Oh well, never mind.

Oh dear - of all the retail outlets they had to choose the biggest muppets of them all.

"DSGi's IT support service, TechGuys, also forms part of the deal."

lol WHAT IT support service? They have one?!

I think this is incredibly short sighted on Dells part which will hurt them even more in the long run. Can you really imagine walking into PC World and asking for a Dell box with linux?

I leave the reader to the outcome of that scenario....

It will be interesting to hear the ads on the TV 'we don't sell in shops' has been changed. eg, we sell in some stores that people will only visit if they are really desperate / bored / warmest place on a cold and rainy day.

Still, I must not grumble, the more they sell, the more break fix work we get LOL

Dell UK sold through PC World back in 1992/1993, though not many folk ever noticed.

I was at Dell at the time in a junior IT role, supporting warranty systems. I had to look through the complicated warranty forms filled out by PC World staff. Most were illegible or incomplete, meaning that customers calling Dell for service found there was no record of them or their purchase.

So, let's review:

- Dell selling through PC World

- Poorly designed systems

- Bad communications between companies

- Poor service from PC World & Dell

So much has changed in 15 years. But not here apparently...

not.

packard bell and emachines became as 'matsui' in the minds of the public after takeup with dsg.

selling more machines might happen in the short term, but how much more damage to the name of 'dell' after DSG store staff(not their fault they don't get the necessary training) try to deal with the (user) problems?

mental image>> woman saying to friend "we got little johnny one of those dell laptops from pc world for xmas.. great job until it broke(not our fault-honestly..) and no one wanted to know us on boxing morning! never again!!" <<

going down...

I reckon Dell will do well out of this, after all its just consumer/retail computers they will be selling in the stores so more exposure for them. Lets face it, IT angle aside, if you are joe public looking for a new PC, where do you go? Tesco? Nah, most go to PC World.......

The currently terrible Indian tech support line, or the even worse tech support from DSG?

I think I'd rather risk it with the Indians than let any of the DSG muppets give me any advice, having had a laptop from DSG recently and needing support, it was far worse than any support I had from dell when my desktop died.

Another nail in the coffin really.

DSG's stores were once marques in their own right. Not perfect, but nonetheless they had a certain appeal. Now they are all cookie cuts from a master plan. The name on the front is different but the stock, the staff and the culture are all the same.

It may be a coup for DSG to get their hands on Dell kit - but as others have already said here, the opportunity to snatch failure from the hands of success is very real. I'll be none of the deal-makers at Dell have ever shopped at DSG. Perhaps if they had then they'd have run a mile.

DSG? So what exactly is the IT angle to this story?

The reason DSG's support is so poor is simple, they treat their staff very poorly, and, in the case of telephone support, since they sold off the call centre to Crapita, the level of support has dropped, mainly due to the reliance on script based "problem solving".

I used to work in the call centre, after 2 years of being fobbed off for promotion/certification ( I didn't generate enough sales leads to warrant any certification/promotion, funny, I thought I was supposed to be helping repair broken laptops, not a bloody salesman) I left and worked in their laptop workshop, this was excellent at first, but soon after gaining A+, the workshop quota of engineers was doubled, and the required output doubled, shift work was introduced whilst the bonus scheme was "adjusted" to make it much harder to earn enough money without doing overtime, sometimes made compulsory.

Now they're taking on Dell, and if they give any proper training, it'll be to a selected few "specialists", and the rest of the engineers will struggle, because all laptops have indvidual quirks/faults/design "features", which will manifest themselves during the lifetime of the laptop, as they now have roughly 120 engineers, proper training will be virtually impossible during peak, so best of luck if you're foolish enough to be tempted into buying a Dell, either way the support will be poorly trained, poorly paid, and probably looking for another job, with better conditions and prospects...

I bought a Dell PC about three years ago. The support was alright I suppose the problem was fixed. Otherwise I've upgraded and added parts as and when I needed to, had to, or just wanted to.

PC World stores (sorry Adam Szostak) at least in the Bristol area are no more than warehouses with weird layouts and very few staff manning the aisles/departments. The last piece of hardware I purchased was a hard drive and not having fitted one before, I phoned up the independent store and got walked through the whole set there and then. No call center, no hassle.

