PC World feels the Vista pinch (again)

Slow adoption of Microsoft Vista has hamstrung profits again at DSG, the retail group that owns PC World. In a statement to the stock exchange today, it warned that overall group profit margins for the 24 weeks to 13 October will be down 0.6 per cent "largely driven by slower Vista-related hardware sales". PC World has been …

[Vernon Lloyd]

Does that mean

1: That they will be selling PCs for a normal decent price

2: The 'Tech Guys' will have to be made redundant

3: In your face Sales persons will be made redundant

4: They will overcharge for a PC Health Check (ie run one piece of software and vacumn out dust) and charge £50 to find that your computer is still just as slow.

Ideal World = A World without DPG and expecially without Packard Hells, sorry Packard Bells, which are the cheapest, most unreliable with the worst technical support ever.

Example: On my friends wifes PC (A Packard Hell)

Typical Mastercare personell:

Issue with PC was computer not booting, CPU was running above 85 deg C in the BIOS, i had to wet my finger to touch the heatsink (with the usual ssssshshh). The guy on the phone claimed that 85 deg was perfectly normal and that the heatsink should get hot. He told me that he was qualified and that I did not know what I was talking about.(I recorded the message on a dictaphone for later). I explained that the CPU was replaced a day ealier by a Mastercare PC field tecchie. He then told me that I had invalidated the warrenty by opening the case. I told him that I was more than qualified to do this. One arguement later where he swore at me meant a visit to PC world with original receipt.

By then I had worked out that the muppet who installed the CPU had NOT put on and Heatsink Compound.

I spoke to the muppet in charge, sorry store manager and demanded (made sure I was in a very busy part of the store), a New Mobo, CPU and PSU (which has itself got very hot due to excess heat). I basically told him what needs replacing or I would ask for my friends wife (who didn't want any trouble, the salesperson favourite) money back he said no. So I played the dicaphone message to him (in frront as many people as possible) and after the 10th customer walked out in disgust he took the PC and gave my friends wife a brand new pc and installed her HDD as secondry HDD for her.

The knife twister is that is was his son on the phone when we rang Mastercare. Simple rule in life when dealing with big companies, make sure you complain near as many people as possible. Oh, make sure you tell them you are recording the telephone message thou.......:-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue Microsoft?

Didn't Bill and his posse state that Vista was the best thing for business since Adam Smith.

Turns out to have been a bit of lie doesn't it... but then again that's marketing for you

[The Other Steve]

If no one else has said it...

BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAA.

Something that makes both DSG *and* MS look like twats can surely only be a good thing.

[Anthony Hulse]

The End of The (PC) World

"Adding to the mixed outlook, the Italian Unieuro computer store division continued to struggle, with DSG blaming poor consumer confidence."

With more UK residents waking up to just how bad PC World are, DSG can amend that excuse for next quarter's profits warning too.

[Steven Hewittt]

Bollocks

Your average Joe in the street probably doesn't know about Vista. If he does it's going to be "isn't that windows or something?"

They won't NOT purchase a PC cause it has Vista on it!

What DSG mean is that they brought a shit load of PC's thinking they'd shift a ton more than they did the previous year, only to find out that it's only marginally more than last year - leaving them with a crap load of stock left over.

(As El Reg reported on higher PC sales since Vista's launch compared to this time last year)

I actually have the few remaining people in my company who don't have Vista comming up pestering me nearly EVERY day as to when they'll get it - consumers don't read these pages or comments - they'll just use it rather than refuse to buy a PC.

Just piss poor stock management from DSG who are looking for a scapegoat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Vernon

My parents bought a PC from PC World (VERY MUCH against my REPEATED advice) and paid extra for a three year warranty (once again VERY MUCH against my REPEATED advice). One day, the PC started freezing, they used their warranty to get someone to look at it. Without even looking at it, or getting it to freeze, the engineer declared it must be the hard drive. He then proceeded to tell them that under the warranty T&Cs he would have to take the old HD with him as that was the definition of "replace" (Oh.). NB He told them this AFTER putting the new HD in. My parents, not being utter muppets and quite capable of being arsey when needed, my mum got him to take it out again and fit her old HD.

After reading through the contract several times, there is NO definition of replace, much less anything saying that the engineer must take the HD back with him. My parents finally sent an official complaint to them, which got nastily rejected. After talking to Which legal support, the lawyers had a word with the support service and PC World. My parents immediately got £1200 of vouchers.

[Andy Worth]

Shame shame

One advantage of people gaining more technical knowledge in general is that eventually PC World will either have to sort themselves out or go out of business.

