My first mistake, I fully acknowledge, was buying a PC from PC World. The only chain of computer-based shops with a bigger selection of HDTV’s than wireless cards (The the ratio about 30-1 in favour of the TVs), and around12 member of staff wearing a selection of ugly-coloured slave outfits than they actually need. First off, very few of the display PC’s matched the specs laid out on the price tags, making most of them largely useless to a consumer What you could see was not what you would get. The layout seems designed to confuse, as if forcing you to speak to the largely under trained and indifferent staff to figure out exactly what the hell you’d be getting if you spent the money. Until recently, it had at least a little jumble sale-vibe going for it, as if a rabble of cloying nerd’s had recently been through. They’ve change it now, though – everything is on pristine-white shelves, in boxes, and the nerds are nowhere to be seen. They even have a fucking specialized Apple centre right in the middle of the store, and a sign that says printers are ‘ideal for business people’, with a picture of a tie. It’s gone from a slightly haphazard yet approachable place to a sterile, fuck-you centre for idiots and Mac lovers.
In the end, I settled on a rather sexy, Mick(Nerd)-approved ‘rig’ (sorry). I am happy with it and it does everything. It was either that or build one, and I couldn’t be arsed. PC World didn’t have all the parts anyway, and succumbing to Maplin is like taking a step too far in the other direction. To even get into Maplin you need a hardcore WoW addiction and a propensity to buy stupid disco lights with your VGA cables. The ‘puter I went for is pretty and shiny and hums along in a satisfying manner. The most advanced game I play is Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, so I’ve probably spent way too much for what I need, but I’m stupid like that. However, my decision to spend the money had fuck-all to do with PC World and much more to do with my laziness and lust for shiny gadgets.
The process of actually buying one of their computers gets difficult very quickly. I stopped a man in a dull pink shirt and tie, and informed him politely that I would like to buy one of the computers behind me. I even tried to point in it’s general direction, to indicate that he had an almost definite sale with zero work needed. He said he would send over a member of his ‘team’ to help me, because he was too senior/lazy to help a tattooed young un’ like me. He then went and stood by the door for a minute or so, before waddling off to the printer cartridge section to help someone read the side of a box.
For 5 minutes.
Abandoning the idea of any further help from that useless fuck, I collared a young girl with a very quiet voice and a nervous demeanour. After a short amount of whispering, I persuaded her I wished to exchange money for the product and she agreed that she could facilitate this. She was the most useful part of my experience and for that I love her dearly.
Now, PC World offer many useless offers and add-ons when you buy a new PC with them. I’ll start with the least rubbish: Money off the Student Edition of Microsoft Office – Not bad, if you’re after a copy of Office and have never heard of OpenOffice.org, but ultimately useless as the majority of ‘students’ will be relatively poor and would rather steal the damn thing off the internet rather than spend money on it. Also, OPENOFFICE.ORG. The offer still doesn’t bring it down to an affordable, reasonable price though, when considering you’re just paying for a bit of software to write on or make powerpoints with AND OPENOFFICE.ORG IS FREE. AND WORKS FINE. AND IS FREE. Start charging more around the price of, oh I don’t know…FREE…and I might consider MS Office. Maybe. That might be just a personal thing though.
The second worthless piece of software they had on offer was Norton Anti-Virus. Which no one ever wants; and even if you do, you should never ever pay for.
Lastly, they offered a deal to all new PC-buyers that basically entailed a PC World man coming to your house in a PC World van and setting it all up for you, for less than £30! Bargain! Or not! For £30, a bored minion will turn up at your house, plug your PC in, and turn the power on. Then look at you as if you are stupid, because you are. Everything about this ‘service’ is useless. If you’re genuinely unsure on how to do it (if you’re a layman, elderly, or stupid) just ask a member of your family, or a neighbour. Anything. Under no circumstances give PC World any more of your money to perform a menial task at a greatly inflated price. Again, this is something completely aimed at splitting morons from their money. Any self respecting member of PC World staff should talk you out of it if you’re dumb enough to even enquire. Part of the fun is jamming everything in and making it go. It’s even more fun if you have to crawl around under a desk, swearing. That’s the joy of buying a new PC! Sort of. At least now it’s coupled with the joy of saving yourself £30. There are more things like this, ‘offers’ that will take a stack of money from you in exchange for plugging in a TV, sorting you out with a wireless network or sitting you down and telling you to just fucking kill yourself before you somehow manage to have kids. Ugh.
Back to the process of actually getting the desired piece of equipment out of the shop…The shy girl had gone to get it out of the back for me. Except…she hadn’t. She located the useless disappearing man from earlier and was trying to talk him into doing something. I assume this is protocol, because they don’t trust their lesser members of staff to fetch items from the back or something. He was still taking his time though, and it took another ten minutes just to get it down to the front till where 3 separate members of staff counted through the stack of £20′s I gave them. I got it home fine, and managed to set it up in about 15 minutes, handily saving me that £30 and a handful of dignity.
PC World seem to want to make it as annoying as possible to simply buy a PC. Which is fucked, considering it’s a shop that should really be promoting such behaviour. They seem set-up towards exploiting the members of the public who might not know exactly what they’re looking for. They have ‘Tech Guys’ who helpfully approach each situation with a surly ‘better than you’ attitude, but get flummoxed if you ask them any question more technical than where a USB stick goes. There was a man walking around with cheap shirt on, with ‘Windows Guru’ sewn into the back as a shining example to child labour, whose job surely can’t be more than pointing out where the Help section is on Windows. As an OS, Windows is fairly idiot proof in itself. I really can’t think what else he would have to do, except instil the fear of Gates into customers who think to even understand one of these infernal machines you have to be a ‘guru’.
Well fuck you, PC World. You are shit.
(I realise the hypocrisy of this whole thing, because I still gave them my money…but hopefully one of the board members might one day read this, have an attack of conscious and leave a note for his Secretary detailing how to fix things before diving out of the window of his 12th-floor executive office. Note: Not an actual suggestion)
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