It's not difficult to hire PC hobbyists (not qualified engineers or anything so expensive) that take a passing interest in computer hardware/software, gaming, connectivity and heck why not consoles and of course enjoy the role of customer service, and I'm sure a high percentage of your own staff are in that mould. However if you pay peanuts, you will find more monkeys.

Being able to buy Dell in a store however kind of defeats the "Taylor made for you" tag line that they sell themselves on, but waiting for 14 days or so to go back to the retail hell of the average UK Mall, isn't so nice at all. Maybe it would be better to order online and then pay and collect in store once the unit is ready and has been delivered to the store most convenient to the person - beats waiting at home for a delivery person that may or may not arrive.

Yes, I'm sure it will be a good deal for the high street stores and Dell, as long as the customer service levels at both ends of the chain are properly managed. That's all anyone really wants isn't it? A solution when a problem arises.

Couldn't agree more mate.....

I have been a reg reader for several years now, and am often left gobsmaked by the coments, that get made about PC World, I am nor ashamed to admit, I aslo work for the company, and I think that the points to make are spot on....

For example I get realy anoyed by, the way our instore technicians get slated for being rubish, by people who probaly havent even set foot in one of our stores for 5 or 6 years, yet alone had cause to actualy deal with any of them....

Don't get me wrong, I am sure that from time to time, a situation ariese and we make a mistake, just like anyone else after all our staff are human, but then I have had bad experiances from small indipendant IT sales and support companys, and we at PC world often have to pick up the pices left behind after someone else drops the ball.....

These however don't make it into the press, or get mentiond on line as no one seems that interested with them....

The point to remember here is, that PC World and the DSGI group as a whole, wants customers to be happy, with margins the way they are at the moment, they want customers for life, as thats the only way for the company to be sucsesfull....

So although they do not always get things right, if you are unhappy at any point, ask to speak to the stores general manager, and they will do everthing, in his/hers power to solve your problem for you, if they say no, then theres a good chance that the situation is not as clear cut, as you might think.....

PC World & the DSGI group as a whole are focused on customer satisfaction, perhaps more than some of you that havent visited our stores for a few years might think, so give us the benifit of the doubt, and give us a chance, who knows we might change your mind.....

I used to be a Technician in PC World.

I'd agree with Adam. We had a store with £5m turnover, 18 staff, clinic manned primarily by me, dealing with umpteen irate people per day, the VAST majority of whom had caused whatever problem they were whinging about themselves - laptops dropped/lids closed on pens, files deleted etc etc. The actual failure rate of the products was pretty low. The main problem is the average computer literacy of the PC World customer.

I would agree on training. I am self taught, I was trained nothing in PC World, despite many training initiatives from head office, in reality, non of the stores that I know of have anything like the time to actually do any training.

What I would say is give the guys in the stores a break. It's crap hours, crap pay, abuse all day from frankly moron customers who are clueless and expect things to be fixed instantly, all for a starting Technician salary of about £5.75 per hour.

If you take a close look, PC World's PC/Laptop prices are extremely competitive, and not a rip off at all, the rip off comes in inks and software etc, but then there are retail premises to pay for, unlike internet vendors.

If DSGi put some real effort into training and importantly staff retention, it would actually be ok, but its a stepping stone on the career ladder for too many people and as such customer service will always suffer.

As a final point, Dell - garbage. We had dozens of customers with Dells each month who came to us because Dell's support was so bad.

All of you who sit in an office somewhere giving internal support should consider what it is like to spend 10 hours a day giving support at a public desk to people who are clueless before critising people who do the bestthey can given the circumstances.

As someone who works for Dell Tech Support it is amusing to read these comments from bitter know-it-alls. While I can;t speak for my Indian colleagues, here in the Business support section we are currently orunning on a customer satisfaction level of nearly 90%.

@Dan - "I would like to see what percent your staff are telling people to re-build thier PCs to get a fix."

It is a fact that a great deal of PC problems are caused by (l)users installing something they shouldn't or spyware infested systems. In my experience more than 50% hardware faults turn out to be misconfigured or incompatible software, corrupt profiles and disk read errors caused by someone improperly shutting a system down. But trying to tell a self described tech-god this can be an exercise in futility.

The only time I have used DGSI techs is when I had an ID10T moment and bought the wrong motherboard. It was swapped over in minutes and I was on my way wih no fuss.

For me, PC world splits in two when I think of it. I have always found the stores to be manned by poorly trained people with (I assume) massive sales targets. But the Tech Guys have always been good in my experience. We have a stand alone TG store near us that I've used, both over the phone and in person and I've recommended to people. All of us have had good experiences and cheap too.