Everyone who knows anything knows that what they said is just an excuse. The truth is that the public are wising up to how crap they are.

[Hedley Phillips]

For once Jo public is in the know

This must be the first time that Joe Public knows that the latest WOW offering from M$ is not very good (trying to be polite there) and is staying away in droves. Good on em.

Sales are down? no wonder, Vista is not ready. So far the one test machine I have had has crashed when burning a DVD, the copy command doesn't work, it sat calculating how long it would take and then just disappeared. I ended up using xcopy instead, and the search function doesn't work.

And this is on a monster spec machine.

If the basics don't work, heaven help the rest of the OS.

Lets just hope that JP continues to not buy PC's with Vista and M$ finally realsie that they can no longer release trash and expect people to buy it just because it ha sa shiny box.

[Chris Long]

Nice

So that's a pretty direct admission that the primary purpose of Vista is to drive increased hardware sales. Obviously we all knew that anyway (I had to replace 90% of my peripherals when I upgraded to XP) but nice to have it confirmed.

[Steve Browne]

Deja vu all over again

or Same shit different company

I remember working at IBM in 1984, and mentioned to the drones there that they were living in a fantasy land where they really believed that people were going to continue paying ever higher prices for the same product. Guess what, they didn't and IBM almost went to the wall.

Now it would seem that Microsoft, once time IBM partner, is getting into the same boat, if it hasnt already. As are PC World.

Do they really think people are interested in computer software ? Because they are gravely mistaken if they do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all bad at Victim World for the punters

Victim (sorry, I mean PC) World isn't all completely bad for the punters.

Where I'm based the choice for buying computer parts off the shelf is... limited. So one afternoon in a bit of an emergency I popped down to Victim World to find that the thing I needed which the website was telling me "out of stock" in that store was there on the shelf. Data accuracy not a great thing clearly. (If you're asking why I went down for an out of stock item it's because they're stock levels on the website are so inaccurate it's worth a try if the journey isn't too out the way.)

Asked the very very bored sales assistant if I could have it at web price rather than at the in-store price (double the web price) since the online stock check had not told me the truth and he just went "yeah whatever", looked up the web price, and put it straight through.

Maybe the end of Victim World really is nigh: bad support, slipping sales, stock data telling people not to shop there, and stores people who are simply willing to drop prices.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Bollocks

Steven: the average Joe in the street does know that Vista is bad news. Vista's reputation is now so notorious that this is one of the few things Joe feels for sure that he knows about computing.

A friend is about to start a PhD and asked for advice on the laptop she is purchasing to do the writing. She has spent the last two years in a small town in the Australian outback sifting the sand of dry river beds for fish eggs. Out of touch with city life to the extent she was amazed by the LCD TVs that have sprung up in shops and which are doing the job once done by neon lights.

I recommended she use Vista (the last thing she will need during the thesis-writing crunch in a few years time is a Xp to Vista++ upgrade bought on by some Microsoft-inflicted End of Support). Her response "but Vista is shIt!" She'd heard about Vista's uselessness on a AM radio chat show made in a town of 20,000 people.

That is the depth of Microsoft's problem with Vista. The job for Microsoft is no longer to save Vista's Edsel-like reputation, but to prevent Vista's pongy PR from infecting people's view of Office. Not the best of time for Microsoft to have changed Office's look and feel -- can you hang yourself with a ribbon?

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: PC World Prices

You can level many criticisms at PC World, but high prices for PCs isn't one of them. Have you seen how cheap laptops are these days?

[Charles Manning]

MS made Joe Public aware

As Hedley Phillips says, this time Joe and Jane Sixpack do know that it is Vista and that the sugar is only pixel deep.

Why? Well MS went to such pains to make sure that everyone was aware of this new shiny Vista thing. Since approx Win98 it has been pretty hard for most punters to really tell the difference between Windows releases. No difference, then no compelling reason to buy the new one.

But this time MS shot off the foot. People are getting more savvy that software is prone to "issues". If they had said something like: "The same, but better and shiny" they might have convinced people that Vista is an incremental improvement. But no; instead they take great pains to say it's all written from scratch. That makes people a bit nervous.

Basically, they're the victims of their own overhyped marketing machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Definition of replace

From Dictionary.com

to provide a substitute or equivalent in the place of: to replace a broken dish.

What else did you expect "replace the hard drive" meant exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista Basic is much too basic!

