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Dixons Store Group (DSG) blamed overstocking of laptops for poor performance at PC World, and sounded a warning for Christmas and the rest of the financial year. DSG chairman Sir John Collins said: "There is much debate about the uncertain outlook in many of our markets and the economic fundamentals make it difficult to …

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  1. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Translation.

    We've got a lot of shit in stock, but we can't sell shit. Our support people are working their arses off trying to fix this shit. We don't know if we can get people to take any more of our shit next year.

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  2. Dazed and Confused

    Dixons should be rolling in it

    Concidering that Dixon were selling £179 Nintendo Wii consoles for £360 this morning they should be rolling in it.

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  3. James

    Good thing they spunked £7m on a rebrand then

    And in the process queued up another £7m hit for three year's time when "Currys.digital" sounds about as cutting edge as Austin Powers' slang.

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  4. Anthony Shortland
    Thumb Down

    PC World products

    Maybe if they went back to selling PC related products rather than filling half the floor space of the shops with TVs (hello?! thats what Currys etc are for) and stationary they might do a bit better?

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  5. Dave Silver badge
    Flame

    The Tech Guys

    "DSG's support service - the TechGuys - had a better year"

    I bet they havemif they've found enough mugs to pony up £29.95 to get an 8 quit network card fitted in their machine.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    RE: PC World products

    Well...the staff seem to know naff all about computers, so maybe they stand a fighting chance of getting to grips with stationery

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  7. Andy Jones

    It's my fault

    Maybe if they weren't intent on ripping people off then I would recommend people use them. As it is I tell people to steer well clear of PC World!

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark !

    1) The new Tech Guys division has doubled sales. (but accounts not itemised)

    2) Computing group sales are up only 2%

    3) A massive share buy-back has taken place

    Oh it stinks like a dead, week-old, rotten fish with fish pox.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "lower than expected demand for Vista enabled products"

    Well, I guess that blows away the, "Give 'em no choice, and they'll buy anyway" theory. Either they pay attention, and stock the XP (and Mac, Linux?) lines the public clearly prefers to Vista, or the reality check(*) bounces and they continue to be bludgeoned by Microsoft's marketing machine.

    Cheap laptop, anyone?

    (*) Yeah, I know. The pun works better in the US.

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  10. Hedley Phillips

    I'm sorry

    We had to buy a WIFI router from PC World last month as it was an emergency.

    There, I've said it, I feel better now.

    Cor, this group therapy thing is great. I feel like a weight has been lifted.

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  11. Gav H.

    DSG

    The tech-savvy realise that the only thing they're good for is eye-balling gear before going home and ordering online. Why anyone wants to pay £100ish over the odds for any large electrical item is beyond me. And don't even mention the patronising tone of their advertisments and sales staff.

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  12. Tom Cooke

    Anyone remember The Link?

    Anyone?

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  13. Steve

    Re: It's my fault

    Mine, too. Whenever One of my friends/relatives mentions a new computer my first words are "Don't go to PC World."

    We shouldn't feel to bad though - I knew a few people who worked at their call centre when I was at university in Sheffield. One phone monkey used to direct people to Maplin when they wanted things like USB cables because of the horrendous mark-up in the order of £10 in PCW versus £2-3 in Maplin.

    It's got to be a bad sign when you're only sizeable increases are in the department that is supposed to fix the products that you've already sold.

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  14. Jason
    Coat

    RE:Translation

    Even shorter;

    Vista fucked us

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  15. Liam

    im not surprised....

    the people know shit. i remember ~8 years ago needing a job and going for a pc world vacancy. about 10 of us were crowded in a room where most people (through asking around) knew little about IT tech, we were all given a paper to write and answer questions on IT gear. i would say 70% of the questions were about digital cameras! i didnt even get through to the next round as i knoew little about cameras but a lot more about it tech than thr 2 that were picked. we were also told you arent expected to know any tech as they only do basics - everything else goes away for fixing.

    no wonder everyone there seems so clueless.... but they dont even know about digital camers! :)

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    To the lot of you....

    Yes! PC World is a ripoff compared to ebuyer/scan or wherever, and as a fully fledged geek I would never think of paying £25+ to have a 10/100 card installed.

    But for Mr and Mrs Joe Public, they're pretty good. My dear old nan wouldn't want to open up her PC to install a network card now she's got a cable modem, so why not let PC World do it? It's not that expensive.... and how many of you drop your car into a garage when it starts making funny noises instead of getting the tool box out, I bet mechanics are sat there thinking "Ha! Fools! They've just paid £60 to have a £5 part fitted!"

