect from PC World or large chain? lol

[vudu2u2]

...pc world does have its uses tho...

and the truth is you cant train everyone to be a great pc repairer, it takes experience to look for those things that dont seem obvious/likey/possible//

[pepsi_max2k]

>>and the truth is you cant train everyone to be a great pc repairer

and there's me thinking that a "pc repair" store would actually train their employees in pc repair.

but yeah, i was just in pc world yesterday. my dad hasn't figured out yet that having a computer science graduate in the family, he wouldn't have to travel to a shop to ask about pc's, but whatcha gonna do (it *is* quite amusing watching the horrible lack of technical knowledge in their salesmen )...

anyway, he was busy asking a salesman about macbooks. actually, a second salesman, the first obviously knew she was out of her depth when he said "mac". anyway... he wanted to know if he could run windows software on it. salesman's answer (and this was an older, obviously higher up kinda guy) "err.. you have to install a windows os on it.. i don't really know how it works... but you will need a *new*, *fully legal* copy of windows". He stressed the "need a new copy of windows" bit quite a lot. Correct answer? Use Mac's whatever-its-name-is tool, repartition, dual boot by installing windows, use a boot manager to chose between os's at boot. Oh and, you could try wine (i believe darwine) emulation software to run the software on OSX or whatever. And I don't even own a mac. I so felt like jumping in and advising the advisors... Hell, had he asked, he'd have found out that the programs weren't important at all and he just wanted to open files created on windows (word, excell) on Mac. *cough*OpenOffice*cough*. But that wouldn't make them anywhere near enough money, would it? Though no doubt they do sell copies of OOo, I've seen a few Mandriva OSs there for slightly more than the license would suggest...

oh yeah, few years back also had a laptop refuse to boot and the old "it's a virus" crap, OS reinstall and loss of all data. second PC from their had strange boot troubles, had to go back to the store a number of times. the last time was for an internal modem cable that had been unplugged for whatever reason and just needed plugging in again. had this not been 5 years ago and not my dad's pc, i';d have fixed it myself. i still wonder why the hell he goes there...

[HoldenBurn1000]

...pc world does have its uses tho...

and the truth is you cant train everyone to be a great pc repairer, it takes experience to look for those things that dont seem obvious/likey/possible//

ahaha, like saying to a top lawyers office, well you cant train everyone to bea great lawyer, in short if they cxant do it they shouldnt be doing it, there are a million people out there that can fix pcs its not hard

[Blademrk]

there are a million people out there that can fix pcs its not hard

Depends on the problem, I had a look at my neighbours PC for her last night - she's got an Epson printer that would print when connected to the front USB ports on the case, but was being displayed as Unknown hardware when connected directly to the usb ports on the back of the motherboard.
plugged it into a different port on the back and it worked, plugged a scanner into the port the printer wouldn't work in to check it wasn't a faulty port and that worked too. very odd.

[pak000]

tbh theres just no room for retail shop computer hardware anymore.. online is just too cheap for them to compete and their range is welll... poo

ok so they overcharge, but most of us ehre can fix a pc.. but imo there just taking advantage of the evreryday average pc user and charge them 200 times too much

There is plenty of room, it caters for the computer illiterate, the ignorant and those that need things instantly and can't wait for the online delivery and the final group - those that want to see what they are buying before it actually gets delivered by a courier.

The number of people that fit into these four groups is massive - how else would pc world still exist. The ignorance leads to people being willing to pay large amounts for something that is very basic - an all inclusive package. They don't know that they are being ripped off!

Individuals like ourselves may be able to repair pc's and a cheaper cost to pc world but to tap into that market we need to
a) be identifiable and locatable...Ask your average person on the street if they know anyone that they could ask to fix their pc...most will say they don't or produce a 10 year old kid of the neighbour. This leads to the second problem
b) Trust....Would you trust a 10 year old kid with a 500£ piece of hardware that you don't understnad? Most people would respond no and even though most of us arn't 10 years old there is still an issue of trust - what if you make a mistake? are you prepared to fix your error or compensate them?

A large store, advertising and branding goes a long way to enabling your to get away with ripping people off