[nffc]

Originally Posted by Gareth

Apples and pears, nffc. A PC can be used for an enormous number of tasks, and some PCs cope far better than others at achieving said tasks. A car, on the other hand, is always used for going from A to B. There's a lot less scope of variation of what you can do with a car... admittedly you can transport different types of goods, or a different number of people, but at the end of the day, a car is used to transport you from one place to another.

As dodgy as 2nd hand car salesman are, if you ask them whether you'd be able to take a Kia Pride off-roading, even the most dodgiest Boycie wouldn't suggest it's gonna be possible. Yet some of the things I've heard from PCW salesmen are comparable to this (playing all games for the next 2 years at the highest settings, on their budget PC...?!? ).

Don't mean to have a go at you, nffc, but wouldn't you expect a sales assistant to not just be "reasonably" accurate be completely accurate? We're talking about PCs here, they're not really that complicated, are they? It's not rocket science, after all.

In this case, you were able to filter the bullsh*t from the truth, but put yourself in a different situation... maybe digital cameras aren't your fortÃÃâ€*’© - would you be happy if a sales assistant in a camera shop only told you half-truths purely in order to get a sale?

PC World sales assistants can largely get away with it because it's a consumer product they're selling. When dealing with customers for non-consumer products, i.e. business sales, you'll find that salespeople have to be 100% truthful. Why should it be different for Joe Bloggs on the High Street? Maybe it's because the items being sold are cheaper per se, but for the person buying an item at PC World, that's not much help.

I don't really blame the salespeople - it's PC World that should be hiring technically-oriented salespeople. If my local PC shop can find suitably technical sales people, I'm sure PC World can.

I agree with most of what you say - buyer beware to an extent but the salesmen should be accurate in any business, at the same time, the customer should research before they buy, have a rough idea of what they want from a product, ask around etc.

Seems this thread is turning more into an anti-DSG rant than anything else. Which is pretty unfair considering that DSG probably shift more units than most other retailers in the UK, and let's face it, as with any company only the mistakes are highlighted. As with anything you buy what is suited to your needs and / or budget, if you want a leet gaming rig then maybe a Packard Bell is not for you. You build yourself or go somewhere like Alienware or a local dealer who can custom build. On the other foot, if you bought a PC for a novice that came with XP CD + driver CDs plus nothing else, no security software or anything, then equally would get lambasted for "not making users aware of viruses etc and using it to sell more products" yet the supplied versions of NIS *which let's face it is wack* get sneered at too. Just can't win. It's a case of horses for courses, and unless you have specialist usage of it then all PCs are pretty much equal and if you look into the purchase then you will make the best decision for you. That said I have many stories of store salesmen BSing customers, and considering they have a dedicated phone line to notify us and book problems in, then the amount that say "i took it to PCW / went to PCW and they said to ring to book it in" is daftly high.

As for the ad, I've already said I believe the ad to be inherently true but just poorly illustrated. Nothing more to add.

Stuart - how many of those complaints were actually upheld? Anyone can complain about an advert even for no reason in which case the ASA will just laugh.