    PC World, and Currys dot digital play an important role in the market.... to sell electronic gear *pretty* cheaply to those without the time or the inclination to hunt down every e-tailer selling the same item, then pay postage, then wait in for a courier, then find out it's faulty and do it all over again. How easy is it to take back something to PC World? "Hello assistant, this item I bought a week ago is broken. I know it's broken, you know it's broken, and the law is on my side. Can I have a new one please?". Compares very favourably to returning something to Scan, I can tell you!

    I just don't get why it's so popular to bash them. They have a clear target audience and it just seems popular for more IT-savvy folk to wander in whilst bored and try to catch them out. Do you honestly think that you lot, The Reg readership, are the indended market for The Tech Guys backup and healthcheck service? No! It's your auntie mabel. And it's priced at a level she's happy to pay.

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  17. Vulpes Vulpes

    I'm not surprised, either, Liam.

    If that's the best you can do in terms of spelling, grammar and punctuation, I wouldn't have put you through into the next round either.

    You don't have a brother with one eyebrow by any chance, do you?

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  18. Michael
    Unhappy

    Re: I'm sorry

    Don't worry Hedley, it comes to us all ;)

    My old Belkin wireless router threw a hissy fit a couple of months back after 3 years of sterling service. Reluctantly I went off to PCW, but found a replacement by Zoom for only £30 (yeah, I didn't know much about Zoom, but it was an emergency, and £30 seemed pretty good :D).

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  19. mark carlisle

    @'the lot of you'

    I was a DSG employee at management level for many years..(another confession out of the way). Agree totally with the target market comments, and consumer choice is what it's all about. I buy everything online, but got them to price match Dixons.co.uk online for my Panasonic plasma and saved £260 on the shelf price(available to everyone who asks, by the way).

    Profit wise, the word on the 'selling tvs' is that they are HUGELY profitable and thats why they were introduced into PC World.

    From the event of taking commission of the sales staff and moving a 'team profitshare', the sales staff wages have plummeted and so has moral. The only thing thats went up is staff turnover.

    I still have many friends with PC World and Currys so this is recent, first hand information.

    A comment from one of these guys recently was ' I don't sell pc's because I get crucified(by team leaders) for reducing the stores overall profit, tv's are where I make the money '

    Perhaps the chairman should start talking to the 'rank and file'..

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  20. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Someone had to say it

    PC World - where's the IT angle?

    i'll get my coat!

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  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    And what do DSG think of their staff?

    Not a Lot - Just look at this happy TechGuy -

    http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2007/10/24/vandals-forced-me-out-of-work-91466-20000338/

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  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re Anyone remember The Link?

    yeah, got a nokia something or other there about 6 years ago, for free, paid orange 50p a day and got 50 mins a day off peak calls. This is when BT (remember them) were charging me 4p a min to call the gf, which I was doing for 50mins a day :).

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  23. Law
    Paris Hilton

    erm

    Example of why sales are down.

    My brother in law took me to curries to spend his £300 voucher he had (long story)... he wanted a creative mp3 player... and a specific one at that. So, after about 1 hour trying to get their useless staff to understand we didn't want an iPod, we want the thing next to it... they then tried to charge about £150 more than it should be. We laughed and said it doesn't cost that much, try again. Eventually he refused to budge, coughing in our face saying "computer sez noooo".

    So, seeing the price guarentee, we went into John Lewis next door - took a picture of this player being sold less than a few steps away - then went back and claimed our guarenteed price, plus 10% off for the insult (as per advert). They tried every trick in the book not to give us the thing.... eventually they ran out of clauses (not in stock, not less than x meters away, excluded products). It took hours.... we even told them how we saw the thing in pc world and on dixons website for the price it should have been... eventually he got the player and a discount ontop of it, but only because the staff couldnt find another excuse not to. The next time we went in, they had removed the player from display. I'm only assuming they are getting an apple-cheque for pushing ipods rather than creative...

    If it wasn't for the voucher, we would have never had gone there... and it just re-enforced my position that they are evil and should be avoided at all costs.

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  24. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @To the lot of you...

    "But for Mr and Mrs Joe Public, they're pretty good"

    NO NO NO.

    In my limited dealings with the DSG group, I received possibly the worst customer service out of all the companies I have dealt with in my lifetime. Suffice to say, no wonder the 'The Tech Guys' are so busy, in my recent dealings with Currys I noticed the queue for the customer services desk trailing out of the door. Although I once was one of the sad faced victims in that queue (waiting for Currys and The Tech Guys to finish playing ping pong with a failed returned microwave), I'm happy to say that although I've been burned (thanks to the appallingly crap WhateverHappens agreement) my dealings with Currys, Currys.digital and PC World are at an end.

    IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO, limit your DSG purchases to 30 quid or less. I feel sorry for those trying to get service for 1200 quids worth of laptop.

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  25. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    I used to work there.. I'm ashamed.

    As an Ex PC world teccy, I lost count of the amount of shit that ppl brought back in that had faults. I got that fed up of arguing so I used to just kill the PC/item and fudge the dates to make it look kosha. I never had any comebacks from this and all the moaners left smiling.

    Glad I left. It was a hole I'm glad to be out of.

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  26. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    RE: The Tech Guys

    As a former laptop engineer for DSG, I feel that I should post a few comments on this, the store engineers are NVQ (not very qualified),and the sales staff even more so, the way the company treats its workshop engineers beggars belief, when I started, the quality of service and parts were pretty good, but slowly they pushed for more output, and quicker turnover, this was achieved by 1: Employing more engineers(25 in 2001, 130 in 2007, in the same workshop!), 2: The use of recycled parts for out of manfacturers warranty machines(imagine fitting a "new" hdd only to find a previous customers OS & data), 3: Adopting a strategy of compulsory overtime to achieve targets(sorry, I don't do compulsory), 4: A bonus scheme that is constantly being changed so as to make a decent wage is virtually impossible without overtime(£3-5 per completed repair, -£7.50 per repeat repair if the unit returns within 3 months for a similar fault, highly likely with "recycled" parts) 5: Constantly changing work patterns for staff that won't play ball with "The Management"...

    I could go on for days but lMHO, the fact is that the workshop engineers are very good at what they do, but those who run the show, shouldn't be allowed to run a paper round....

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  27. Wellard
    Dead Vulture

    Shop floor staff ...

    ... really do not have a clue about computers. I'm in the market for a laptop. I usually pop into my local PC World to see what is currently available on the market, note down prices, get specs etc. and buy for cheaper elsewhere (it's great that you can try before you buy). I wanted to get the system rating from Vista, to give me an idea on how well it would perform. One laptop got a score of 4.5, and another of only 3.2. What's funny is that I had to tell the shop floor monkey where to get this information. He didn't even know it existed. Even after telling him, it still took him 5 minutes to process the information I gave before he could get it. *sigh*

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  28. marc

    stop advertising the cheap rubbish

    PC World should stop trying to out-dell Dell, and promote the decent kit, like John Lewis do. Let the cheap folk go and buy their low margin £299 laptop that will be dead in 6 months from ebuyer or dell, and concentrate on selling quality gear with higher margin. Price isn't everything to a lot of people.

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  29. W

    Re: Re: It's my fault.

    Me three.

    Maybe get the odd pack of consumables from there, but when my Dad bought a new PC recently, I said "Don't go to PC World." and he said "I know". He'd already spotted the machine he wanted in a Scan ad in ComputerActive magazine and was only asking me for piece of mind. (To: any snobs out there - ComputerActive is a decent mag and had empowered/enabled my Dad to come to develop an informed opinion in a marketplace. Something that's difficult to do in the FUD laden tech market.)

    Re: commission: - It's no way to run a retailer. It's no way to be paid for a retail job. Management should be able to run an efficient company rather than expect PFYs to sell,sell,sell by whatever means necessary. And I'd like to think the public would have much more respect if they focused on service quality rather than the hard sell, but it appears that quality service (pre- and after- sales) is becoming something you purchase as an add on. In the form of the Tech Guys.

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  30. Dave Edmondston

    You pay peanuts, you get...

    Here's what a typical 'tech guy' gets, courtesy of http://www.clickajob.co.uk/cgi-bin/user.cgi?module=vacancy_search&task=search_results&keywords=company%3A%28PC%20World%29&postcode=&radius=10&period=&min_salary=&max_salary=&sort=0&vacancy_type=&entries_per_page=10&page=2

    ------

    Tech Guy

    You will be providing a high level of technical/product expertise and apply proactive and specialist solutions to solve customer issues and increase technical revenue with both internal and external brands. You will also give great customer service in all areas of the store as needed to support...

    Salary: £6.34 (starting)

    Location: Basingstoke, Hampshire

    Advertiser: PC World

    From inretail — 15 days ago

    -----

    Says it all.

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  31. Alex McKenna

    They didn't have any Asus eee pcs

    Went into Manchester Dixons on search of the new little laptop, which anyone could see was going to be a smash hit...

    Not a sign, not even a poster up saying they were waiting for stock...

    Hopeless lot. So I went to Micro Anvika, who also didn;t have stock, but at least they knew about it, so I ordered one.

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  32. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Anyone here use HUKD?

    A PCW Manager posted on there a while back. Actually, a lot of what he said was true of the PCW pricing.....