I feel sorry for the guys at PC World struggling to sell all that crap (Windows Vista Basic). After my ancient Pentium One MMX threw a wobbly (it had the virus that randomly adds spaces everywhere) I had to get a new laptop. First one came from Comet, a widescreen Fujitsu Amilo running Vista. It overheated and crashed and was very unstable but I do have to admit it was a brilliant emailer. BUT for four hundred quid you want a bit more than an emailer - it had no wordprocessor! OK I thought I'll put my "legacy" software on it. NOPE Vista won't have it. What with the crashing and overheating I took it back and did get a refund (with difficulty) then trotted over to PC World. Hallelujah! they had a discontinued E Machines laptop at £199.99 running XP. CD/DVD at the front (more convenient) and much less bulky than the widescreen Fujitsu. Runs cool and is stable. I was so pleased with it that I went back the next day for another but was told "we don't sell XP machines anymore" The old Toshiba is cured now after using a £4.99 anti virus disc bought on eBay and is a handy spare machine. To put it in a nutshell I think it is time that the shops started selling what people want, and not new fangled unreliable half baked gimmicry. Best regards from Davey.

[Anonymous Coward]

PC world helped me a lot

a few years ago.....by being 30 minutes late opening their new super-store, much to the disgust of the masses queuing up outside looking for a bargain, I made the best of it and gave everyone in the queue a business card for my PC business..........

[Timbo]

Is Joe Public learning from his mistakes?

...sounds like he might be, if PCWorld can't sell the latest pile of poo to them...with the 'net becoming more accessible and "word of mouth" opinions being available through numerous forums, it sounds like the start of the death knell for DSG selling PC's...even if the kit HAS got the latest flash-bang-wallop OS.

If customers don't go through the doors, they won't be buying anything - even if they buy online and collect in store...(what a ruse that is !!).

Mind you, I have to admit popping in there stores just to see what stuff is in their bargain bins....coz as long as you know what you are buying there can be some cool kit there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple Soloution

Stop selling machines with VISTA on them! Its a total waste of money.

[Terry Bernstein]

Selling hardware

Even if the user in the street doesn't know that Vista is a waste of space, the point is that by definition, neither then do they then think that Vista is worth buying a new PC for. And since the users who do know what the are doing aren't leading opinion towards Vista as a "must have" there's no route for the unknowing to follow them to an upgrade.

(PS I got bitten with a Packard Bell from them many years ago - once!)

[Richard Day]

Unfair

Come on guys, you're being a bit hard on PC World. I bought a new laptop from them a few weeks ago and it runs like a dream: boots in 90 seconds, never crashes, runs cool and is really responsive.

Runs Ubuntu, of course. The one time I tried to boot into Vista it spent five minutes 'calculating the performance' of my PC and then crashed. Never ran it since.

Not the laptop's, or indeed PC World's fault...

[Anonymous Coward]

@ anyone!

Okay, I work at PC World because otherwise I would have to pay my bank lots of money for a big overdraft, and would resent that. It is my "other" job because my "day" job pays too little. Anyway, DSGi is pretty flawed I would agree, but a lot of its employees are in the same boat as me; I suspect many have to do two part time jobs to make ends meet and thereby circumvent any Euro bollocks working time directive by working 50+ hours a week, or they have to live in shared accommodation or with Mummy & Daddy.There are just too many arsehole consumers out there who are prepared to take it out on people who have little choice but to work in a shed for little more than £5.52 an hour. So why should they take abuse from ignorant customers?

Because of Hemel's (HQ's) buying incompetence, particularly with laptops, there has been very little "bonus" this year for staff. Targets have been set to satisfy (insane) shareholders and have been missed by lightyears. Vista has not been the golden egg that 95 & XP were and very few people spend anything over £500+ on a PC or notebook, and anyway the margins are single figures i.e loss, not profit. Buy a USB cable with your printer and PCW makes a profit. Buy PC performance and ink cartridges and the salesperson gets a "strike" and the GM will be as happy as the village idiot. All retail is running the same business model in various different guises; even John Lewis sells extended warranties. Check out how much space is devoted to PCs & Laptops these days in PCW and draw your own conclusions about where DSGi is going; robot anyone?

[Abdul Omar]

Vista works great what are you talking about?

I recently replaced my Apple PowerBook G4 with a brand new Vista laptop and I have to say it's the best computer purchase I ever made.

That Apple was such a pain to use.

Now I can finally run the latest version of Microsoft Word. Apple hasn't upgraded Microsoft Word since 2003 so as you can imagine it's pretty slow and buggy. Also the integration with the osx dictionary never worked properly. Useless I say.

