Currys/PC World/Knowhow: Stay away if you value time and sanity

FredG

I saw a member of Currys staff flat out lie to an elderly couple who were buying a TV all to flog a £120 Monster HDMI cable.

He assured them that the picture would be drastically better than the £12.99 cable they'd picked up and it would be the only cable to do such a nice TV justice. Astonishingly deceitful.

bod1467

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)

Edit re. above: Aw diddums. Did someone not like being told the truth? Did you also delete the duplicate SPAM posts of that poster? Looking at this thread, obviously not!

To be honest I'm shocked that you'd even consider that post of mine as being abusive. But then again, nothing surprises me these days with how MSE forums are managed ... MSE "roll over and have their tummy tickled" is the impression a lot of us get if anyone complains or reports something. Anything for an easy life, eh?

Yours,
Mr. Angry from Tunbridge Wells

FredG wrote: »

I saw a member of Currys staff flat out lie to an elderly couple who were buying a TV all to flog a £120 Monster HDMI cable.

He assured them that the picture would be drastically better than the £12.99 cable they'd picked up and it would be the only cable to do such a nice TV justice. Astonishingly deceitful.

I hope you stepped in and told them the sales guy was talking (text removed by MSE Forum Team).

vrbarreto

FredG wrote: »

I saw a member of Currys staff flat out lie to an elderly couple who were buying a TV all to flog a £120 Monster HDMI cable.

He assured them that the picture would be drastically better than the £12.99 cable they'd picked up and it would be the only cable to do such a nice TV justice. Astonishingly deceitful.

This must be one of the biggest 'upselling' scams going.. There are specification for hdmi 1.4 but a £5 cable will give as good a result as a £102 monster one. Some people claim to be able to tell the difference but you'd probably need to buy high grade reference kit and test endlessly for what is a marginal improvement.

Back to PC world and their knowhow.. They once tried to sell me their after care package.. When I said 'No thanks' they salemans said "Do you know how to reinstall windows?" To which I replied "Can't be more difficult that rolling out a 10,000 user dag replicated exchange 2010 infrastructure on VMware?" He didn't say any more.

Also do not but their crappy av offerings.. Much better to get one of the free versions available all over the net.

Esqui

CoolHotCold wrote: »

Sucks, but there are some amazing stores, and then there are some downright horrid stores.

And then there are some where you swear you must be the only competent person around!

Incidentally, on point 9, the store should never be saving your data to their own hard drive. It is not possible to keep it secure with the facilities in store, and (I believe) means your data is not kept in line with Data Protection regulations. Plus, as probably happened here, different colleagues may not realise that it's already in use for one customer, and wipe it to back up another customer's data. Stores should only back up your data to a hard drive that you provide to them (or that you buy in store).

This really riles me, because it's not rocket. When I moved to my current store, the first thing I did was blancco and chuck out a hard drive they were using. With the right software, it would have been pretty easy for me to find people's photos and documents.

szam_

tearem wrote: »

I was once told off by a manager for being " too technical" with a customer >.>

The company doesn't care what their staff knows, only how much they can sell in services, not products.

Probably why they turned me down for a job when I was desperate for one. However the reason they actually gave was "not enough technical experience" after requesting feedback.

Given my 2 years in a tech support job (1st, 2nd and 3rd line) including some consultancy, engineering and bespoke software design, volunteering and software based support/testing experience, and to top it off, sound engineering (both at college and in my spare time), it was quite a surprise to learn I don't actually know enough to warrant a minimum wage job selling tech in an area that I've not only worked in, that I've also studied and done as a hobby since I was 15.

I refuse to go in PCWorld anymore, because the last time I did, they were talking absolute garbage.

SuperHan

szam_ wrote: »

Probably why they turned me down for a job when I was desperate for one. However the reason they actually gave was "not enough technical experience" after requesting feedback.

Given my 2 years in a tech support job (1st, 2nd and 3rd line) including some consultancy, engineering and bespoke software design, volunteering and software based support/testing experience, and to top it off, sound engineering (both at college and in my spare time), it was quite a surprise to learn I don't actually know enough to warrant a minimum wage job selling tech in an area that I've not only worked in, that I've also studied and done as a hobby since I was 15.