It's alsmost as if they are two completely separate entities with differing corporate paths.

I don't work for PC world and haven't dealt with the repair people but the last few times I've visited with friends who have been buying hardware (monitors, pcs and printers) the sales staff have been excellent. Very unbiased and genuinely keen to sell the product that's right for the customer. I've normally kept quiet about my profession (IT bod) unless asked directly so I don't think it's been my presence that has resulted in the lack of bias.

Before these visits I'd always assumed PC world would be the same as comet, etc, with their wishy-washy sales pitch. But I've been surprised each time. Shame some people slag them off because of a few isolated bad incidents. From my experience they've exceeded my expectations every time.

These comments make me laugh. If you were one of teh biggest IT companies in the world looking for a channel partner for your consumer goods who would you sell through? Like it or not, DSGi own this market space, there really isn't much choice.

As for this move diluting the Dell brand, it doesn't seem to have done HP, Toshiba or even Apple much harm even with PC World's Tech Guys handling "support". If you want a high-end or specialised Dell product running Linux then buy it online, I hear Dell are quite good at that. However, if you're an average consumer you probably wonder why you cant pick up a cheap Dell laptop in PC World when all of Dell's competitors have one on the shelf.

This was a logical and inevitable move for Dell who are currently very keen to exploit the channel market.

Firstly, I appreciate your taking the time to make comments here. That took guts.

To take your last point....

"I ask you to drop your prejudice and try one of our store to see the improvement for yoursleves. Pc World is the uk's number 1 Pc supplier and frankly unless you build yourself there is no-one in the retail sector who is better on service or price . . "

Adam, I have. Over and over, during a period of over a decade. I have been in your shops. I have spoken to your staff. On every occasion, I have been disappointed / frustrated. Every. Single. Time.

(Except once, when I ran in, grabbed a flash memory stick, went to the counter, clapped my hands over my ears and shouted "LALALALAAAA" while the till-monkey tried to sell me insurance costing more than the stick, paid (£4 more than Maplin for the same item, I found out later that day) and ran out as fast as my legs could carry me.)

PC World IS the #1 PC supplier in the UK.

* highest number of dedicated outlets (high visibility)

* aggressive marketing indicating that prices are lower and support is better than it actually is

* the British public is woefully ignorant regards pc technology.

I accept that you have neither the time nor the money to train your staff - but that ain't my problem. I am not going to come to PC World to make my expensive purchases when I can get them cheaper elsewhere, with a better after-sales service. The only time I will set foot in your stores now (aside from hiding from the rain etc!) is if there is a specific item I need right now, and Maplin is shut. Or if I'm particularly bored and want to see staff squirm when I say - "nice laptop. Only £1,500? Yeah OK. But can I get XP with that?"

("There is no-one...who is better on service or price." Hehe. Good one.)

so, when the dust settles and the boxes are in the shops (if they ever actually are in the shops), will I be able to walk in and drop my pennies on a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed and actually walk out with it there and then???

I'm reading this all with interest - I've been doing support jobs both face to face and over the phone for years. I've also been shopping at PC world because it's close and convienient when I need something "NOW".

I have a real issue with going to PC World and if I could shop elsewhere, I would. About two months ago, I asked one of their staff for a desktop suitable for business use. He tried to sell me a Home Entertainment PC running Windows Vista Media Centre Edition (or what ever it's called).

When I requested that I needed a Business Desktop running Windows XP Pro, I was led to a gaming machine with 4GB RAM and a Dual-Core 2.6GHz processor with 256MB Graphics card running Vista Ultimate.

I had stated time and time again that all the Computer needed to do was run a standard office suite and browse the internet and I'm offered a box that has a greater spec than a number of our production servers!

Sorry Adam et al that are in support of DSGi, the staff are at best amature and at worst incompetent. With pre-tax profits of £52.4m last year [0], isn't some of this money better spent on training staff instead of paying fat-cat's dividends? Surprisingly enough, if DSGi trained their staff, more of us would shop there and the profits would reach £100m in a very short space of time even if DSG reduced the prices of goods.

DSGi do not provide good service and they are not "competitively priced" - I can get a lot of things that DSGi sell for cheaper at the Tesco Megastore next door, I just can't get a business desktop from there yet.