Thank god I'll never again be exposed to the brutal inadequacies of the slow, virus polluted, ugly, inelegant os x.

Good work with Vista, Bill Gates sir. My turban's off to you.

I'm now thinking of getting a massive new desktop PC from PC World or some other magazine so I can run the businesss version of Vista and the latest Microsoft Word too.

[Carl Williams]

Vista lasted 4 days

After BSOD on the 3rd (which was the final straw) I collected all info available onloading XP onto my unsupported Vaio laptop and formatted the C drive and installed XP. It now flies and hasn't crashed once.

[George Johnson]

Right on Vernon!

You sure you're not my old man in disguise? That's exactly what he had to do when his printer went up in smoke after 2 weeks and DSG tried to blame him for plugging it in wrong!!! Stay calm, wait for the shop to get busy and talk very loudly about how poor the service is.

[James Prior]

Vista, it's 50/50

Well we've got about a dozen Vista machines now at work - mainly fueled by the fact we wanted to have some proper real-life field testing and that Dell now charge a premium for XP.

Personally I've had no issues with it at all, my PC is a pretty average business model and even outdated CRM software works file. I will admitt however that it works best with the latest versions of software, for example Office 2007 is at its best on Vista.

[John]

PC world morons

A long long time ago I went into PC world and was looking at a PC. The sales rep started telling me about the specs and I asked him

"whats the cache on the processor?"

to which he replied

"We don't sell processors separately"

PC world is run by morons who employ idiots to sell crap to the uninformed masses, so it does do quite well.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Anonymous Coward

..from an even more anonymous coward.

you may remember me from posts such as "pc world lancaster underpaid their staff and management were told to hide this fact from them" and "divorce quota bonus for pcw store managers"

My partner is in a similar (unfortunate) position to you in that he also works for pissy world as an instore tech guy - (the local government and inland revenue have to make up the difference so that we can afford to eat)

I'd like to say I whole heartedly agree on your point about pathetic bonuses and how staff simply aren't paid enough to put up with the bollox that some customers try and shovel (yeah..it flies 2 ways)

HOWEVER - I really resent trying to stand up for tech guys when they just take it upon themselves to be such utter tw*ts:

Being staff, my partner got us a very cheap second hand lappy - packard hell but beggars can't be choosers. Naturally it is as reliable as a chocolate teapot but I expected nothing less - what I don't expect is for the laptop to be returned to us from having the motherboard finally replaced MINUS DVD Writer er..helloo? And guess what?..They can't send me it separately; I have had to send the laptop back for them to fit it.

I suggested they send the writer to the store where my partner works but apparently tech guys aren't allowed to slot a dvd writer in? ARE YOU SURE???????

I mean...back me up here anonymous...we are talking about the same people that send customers components with a complimentary screwdriver and directions to their nearest store?

[Anonymous Coward]

@Vista works great what are you talking about?

Good luck to you, sir, Abdul Omar, with your future Vista/Office2007 endeavors.

I trialled Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 a few weeks ago, got pissed off, and reverted to Windows XP after using Vista for just two hours. It confused the hell out of me, my chained two sound card setup didn't work (for some stupid reason M$ does not allow me to relay sound from the SB Live, which is hooked up to the line-in of the on-board audio to the speakers, something I can do in XP). Furthermore, the VFD display cannot work at all despite the fact that I have drivers for it under Vista, and accidentally or invoking sleep mode puts the machine into a coma (won't wake up, only hope is to hit reset and lose whatever you did up to the point - although this could be an NVidia driver bug and not Vista's fault),

As for Office 2007, I found ribbon confusing and difficult to use, and quit using it after poking it with a stick a bit. The inventor of ribbon should be tarred and feathered, then stampeded.

[MikeWW]

Extended Warranties & DSG

Correct, everyone is selling extended warranties, the difference is always "which are worth buying?"

Last year I wanted a new flat screen monitor and as usual decided the best thing is to look at them in PC World before buying one from somewhere else. I'd already done some research and laughed when I saw an extended warranty offered on a particular one. Not only was the basic price substantially more but the extended warranty only covered what was in the manufacturer's standard 3 year warranty it offers on all monitors.

I then went into Currys (another DSG company) next door and explained to the salesman (read 'University Student who's had 10 minutes training on all electrical goods') how to search the internet to answer the questions I was asking about response times, etc. This was necessary because the other technique of DSG group is to have the information cards display different features for adjacent items.

Naturally I agree that nobody should be expected to deal with abuse from customers but neither should customers have to deal with staff rolling their eyes when very politely asking a perfectly reasonable, vaguely technical question. Neither should it take several attempts to calmly explain "Yes I know that model has just been released but you are selling it for £250 and Comet, only 3 shops away, are selling the IDENTICAL one for £180".

[David De Silva]

Re: Vista works great what are you talking about?

"Apple hasn't upgraded Microsoft Word since 2003"

They didn't upgrade it in 2003 either. That's why it's called Microsoft Word, not Apple Word...

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Abdul

Are you joking or didn't have you noticed that you're running Ubuntu instead of Vista ?

[Ben Gibson]

@Abdul Omar

Made me smile :)

[Lee]

@Abdul Omar

Feed the troll.

I recently replaced my Old Beige box with a brand new Mac laptop and I have to say it's the best computer purchase I ever made.

That PC was such a pain to use.

Now I can finally run the latest version of Mac OS. Microsoft upgraded Microsoft Windows in 2007 so as you can imagine it's pretty slow and buggy. Also the integration with my home network never worked properly. Useless I say.

Thank god I'll never again be exposed to the brutal inadequacies of the slow, virus polluted, ugly, inelegant Vista.

Good work with OS X, Steve Jobs sir. My turban's off to you.

I'm now thinking of getting a massive new desktop Mac from Ebay or some other Website so I can run the Same version of OS X and the latest Ubuntu too.

[Chris Cheale]

RE: Vista works great what are you talking about?

I think we need a troll icon?

[Lickass McClippers]

My other half...

...had a PC for PC World, one of their crappy EI-System ones ... it died, obviously. Took them the better part of three weeks to realise their restore disks were crap, so they ended up giving her a brand new machine, which by the time they'd finished doing the refunds etc, worked out that the machine cost £169 ... now you can level a lot of critisism at PC World, I have, but in all honesty, you're not going to find too many places that'll do a PC for that sort of price.

Amusingly, they tried to sell her a Vista machine, to which she said no thanks. The sales person looked rather incredulous and asked why not. She replied, why would I want a Vista machine..?? He imitated a gold-fish for awhile, then scurried off to find an XP machine for her. Joe Public does know about Vista, and all of you here have a duty to educate those who don't know about it. It's up to us, the Public, to say no thanks, XP does all we want.

[Pascal Monett]

Troll alert !

Come on, you gave yourself away.

An Apple user unhappy ? OS X virus polluted ?

Went too far there mate, gave it up before the end of the second paragraph.

Oh well, I suppose you're still in training.

[Raheim Sherbedgia]

Vista working?

We've got no problems with Vista (well, no more than with any other OS). We would not have upgraded at all but we purchased 350 new PC's and decided to go ahead and get Vista.

Other than techies, Vista is a perfectly fine OS for business or home use; I think the reason for poor overall Vista sales is that XP meets most peoples needs, just no reason to upgrade. Vista is too little, too soon, no justification to buy if you already have XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

erm...maybe I'm being naive

But I kind of assumed Abdul was being ironic?

[Cyfaill]

Maybe a good time for retail to promote high end Linux desktops

As Linux distributions are now getting truly sophisticated with powerful desktop functionality with superior eye candy with all of the different desktops (KDE, GNOME, etc.) perhaps the different hardware manufactures will get a clue as to what the future really will look like... It is not Windows which suffers with many broken pains :)

Powerful hardware makes for a very happy Linux machine.

Many pundits of Linux including myself keep saying that this is the year of the Linux Desktop, and all of the Windows® users yawn... smile, shake their heads and think that they might want to buy me one of those Fox Mulder (X-Files) "I Want To Believe" posters. Well it might not be today, but it will happen and when it does, the tipping point will be intractable and anamantine.

Make the drivers available to Linux... and they will come to buy now.

[Chika]

Is PC World necessarily to blame?

If we assume, as previously stated here, that PC World is staffed (or certainly run) by idiots, can we necessarily blame them for trying to sell the latest crudware from Microsnot? If the Beast of Redmond states that their current product is great even though it is flawed, especially if they pay big bucks in advertising, can you blame PC World for swallowing the bilge?

Of course, the other side is that a certain death camp memorial quotes the phrase "those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" (or something like that). That's why, even though I have seen stable Vista installations, I still refuse to use it until at least the first service pack as I have seen every M$ system go boobies up on first release in some way. Consider the public release of XP, or 2000 before it, or NT4 before that, or WME, W98, W95, W3...

The only diff I can see is that Joe Farty is beginning to catch on.