PC World www.pcworld.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

Convenient

Apparent lack of staff knowledge, some items seem over priced, I feel I experienced poor customer service.

I bought a brand new Acer laptop today for £899. For once PC World were actually cheaper than the internet for a product.

I asked once of the staff members if the laptop had space to fit a second hard drive which he replied no. Being a large multimedia laptop I told him that more often than not they do have space for a second drive and asked him to check. He went over to the Mac section with me to have a look at the tech spec on the internet as he said, and I quote; 'I don't know how to open up a laptop'. Great start I thought.

He did a bit of Googling for me but that turned up nothing. I told him to check the Acer website as he would find the info there. I felt I really shouldn't be telling him how to do his job! Anyway, as I expected the info I needed was on the Acer website and it DID support a second hard drive. So much for his original advice.

Upon getting my shiny new laptop home and unboxing it I noticed fingerprints all over the screen. Very odd for a NEW laptop.

Further investigation found that there was no battery in the box and the power supply was wound up in a very untidy way.

This appeared to me to be either a customer return or ex-display model. I went right back to the shop with it.

When trying to explain to the chap at customer service that the laptop wasn't new he informed me that providing there is no fault with customer returns, they will just put them back on the shelf. It turned out that the laptop I bought was actually an ex-display model. Even worse I thought.

I tried to get through to the assistant on the customer service desk that if I buy a NEW laptop, I expect to get a NEW laptop, I didn't pay £899 for second hand.

After a lot of debating he agreed to swap the laptop for a new one which I feel I should have had in the first place. I accepted this since there was no way I could have bought the laptop cheaper anywhere else.

After waiting for him to get the laptop from the store room for several minutes, he came back to tell me they had none left. Hang on, they had FIVE of them less than an hour earlier!?

I insisted he checked again and a few minutes later he returned with a laptop in a SEALED box telling me that there was a problem with their stock system!

After my experience today I would have to think twice about shopping in PC World since in my experience, new items may not always be new and some staff's technical knowledge appears to be lacking.