I refuse to go in PCWorld anymore, because the last time I did, they were talking absolute garbage.

Having worked for Dixons before, and having a partner who still does, we have both been involved in sorting through CVs and telephone interviews.

I can tell you that neither of us would ever dismiss an application on someone having too much technical experience! It's more likely that someone has just pressed any button to generate a generic 'Sorry' e-mail.

However, it's sometimes good business practice to not hire people over qualified for the job as they can use it as a stop gap and leave relatively soon after starting. They may have thought that you required to be challenged a little bit more than the role would provide you with and so thought you may not hang around very long!

(Please note, that's my common sense approach and NOT the hiring policy of Dixons)

bod1467

Edit to post #13. Looks like someone doesn't like being told the truth.

szam_

SuperHan wrote: »

Having worked for Dixons before, and having a partner who still does, we have both been involved in sorting through CVs and telephone interviews.

I can tell you that neither of us would ever dismiss an application on someone having too much technical experience! It's more likely that someone has just pressed any button to generate a generic 'Sorry' e-mail.

However, it's sometimes good business practice to not hire people over qualified for the job as they can use it as a stop gap and leave relatively soon after starting. They may have thought that you required to be challenged a little bit more than the role would provide you with and so thought you may not hang around very long!

(Please note, that's my common sense approach and NOT the hiring policy of Dixons)

Maybe it was the store then, it was only a year and a half or so ago - and surely if they see someone with some decent technical ability with various work experience in retail to boot (my first ever job was in retail with the option given to me as training as a manager for two years at the age of 18, which I turned down as I didn't see my future working at Asda), perhaps they may want to try and move up the chain, surely nurturing potential ability from the bottom of the chain would be an idea?

I think a lot of larger companies miss a trick in their pursuit for profits, and sacrifice reputation (I don't know anyone in my office who would go to PC World for a Computer or Laptop, and I have a colleague who worked there years ago), you can still advise the least technical of people and have the same people acquire decent amount of knowledge to talk to someone more technical, they don't need to be experts but a decent standard would be nice. An example, what is the difference between SSD and HDD and what the advantages/disadvantages of both? I get the impression the staff are paid to wander around the computing sections are just thrown in there with little or no training on what they are actually selling - just sell things.

Surely it'd be more profitable long term to try their best to retain potential and knowledge and develop staff, however it seems to me that it has turned in to a revolving door kind of job (mostly) consisting of students/part time workers.

My personal problem is that they just flat out refuse to even accept an interview for someone with technical expertise, who may actually come in to your store with drive and ability, improve the customer experience and potentially that stores reputation by being honest and is keen to make something of themselves in the company (which I would have liked to have a chance to do had I gotten a job there). But then again, if the policy is sell at all costs with a disregard to the customers needs, not only would I (personally) class this as poor customer service, but I wouldn't want to do it anyway.

It's like when I go in to GAME, I can talk gaming with the staff because most of them are gamers. That makes me want to go back and spend money there. If I walk around Currys/PCWorld and I'm comparing the specs between two machines and a member of staff is trying to hard sell me one by talking rubbish, it leaves a bad view of them in general - but it wouldn't with someone non-technical, I presume they may feel that they had great customer service which sucks because they may have been oversold hardware they may never require.

Apologies, a bit long and ranty, but hey.

FredG

To the people asking, yes I did step in and explain that a digital signal either works or doesn't and there would be no discernable difference in picture quality.

I'm a right AV snob and have spent £1000's on my home cinema setup - however, my HDMI's are £2.99 jobs from Ebuyer. Not had one fail me yet!

tearem

Another thing that annoyed me when I was at PC World was when "I spent too long with a customer". Seriously, being told off for spending an hour with someone when the store is dead and no other customers in. Saying that, it was only one manager who did that with me, we didn't get on too well since I kinda embarrassed him infront of a customer when he lied to them about a product he said we didn't have that we did XD