/me wanders off to dell.co.uk - I'm going to shop on line to prove that it's the way forward... :oP

Matt.

How many people will go to PC World, have a look at the PC, and then order it off of the Dell website if they like the look of it? That's generally what I use the PC World showroom for.

I was one of the 100+ internal IT staff who was outsourced, so I'm very much aware of how much focus is given to profit, and nowt else.

As a shopper, I've tried to avoid PCW/Currys as much as possible.

I think Adam has missed the point. You put the customer first. Always. The problem goes far beyond the laughable "tech guys". It extends right down to basic shop management - in my local Currys/PCW it isn't uncommon for there to be no-one on the tills.

Now come on Adam, are you telling me that your budget is so stretched that it cannot run to having someone at the till to take my money off me?

You need to go back to running your store as a SHOP and not try to see it as a business. Your first job is to sell things, all else comes secondary, including you having time to post here!

The whole point of a retail store is for it's associates to be able to provide the correct advice and guidance in order to secure a sale! If they wanted to just get goods in and out as quickly as possible with no fuss then they wouldn't be a retail outlet, they'd be an online store.

Of course online stores work on even smaller margins, sometimes even 1% profit because they work on volume and have lower overheads.

In a retail store, one of those "overheads" is staff which should also include training. You wouldn't just plomp someone on a checkout and tell them to get on with it because they are handling cash. So what's the difference with the sales floor staff...they are still handling cash in the form of physical goods so their care, attention and knowledge should be for the benefit of the customer. Not just some random crap made up to get the sale!

The Tech Guys I would imagine is the most profitable part of the company, simply because most of it is labour based charging. I mean how can you warrant charging £150 for reinstalling Windows on a system which has a simple piece of malware which could easilly be removed by a tool!

I work in IT and in my previous job supported the public. If I had a pound for every time I heard "PC World reinstalled or told me to reinstall Windows" to fix the simplest or problems (even System Restore would have fixed), I would no longer be working and would have my feet up on a sun lounger in the Caribean!

Training is the key here. The fact that most PC World associates don't have basic knowledge and understanding of things like networking and the difference between memory (RAM) and disk space (one of their recent ads stated something like "it has a 500GB hard drive which should give you all the memory you need!"). Ok so technically it is a type of memory but it misleads the customer. When I tell someone their computer needs more memory they then ask if they should get an external hard drive or something!!

Rant over, to summarise, PC World have a duty to provide training for their staff in order for them to be able to give informed and useful advice to their customer! Not spend that money on flashy glass entrances to their stores and decor....people really don't care about that!

>>However, there are a lot of people in this world who don't understand how computers work.

Unfortunately, most of them got jobs as the Tech guys.

I can't see this being a problem myself.

Dell want to sell their PC's in the high street as there is no growth in the online market, if you wanted to do this in the UK who would you make a deal with? Which company in the UK is the biggest high street PC company?

Dells support may have been suitable for them, but don't you find it frustrating if you want it fixed but you have to wait 2 weeks to ship it back to them then get it sent back to you? With a PC World deal you can drop your PC off with them, if its a simple fix you may be able to get it resolved whilst you wait, or pick it up the next day.

Dell aren't trying to get new customers into PC world, what they are trying to do is get the existing customers that go into PC world to buy Dells, by offering them.

Don't get me wrong guys I don't like shopping at PC world, I'd probably never purchase a PC from them as I have had bad experiences in the past. But what I will do is drop into my local PC world in January and take a look at the Dell PC's then if I like it I'll buy it online.

I'm diabetic.

I go into Tesco and pick up some biscuits, they are clearly and unambiguously labelled with sugar content on the packet. The information is factual. In the same way as, on a desktop pc, the (e.g.) RAM or HDD size is.

I would not expect a Tesco employee to be able to answer "I am a diabetic, which digestive biscuits do you recommend?" for a number of (I hope) self-evident reasons.

I would expect someone from whom I am potentially buying a £1,000+ piece of kit to be able to recommend one based on my stated requirements rather than just trying to flog me the one with the best set of flashing lights.

....true. But when you are spending considerably more than a pound, you do have reason to believe that the staff are better informed than just shelf stackers.

It's unfair to compare a medical necessity (as in sugar content, not as in biscuits) with a luxury purchase to justify sales staff not having a clue.

