Not all bad ... Not all good. (PC World)

Member Name: sidneygee

Product:	PC World
Date:	13/01/02 (1507 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Local, Wide range of products, Service Agreement available and sometimes worthwhile.

Disadvantages: Staff not always knowledgable, And not always honest, Service Agreements on many products not worth the expense

It has been very interesting reading the various accounts of the experiences that people have had with dealing with PC World. This has been to a large part, rather negative, with particular criticism directed towards the 'hard sell' given to the expensive "Service Agreements" (Extended Warranties). To redress some of this criticism, I thought it better to recount some of my experiences with the Edinburgh (Corstorphine) branch of the chain, and to indicate circumstances where the much criticised "Service Agreements" can prove to be a very sensible option

The Premises (5/5)
There are two PC World premises in Edinburgh, my local being at 1 - 17 Glasgow Road. Initially built as a Safeways' Supermarket in about 1989 (to replace the premises occupied by a small engineering company that had closed down), Safeways' deserted these premises when they moved to the nearby Gyle shopping Centre when it was built and an 'agreement' by those developers with 'Asda' fell through.

I was quite intrigued at the time, in 1992 (I think it was) to see such an enormous building being devoted entirely to computer supplies. "It will never catch on" I said at the time, little anticipating the enormous 'de-geeking' of computers that would take place during the next decade, and the increased prosperity and developments in the internet that has (literally) transformed the life of a substantial proportion of the good (and the not-so-good) Edinburghers.

In the same way, I never thought that mobile phones would catch on - in spite of a friend who worked for Marconi tipping the development strongly in the early 1980's. He put his money where his mouth was and investing heavily in Vodaphone when the shares were first floated. He is now one of the select group of millionaires that I know (having sold out close to the Vodaphone peak value). My life often seems to be a catalogue of missed
opportunities.....

Prior to the opening of these premises, there were only one or two business - orientated 'shops' in Edinburgh (e.g. Alva Computers) capable of supplying computers and providing advice and service (apart from Dixons who sold some Amstrad word-processors and games machines). Indeed when I wanted to buy a half-decent Fax Machine in 1991, it was Alva Computers who did the business for me. But PC World scores heavily in that there is ample car parking, whereas the business computing shops in the centre of Edinburgh are a nightmare for parking.

The premises 'made their mark' in 1994 or thereabouts when they painted the outside in "PC Purple", that upset the locals somewhat who became even more upset when it was found that there were no planning constraints controlling such garish paint schemes (the area not being a conservation area).

There is now a drive-in McDonalds attached to the store and a large Tesco (24 hours) Supermarket on the next site that has dragged the immediate area down a little more. I was 'relieved' that in 1981 I did not buy a particular house in the close vicinity. It would have been 'blighted' a little by these developments.

The premises are quite well laid-out and it is easy to park close to the door and to find your way around. They are not the largest of the PC World’s that I have been in, and their stock can be limited, so they do not always have the items in that are advertised in the press. But they have most of what you would require, and if you suggested 12 years ago that such a development would occur in Corstorphine, I wouldna believed you.


The Service (3/5)
Like other PC World premises, the shop is patrolled by a variety of sales people who always seem to ask me if I need help when I don't, and not to be seen on the rare occasion that I do. These sales people themselves often seem to know relatively littl
e about computers and accessories, but if you do ask them, a person who has some 'relative expertise' in the subject area can usually be found. I should say though that it is better to do this during 'normal' business hours, rather than in the evening or at weekends.

The store has a Business Section up next to the Laptop Computer section which I have always found useful for advice on printers/scanners/software - but again in business hours (10 am to 4 p.m. only !!).

Those of you who have read my opinion/review on McAfee Virus-scan product will know that my 'confidence' in PC World was shaken by their selling me a version which was not compatible with my early Windows 95 program, and then refusing to give a refund (and the person that I had asked at 7pm for advice denying the following day that he had ever advised me !). Rather dented my overall confidence and rating of the store.

I also recently inquired about digital cameras, but found that I knew far more about the product than their 'expert' knew. All he wanted to do was to sell me either their current 'special offer' or a ("much better") very expensive option. Thus it is rather disconcerting and indicates a wide variability in the knowledge area.

