Mike Southby

I was amused this morning to read that staff at some shops owned by the DSG group of stores (Dixons Stores Group, i.e. PC World) have been caught insulting customers on Facebook. A group setup for staff of DSG features comments from existing and former staff. The comments accuse customers of being “stupid” and recount alleged incidents that have happened during the employees working time at the stores.

Are they for real?

I remember a few instances over the last few years, such as the time I was told I would not be able to buy a Serial-USB converter because “they do not exist Sir, what you need is a Serial-Parallel converter”, urm yes they do actually. Then there was the time more recently when I overheard an alleged technician giving advice at the PC Repair Helpdesk, “no sir, it’s not possible to put the original software back on the machine, you’ll need to replace the machine with a new one, can I recommend…”, great advice, not.

Stores such as PC World are a convenience; they stock a fairly good range of general IT peripherals although at an extortionate price. I try not to use them if I can as I get much better pricing from on-line retailers, but they do have a place when you need a particular component straight away. My gripe is the lack of knowledge available at the stores, the general public are fooled into believing that they are going to receive excellent knowledge and advice from the staff at a competitive cost when in fact, they are often simply mislead because the staff member in question does not know the answer.  Perhaps it’s about time we revolted and created a new group on Facebook and shared some of our experiences with the staff of DSG, now that would make interesting reading!