The only reason why PC World stay in business is that they advertise to people who have even less knowledge than their sales staff. If the world was, as you'd like them to be, better informed, we'd all buy online.

Slightly off topic, but im amazed to see that no one has complained that there's no tech gals. In the days of PC and sexual equality, how can they blatantly advertise single sex computer repair engineers.

I quite like Dell laptops. This means I can check them out in the stores before I decide to buy one with my exact spec.

This is a perfect example. A "PC Line" brand USB cable for £14.99

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0443132973.1197636678@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccfgaddmkiemghjcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=451389&category_oid=-10280

Hope you sleep well at night Adam Szostak knowing you rip off the public in such a disgusting way.

I used to work in the PC Clinic as a lead technician at PC World about 18 months ago - shortly before they moved over to being called the "Tech Guys".

I can go as saying; there is nothing that my colleagues or I would not do in that place for our customers.

The amount of hardware which we would be handed over to us for repairs, repairs which are caused by customers (spilling red wine over a laptop keyboard, the pen on the keyboard of a laptop and closing the lid) and not through simple hardware failure was enormous.

In most cases, the customer expected us to repair their faulty item, at no cost to them, simply because they bought it from us. Technically, we should have simply said we couldn't do anything and turn the customer away, but we would try and see if we could resolve the issue first.

We would go out of way to help our customers - We might be on a day off and we technicians would call each other up requesting extra information about one of our customers which we had been dealing with, as the customer wanted to ask some questions. The amount of times we would drive to the next store (about 15-20 miles round trip) on our day off or straight after a 10 hour shift to pick up a product because the customers one was faulty (on our day off out of our way). Its amazing how much behind the scenes work your average technician will go through to keep a customer happy.

As to say that the Tech Guys don't know any thing, I myself have a degree in Computer Science, my colleagues had the same, were A+, MCSE certified......we certainly had the knowledge to resolve the issues handed to us.

The only thing which did annoy us, were customers who thought they knew everything but knew nothing, trying to dictate to us on how to do our jobs and how to fix an issue, without realising they are not the most important person in the World and that there are other customers which need our time and help.

So the next time you go into one of the stores and approach one of the tech guys (and gals) make sure you do it with a smile and do not storm up to that counter thinking you are the only person in the World.

A 1.5 metre USB for £19.99 - with a big sign above it saying "great value"

I rest my case

True! a Tesco's employee wouldn't be trained to know that and they should therefore refuse to answer the question or tell the buyer to read the info on the packet! That is the manufacturer's responsibility (and a legal one I believe).

My point was that the PC World employees will spout out some bullshit in order to get a sale, no matter if it's what the customer has actually asked. A Tesco's employee would not even entertain this idea!

However, if the diabetic had suffered a relapse because of wrong information a Tesco's employee had given him, there would be a pending lawsuit and at the very least, he wouldn't go back to the store.

With PC World, it's almost a monopoly, people are unaware of online options or do not know where to get advice on their PC so PCW is the only alternative! Again because of it's high visibility and misleading marketing claims!! And independent suppliers with the knowledge and ability to give decent advice and assistance firstly get crap margins from their distributors to work on and therefore can't compete and can't expand or go out of business because of companies like PC World telling everyone how cheap their stuff is!

Sorry but the bulk of the people who staff my local branch really are muppets. I got a cheap Toshiba laptop deal in the summer, came with a memory upgrade, and it took the two blokes half an hour to rip the packaging apart, install the new memory without any static precautions, and then repack the box with the machine loose inside. Meanwhile their female colleague was trying to tell them a) that the packaging was designed to be re-usable (ignored - they ripped it up with a pen instead of folding it out), b) that they needed not to pile stuff up on top of the machine, and c) that she knew the model and could do it in no time if they would let her. She was rebuffed. At one point the younger bloke started trying to "explain" to her and me how the memory upgrade would work and I had to tell him that he was completely wrong on all counts while she just raised her eyebrows in resigned exasperation. This didn't seem to trouble him, he just carried on the conversation with his sidekick, who spent the whole time hovering about doing sod all. I then spent ten minutes going through a completely unnecessary rigmarole at the checkout and being offered a warranty which would already have been voided anyway by the way the upgrade had been done.

Yes, it's just another piece of anecdotal evidence, but they do pile up you know. Nobody I know has a good word to say about service at our local branch of PC World (Edinburgh, Fort Kinnaird), and that means the problem is you, not your customers.