The store also has a Help Desk/Service Desk always with a long queue. I understand from friends and colleagues this gives advice varying between the realms of excellence and the downright incompetence. As far as the general sales assistants are concerned, there are occasional excellent individuals working part-time who attend the local schools. These can have an up-to-date knowledge of computing and computer products (particularly Games). These individuals would be pointed out to me by my son when he attended school.

The Products (4/5)
Apart from cables and a few Software packages, what have I bought from PC World ?And what would I trust them with in the future
?

Well, I really doubt if I would ever buy a desktop PC from them. I know 3 or 4 friends/neighbours who have and the performance/reliability has not been THAT good. Whenever I visit the store, the prices always seem to be just that little bit more than the Direct suppliers quote in the press. Since I bought my current (venerable) PC from DAN in 1995 with very few problems then it is likely that I will buy again from DAN or from DELL who have a good reputation for desk-top PC's.

PC World (in common with John Lewis) also have a habit of offering "yesterday's" models with apparently VERY-enticing 'price-reductions'. Those who check carefully will find that the latest more powerful model often costs very little more than the set-up that the store is trying to sell as a 'bargain'.

BUT, I have bought a Toshiba Laptop from this branch of PC World and when I buy a replacement, I will probably buy again from PC World.

I bought this Laptop in May 1997. It was an ex-display model, an older (about 10 months) one based on the 486 Intel chip, with 4MB RAM, and a 500 Mb hard-disk, running on Windows 95. All sounds (and is !) VERY basic now, but it is still going strong and has accompanied me all around the world.

The price was a very remarkable £369 (INCLUDING a 3 year warranty). Now when you consider that to buy anything better with a Pentium 'chip' would have cost in excess of £895 WITHOUT the warranty, then you can see why I bought without demurring.

I found out eventually that it was actually a customer 'return', from an Architectural Practice, that was put out in the store as a display/demo model. The reason why they gave a 3 year warranty was because the manufacturers warranty had been started and had only 2 months to run when they decided to sell it. I found that its Windows 95 had been registered with the original purchaser, and found their telephone num
ber from the Directory. It had been 'miss-sold to them and would not handle the software that they had been assured by PC World that it would... so there is 'another tale' there ...

I upgraded the memory to 20MB for £85 from a specialist advertising in Micro Computer Mart. I also use an external Zip drive. I loaded Word '95 but it was so slow operating with this system that I removed the program, and continue to use my favourite word-processing program (AmiPro 3.1), translating into Word via WordPerfect 5.1. Anyway, more about my experiences below when discussing the Service Agreement.

What other hardware have I bought ? - three printers and three Hewlett Packard scanners.

My first two computer printers were 'throw outs' from my work, an OKI dot-matrix and a Hewlett Packard (HP) DeskJet 500 (both still working on off-springs' computers !!). I bought an HP DeskJet 690C colour printer from PC World in 1996 and this is still giving reasonable (if relatively expensive) service for when I need to print in colour. However I found that I needed to print quite large quantities of documents for my Consultancy business. Thus, an investment in a Laser printer was proving attractive.

I bought a Brother 1025 for £179 in mid-1997. I did not pay for an extended warranty. It gave out after printing 25,000 copies ... well when I say 'gave out', it started giving smudges on the pages, indicating problems with the 'drum', but I cannot argue with that for service. It is used now by our son, as a draft printer. I followed this up with my current workhorse - a Xerox DocuPrint P12 Laser Printer, that I bought from the "Managers Special" Table during a 'browse' in late 1999.

Whenever I enter this branch of PC World, I gravitate towards this Table. Here you will find a variety of items. Some of them are bargains. Unfortunately, most are not ....

To a large
part, these are items of hardware that have been returned, and are usually missing parts of the packaging or even leads/power packs/instruction manuals/installation discs/CD's. Now if such an item is on sale at half price, I may be tempted, but mostly the discounts are 'miserable', often less than 10%. But my Xerox was a snip - at £125. Now this was correctly indicated as a former display/demonstration model, and they had 'lost' the installation software and also details of the original price ((but it had the instruction booklet and the 'leads').