    Basically the gist of it was that PCW make very little overhead on their PCs (especially as it's a bricks-and-mortar establishment which costs a helluva lot more than an online one). They make most of their money in the warranties and additional bits (£10 network cables and the like).

    I've used them in the past in emergencies and I've been building PCs since the early 90's. They're fine for what they do.

    The other thing that people don't seem to realise is that they now price-match (IIRC) the top 10 online electronic stores (strangely, that doesn't include Amazon as they believe they are a bookseller)

    Here's a link to one of the threads.......

    http://www.hotukdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111141

    I'm not saying however that they don't sell shit products because they do have a habit of doing deals with some "Not so well known" companies who make tardy products. Stick to the major brands and they're fine.

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  33. Joe K
    Stop

    Just how stupid do they think users are?

    Seen on a few PS3 game boxes in PC World, including the new Assassins Creed and Ratchet and Clank:

    A sticker saying "HAVE THIS INSTALLED! Avoid the hassle, ask The Tech Guys to install this for you, only £14.99"

    WTF?! What are they going to do, slide the disc in the drive and say "thats what you do when you want to play the game"?!?

    (and no, you cannot install PS3 games to the HD)

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  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alternatives?

    Go on then - name a better alternative.

    Comet : DSGi in disguise. Same staff quality, same products at the same prices. I use them if Currys/PCW haven't got an item in stock.

    Erm.... aaaah..... oh yeah, there's no other alternatives. Depending on what you want there's the like of Staples for printers/monitors etc, but asking them any technical information would make your PCW Shop monkey appear to be cleverer than Stephen Hawkins.

    And don't suggest a local indie computer shop, my experience of them is that you're wasting their time constantly, you get mono-syllabic grunted answers and the prices are astronomical for anything other than nasty ink cartidges. I tried to buy a printer from my local place, £45 for an Epson that was £24.99 at Tesco and Dixons.

    Go on then, I'll own up... DSGi own my ass. I'm a Tech Guy. Which means I'd be the first to whinge if I thought they were at fault, since I spend all day whinging about them. However when it comes to selling fairly cheap equipment and offering not-bad service without having to deal with e-tailers, they're pretty good! I know the profit margin on various items and it's nowhere near as much as it used to be, hence declining staff levels. But satisfaction levels are fairly good, remember you only hear about the poor results. Oh but that wage posted up there, that's rubbish. I certainly wouldn't work for that!

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  35. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Linux on laptop and warranties

    It's no wonder people won't buy laptops there. Remember the story about how they refused to repair a laptop with a broken hinge due to the owner installing Linux on it?

    Or the one about them not replacing a laptop case as the owner had been carrying a Mac laptop in there?

    They could be pushing eeepc's but then nobody would buy the more expensive laptops.

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  36. night troll
    Pirate

    I Use Them All The Time!!

    We have 3 PCW branches close to where the family do our shopping and at least once a week I drop in to PCW to wind up the staff. Usually it's "I'm looking fo a PC or plasma screen TV the bigger the better" then come out with all the tech questions and watch them run themselves ragged trying to find out the answers. After about an hour of wind up I usually say no I'll buy it online and walk out. You see I believe the public should teach the sales staff in these stores to be able to answer all the questions customers throw at them, so I'm doing my bit for Dixons group training. Well, thats the way I see it!

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  37. Stephen Sharpe

    PC World's installation

    We only ever had a computer upgraded there once. 64meg of EDO RAM (the memories!!) and they put bad RAM in. Ok, that can happen to anyone.

    What they didn't excel on was accepting they (directly or indirectly) had caused a fault. Saying that my problems with IEXPLORE and driver crashes and Windows hanging that only appeared after the RAM install must be due to bad drivers.

    I even fresh formatted the thing.

    They did eventually relent and do it again. Guess they didn't like being told by someone whose voice hadn't even yet broken.

    Ah well, it helped me step from above-average luser to PFY. ;)

    Never again.

    Some of the staff are quite nice. Some of them are horrible. Good for printer cartridges in a rush. :)

    I prefer Comet if I have to use a shop.

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  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: You pay peanuts, you get...

    I know someone who works on the phones at the tech guys call centre in Nottingham(i don't know if they have other centres), they have finished their probation period, but their money hasn't gone up, they are still on a training wage. The "shifts" are crap, including weekends, they sometimes have to go in for just 4 hours on a Sunday for example, hardly pays for the petrol. They are totally demotivated, and tell me they are not the only one to be treated like this. I wouldn't have recommended friends/family years ago to buy pc's/laptops from PCW, it was worth scouring the internet and other sources to save 500 quid, but nowdays they are much nearer the mark and it's not worth my time looking for them.

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