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PC Superstore Admits Linux Hinge Repair Mistake

Posted by Zonk on from the there-are-some-happy-endings-after-all dept.

Erris writes "PC Superstore says their store manager was wrong to turn away a client with a broken hinge whose machine should have been repaired. 'El Reg put a call in to the DSGi-owned retail giant to get some clarification on PC World's Linux support policy. A spokesman told us that there had simply been a misunderstanding at the store and that, in fact, the normal procedure would be for the Tech Guys to provide a fix. [PC World] will provide a full repair once the firm has made contact with Tikka.'

30 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. It appears... by msauve · · Score: 5, Informative

    that the manager didn't get the news.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:It appears... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      For those too lazy to read the link, PCWorld is still refusing to fix the laptop. They aren't blaming it totally on Linux, now it is a mix of Linux and saying that the warranty doesn't cover the hinge because that is basic wear and tear.

      And now, my own opinion about PCWorld. They are technological idiots. I've lived in the states and now in the UK, and compared to these idiots those guys at BestBuy are hackers. I honestly don't believe you have to be more qualified to work at PCWorld than at, say, Burger King. You can manage a register, sweep floors? Good enough. They couldn't help even if they wanted to, which they don't. Extrapolating the behaviour of their workers to their management and I'm not surprised at all that it's PCWorld which pulls some crap like this.

    2. Re:It appears... by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Informative

      I bet you this guy didn't quite expect that his name would be linked by one of the Internet's most busy web-pages, and not in a good way... I mean seriously, slashdot will accidentally DDoS news agencies due to the large number of visitors. Companies pay small fortunes for that kind of attention... They have now managed to get worldwide bad publicity TWICE due to this laptop. The words "the most expensive $94 Orbitz will ever make" springs to mind. For those of you who don't know what I mean, here's the link: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=orbitz_blows

    3. Re:It appears... by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 3, Informative

      Asshole. You expect the Orbitz scheduling program to give you a valid schedule. It's not the customer's place to be debugging Orbitz incompetently maintained database.

      Not only was the schedule invalid, but it depended on the customer paying for transportation between stops without informing the customer of that fact.

      It's quite the incompetent travel agent who books you flights, but neither books transportation between stops nor informs you that you need to do this. That's HIS JOB that's why you use a fucking agent.

      In this case, the agent was an incompetently written and maintained program. Not the customer's responsibility.

      So they wrapped a shit product up in a bow and sold it. The guy notices all of one minute later that he's been cheated and tries to fix the purchase. No doubt, by California law he's entitled to change his mind, but never mind that, any fucking competent business can deal.

      Orbitz failed. And they had incompetent management that not only failed the customer, but failed every kind of public relations by excusing the inexcusable and releasing the customer's private information. My God, how can anyone be that incompetent?

    4. Re:It appears... by l33t_f33t · · Score: 5, Informative

      Your fears are correct, I have a friend who did work experience at PC world. None of the staff had any idea what they were talking about, including those who were supposed to be fixing computers. In fact, the PC fixing unit was one of the worst. If they cannot solve the problem by putting a CD in, or opening it up and checking all the parts are there then they send it back to head office. There is also a "Service" they offer called something like a PC health check. They charge £50 for it. This service involves putting a CD in the PC to check for viruses.

      This is why, despite needing a job I am not applying to PC world.

    5. Re:It appears... by RockDoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have a friend who did work experience at PC world. None of the staff had any idea what they were talking about, including those who were supposed to be fixing computers. In fact, the PC fixing unit was one of the worst. If they cannot solve the problem by putting a CD in, or opening it up and checking all the parts are there then they send it back to head office.

      Un-disputed that there are some real brain-dead numptys working behind the counter at PC World. On the other hand, I know at least one guy who works there who can't get into the "Tech Centre", despite having run a PC-building/ fixing/ selling shop for most of the previous 5 years. The problem wasn't lack of ability, it was company policies over time spent diagnosing problems, over how much swapping of parts was allowed, and warranty agreements with manufacturers. In short, if you are building your own boxes (including at a shop) you have a lot more leeway about what you can do to the machine compared to what you can do with a machine that came out of a box from Brand-X. Brend-X have policies about what they'll consider a warranty repair, and if you (the "Tech Guy") go beyond that then PC World loses the opportunity to return the machine to their supplier. Net loss to the company of several hundred quid.
      That is why they do very little at the store.
      PC World are not trying to fix your computer ; they're trying to turn a profit on the computer they sold you. One major part of that is reducing to the minimum their costs (including risked costs) on the machine. Which dictates centralisation of any technical skills and risks as much as possible.
      (BTW, my friend who was not suitable for the "Tech Guys" is now rapidly working his way up through the ranks at their small-business support centre. It seems that the store manager can see a way of making more money out of my friend than he'd earn as a "Tech Guy". Again, PC World are not in the business of fixing your computer, they're in the business of turning a profit.
       

      There is also a "Service" they offer called something like a PC health check. They charge £50 for it. This service involves putting a CD in the PC to check for viruses.

      There's a girl up the hill from here who offers a service of unclogging your vasa deferens by sucking your dick and swallowing. She charges £30 for the service. Sounds like PC World are somewhat over-priced for the market. Which is not news. You can get better prices, but you do need to hunt around. Some people value not having to hunt around quite highly.
       

      This is why, despite needing a job I am not applying to PC world.

      Sounds to me like you've not got a very clear idea of the nature of PC World's business : they're not now and never have been a PC shop - they're a machine for turning cardboard boxes with "stuff" inside into profit. And if that makes them sound like any other part of Dixon's Group ... ah, I see, you're getting the idea.