I negotiated a discounted Extended Warranty for 5 years for an additional £45. Checking over the web on my return home established that the then cheapest available price was £449. So I now had a superior quality printer with a 5 years warranty for £170. The installation software was easily downloaded from the Xerox Website, and checking the 'log' when I connected the printer to the computer established that it had only produced 69 copies up to then. It now registers 30,393 pages. I am on my third toner pack. The first replacement cost £90, but I bought two from the Managers Special table last year for £35 each. And the quality is still perfect, with almost 3 years warranty still. I reckon that I will probably wear out the drum before that time.

As regards scanners, the first is a ScanJet 4S, sheet feeder type that I bought in 1996 for £150 which is in daily use. It is fast and accurate and I would not wish to ever be without it. I have also owned two HP flatbed scanners each of which lasted about 2 years before catastrophic (beyond economic repair) failure. Perhaps I should have bought an extended warranty ... But the second one cost a mere £45 from the 'Managers Specials' table and only 3 year warranties are offered, costing £17 on a scanner costing less than £50. I shall soon be buying one of those printer/scanner/fax/copier multi-function mach
ines and I shall review my options carefully.....

Service Agreement/Extended Warranty (5/5).
As indicated above, I have bought a Service Agreement/extended warranty from PC world twice, and would consider doing so with some other items.

The key word here is "consider".... The price of the extended warranty depends entirely on the actual price you pay for the equipment. Thus, if I had paid the full £449 for the Xerox printer (or even if I had it discounted to £300), the full 5 years' warranty would have cost an extra £185. Now such figures may be open to some negotiation, but I cannot see that I would have spent approaching half the price of such an item on such a warranty.

As indicated, my laptop is still going strong, but it has had 4 major (potentially ba**-crushing) failures that were dealt with quite efficiently by the extended warranty. The first occurred in December 1998 when the computer was knocked off a table in the office where I was working in Buenos Aires. Broke the screen, so that half of the screen was unusable.. I borrowed a monitor that could be plugged into the back, and this helped, but still caused problems when trying to work at the hotel. This really showed up how bad my touch-typing was ....

Now those of you who will have examined the extended warranty/Service Agreements offered by PC World will already know that it offers cover against accidental damage for the full period of the insurance. Now those offered by suppliers such as John Lewis do not give this valuable 'cover'. Indeed, I could possibly have arranged to have the lap-top repaired in Buenos Aires, with the approval of the insurers, but since I had only one week to go before my return to the UK, the this wasn't worth doing. Theft is also covered for the first year.

The service offered with Laptops is that a courier picks up the computer from your home or premises, and delivers it back. Getting throug
h to the 'correct' person on the telephone to arrange the pick-up was not easy, but once the circumstances were explained, off went the computer and back it came in perfect working order 5 days later. However, 9 months later, one half of the screen 'failed' again, so back it went, arriving home after 4 days. Then in 1999, there was another 'accident' and the whole screen failed, so back it went for screen number 4. A small crack also had appeared in the casing, but they would not repair this because it was considered 'cosmetic'. A touch of superglue however sorted that out.

The next failure, 2 years and 10 months into the warranty was the hard-disc. Fortunately most of the work was backed up or recently printed out, so there was little data loss. A replacement was fitted within 5 days, and it has proved excellent service. Now this Laptop owes me nothing. The battery pack initially lasted over 2 hours use, but now manages about 100 minutes, but mostly it is used with the mains adapter, 'on site'.

So if I were to buy a new Laptop, I would be looking to PC World and I would try to get an extended warranty for 5 years for about £250. This is the charge for laptops under £750, so I reckon that this is a good target price to aim for warranty-wise.

In view of the 'hammer' that I tend to give anything portable, I would also consider spending the basic £68 for a 5 years warranty on a Digital camera. Remember, the charge made for the Service Agreement is generally 'negotiable' in the store.

So far, no problems with the Printer .... But I cannot see that 'drum' lasting more than 4 years ....


CONCLUSIONS
1. I would really miss this store if it closed. It takes more than the odd 'bad experience' to poison my mind completely.

2. It is a mistake to dismiss the idea of a Service Agreement out-of-hand. Certainly where a product is t
o be used extensively for business (particularly where there is the danger of accidental damage), it could be an excellent investment. BUT the price of the 'insurance cover' must be weighed up with the price of the product - and if you are unhappy with the price - try to negotiate.


To sum up, I both love 'em ... and sometimes hate 'em at PC World.

© Sidneygee 2001

Summary: