bought a diagnostic kit for my sprinter van... needs a laptop with a serial connector... usb adapters don;t work properly (something to do with timing)

really wanted one today... so figured I'd just go to pc world....

couple of min looking around and not finding one then someone came over and asked if i needed a hand... so i asked for a pcmcia to serial rs232 adapter....

he looked at me blankly.... then went to get his mate....

so i told him what i wanted....

and he led me over to fans and fan adapter cables ()

did my best to describe what I wanted... "you know.... one of those cards that slots into a laptop"

so off to the computer to do a stock search we went....

stock search didn't find one... so they searched on google... which found one on the pc world site (oops)

but.... no picture !  they were still stumped !  so another guy came to help (3 of them trying now.... not one of them knew what a pcmcia card was)

I think they forgot I could see the screen when they did a google image search....

they still looked lost.... but one of them went out back to look (where i think he got help)

5 min later... and he came wandering back with one ! (woohoo!)


all for the bargain price of £76.99 I laughed at first... that must be wrong... is it not £16.99 ?

nope... defiantly £76.99....

so i came home and bought one from tek for £9.16 instead



I knew pc world wouldn't be up to much... but out of 3 guys non of them had even heard of a pcmcia card... even after I explained what one was... and even after they saw a picture ?

LOl , you probably got charged labour charges for the 3 stooges.
A while back i asked if they had any PS/2 mice , he said he just uses the hand controllers ^^.

LOL !

That's the worst I've ever heard of. The thing is they are all sales gimps in there that only know the sales patter, no IT professional (or plain enthusiast for that matter) would bother to work there because they know this is going to be the case.

A long time ago I got turned down from a job in PC World without an interview, id say I would have been the most informed person there had I been given a change but I obviously wasnt what they were looking for.

I'm more shocked at the price than the compete lack of knowledge, were they all <18? You might have had the same response if you had asked for a video cassette player.

When the Asus Transformer came out I went on a hunt for one on the release day... I knew from forums that the combo Tab/Dock was very hard to get hold of so I I didn't hold much hope but Tottenham Court road looked to be my best bet so off I went.

PC World:
Hey do you have the Asus Transformer with dock in stock?
*Looks blankly*
You know, the new Asus tablet...
Oh you want a ipad?! *starts walking over to the apple section*
No, you see that tablet over there... one of those but with its dock.
*looks blankly* - Urrrr back in a minute

And after watching him talk about about 4 people and all of them around one of the sales computer I get a no we don't... I mean why don't know they what they sell?!

Worst was walking into the 'Official Asus Retailer' - They had never heard of it

Not even slightly surprised.

2 experiences for me.

"Do you have a HDMI to DVI-I cable"

First the girl tells me that you can't convert HDMI to DVI-I because they're 'different types of signal', so I explain they're both digital signals and you can, I also pointed out that even if I wanted to go digital to analogue I could happily buy box to convert the signal... then she tells me that in that case no they don't (and never have) stocked anything like that, at which point I saw it on the shelf behind her so reached over picked it up and just said 'ah ha - thanks for your help...' (then I put it back because it was about £40..)

Second was with Dixons when I worked at Gamestation with Leon - called them for a PCI USB 2.0 card - again "we don't stock them". Was sure I'd seen them days earlier so went over - sure enough a huge pile of them right next to the customer service desk where the phone was....

I know these people are employed in more of a customer service role - but some basic skills training isn't too much to ask since you can't offer me any customer service without it!!

The main problem is they just don't have any interest in what they are selling. In my mind why would you work at a store that you didn't like? I wouldn't work at a clothes store but would happily work at a electroics or game store.

When I worked at Virgin everyone there knew about what we sold (at least per section, my music failed me but knew everything in movies / games) and at Gamestation with RivKid we were laughing (mainly trying to flog Snes/Dreamcasts to people ) and at the end of the day you can provide much better customer service and surely you enjoy yourself as well!?

Couldn't agree more with that, but these days for people its more about getting paid than the job/work ethos, which is understandable I suppose.

I wonder if the managers don't know a thing either.... so that's why they hire people who don;t know what they're doing ?

they'd get a lot more business if the staff knew what they were talking about.... noobs would go in and buy stuff just so they could ask questions about it....

Nah, you're looking at it all wrong...

For shops to employ someone with the technical know-how they'd have to pay money that competes with entry-level (at a minimum) IT jobs. The wage bills would be so high that the shops would have to shut. It is bad that the staff don't know what it is that they sell but it is understandable; they're there to sell not to advise. This is why BestBuy don't pay commission on sales and DO have staff who have <some> idea of what's what.

I don't know... both retail jobs I had were more or less minimal wage with no commission

You don't have to get people will a lot of experience, just get them young when they are interested and willing to learn... which seems to be getting harder and harder to find in today's 'youth'

add-in a belief that they are entitled to top-rate pay and I think you're right :/

I work for an electrical wholesaler and with the odd exception most of the staff don't have a scooby about electrics. Tbh, it'd probably be dangerous for them to offer advice

Just to clear it up, the Dixons group's sales people don't work on commission. However, I do agree that most people in the stores don't have a clue what they are selling.

When I started with the company a few years ago, some of the techguys (now knowhow) in store did actually know about computers but they seem to have lost all those staff recently. Even on my side of the business (field repairs) we have suffered in the past year with lots of knowledgeable people leaving and those of us who stayed moving from technical work to mainly deliveries. Luckily they haven't reduced our wages though as we still do get sent out to do contracted technical work.

It's the same with photographic kit in Jessops, and I suspect most other slightly niche interest shops.

With Jessops I took to having my Pentax 110 about my person if I wanted to actually talk to anyone. Anyone who recognised it for what it is (a tiny but perfectly formed SLR which just happens to be about the size of a 35mm film box) was worth listening to.

Alas I have yet to come up with an equivalent product for PC World.