      What? You believed their advertising? Including the name?

      In that case, I've got a bridge to sell you.
      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. we're sooo sorry! by v1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    We'd like to apologize for getting an unexpectedly large backlash due to our usual behavior of being dicks to the linux users. In the future we will strive to continue our inexcusable treatment of our linux based customers without attracting such public negative PR in the process. Thank you for your support in these difficult times!

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  3. Only a misunderstanding if you get caught. by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And the question on everyone's mind is "Would this have happened had the plight not been so well discussed on the internet?"

    Also, how many other people have already been turned away for hardware warranty repairs based on what software was on their machine?

    1. Re:Only a misunderstanding if you get caught. by VirusEqualsVeryYes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And the question on everyone's mind is "Would this have happened had the plight not been so well discussed on the internet?"
      Hardly. I think pretty much everyone here realizes that the reason for the change of heart was the publicity on the Internet. If you're an idealistic optimist, you might try to believe that the higher-ups heard about it through the Internet and righted the wrong simply from hearing about it, but the rest of us have enough experience with these Internet-spread stories of fuckups that it's the bad publicity that causes the higher-ups to take a correctional course of action.

      This isn't about Linux. It never was. Linux just happened to serve as an excuse for denial of service. This regularly happens to non-techie customers who don't install alternate OSs. To consumers of all sorts of electronic products. They STILL get denied service. They get convinced by customer "service" that the product is not eligible for free or low-cost repair.

      The thing is, American customer service is much like American insurance -- it's nothing but a financial black hole in the eyes of the bean counters. It's about saving a little money now. Every payment, every reimbursement, every repair denied is a few bucks saved. Who cares if the customer is unsatisfied? The corporations certainly don't ... until the customer's story makes it big on the intarwebs and thousands of people start talking about it. Oops, bad publicity causes loads of lost sales! So they better fix it so the plebians don't switch brands!

      It's all about the numbers. Denying service to customers saves a little bit each time. If the rate of lost sales because of individual angry customers is less than the money saved from denial of service, it's a win. It's only in their interest -- or rather, the interest of their bottom line -- to service the customer if the angry customer breeds anger among many more customers, say via the Internet, and causes many lost sales that far exceed the costs of the simple customer care they should have provided in the first place.

      This is capitalist shortsightedness at its worst. Bad word of mouth hurts more in the long run. Satisfaction leads to good word of mouth which leads to more sales. As a personal example, I always make a note to people about how phenomenal Nintendo customer service is. I tell them about a problem, they fix it immediately. I know for a fact that my advice has caused a few more sales of Wiis rather than (usually) PS2s. See, since Nintendo didn't penny-pinch with the cost of repairs for my system, they indirectly made more money through my satisfaction. This is foresight that I wish American companies had. I think we'd all be happier for it.
  4. Don't shop at PC World by GreatDrok · · Score: 3, Informative

    The moral of this story is to stay away from PC World. They over price all their components and the machines they sell are crap by and large. They exist to take money from the ignorant and their attitude when their product inevitably breaks is dreadful. The anti-linux attitude is old news as I experienced similar treatment at the PC World in Edinburgh when I had a keyboard fail on my laptop with Linux installed. Fortunately I had XP on it too and was able to prove that the fault wasn't due to Linux.

    Sadly, PC World has also put a lot of the good little computer stores out of business which is why they can behave so badly.

    --
    "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    1. Re:Don't shop at PC World by MrNemesis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For the most part I'd agree with you - but IMHO the appalling treatment of customers starts the second you walk through the door.

      PC World employees are, by and large, not the sharpest tools in the box, and their managers are typically worse. They flat out LIE to cusomters about the products they're pushing, and use FUD to cajole people into buying things. Their components sales are horrifically overpriced. Last time I bought a network cable there it was £12 (~$25) for a 3m Cat5. I've heard someone tell a customer that you need "at least" a 3GHz CPU (and 256MB of RAM, no less!) to "surf interweb pages", or how iPods don't work properly with windows, or any number of made-up-on-the-spot bullshit.

      And like the parent says, they've caused alot of the smaller geek-run computer stores (which usually contained knowledgable people) to close down.

      --
      Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
  5. Not surprised... by cyberjock1980 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So PC World pissed off a geek. He told all his geek buddies. Word got around and now PC World has either changed their mind, or announced their mistake as loud as they can for fear of reprisal from tons of geeks. Why am I not surprised? I'm sure they want to stay in business, and even if that was their policy, i'm sure it changed VERY quickly because the community they target is the same community that's now talking bad about them. Change their policy or risk going out of business? Slashdot wins! PC World - 0 Slashdot - 1

    1. Re:Not surprised... by dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      sorry, but pc world dont target geeks, they target people that don't know any geeks at all & have more money than sense.

      i'm amazed that a pc world customer had heard of linux, nevermind installed it.

      --
      Web Design
    2. Re:Not surprised... by turing_m · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm routinely amazed at people who run linux and people who have never heard of it. I've sent away a laptop to be repaired and told that the hard drive has died when I knew it had a perfectly good linux install on it and that it was not the source of the problem. You'd think most electronics repair geeks would have some experience, but not this guy, even though he advertised his business on the web.

      And then you get random blue collar workers running it because it can revive old hardware, it helps them get more from their tiny discretionary income, and it helps them do their job when they have management that will never give them approval to buy software.

      --
      If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
  6. Good by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I have wondered for a while what sort of warranty issues surround installing Linux. In the Microsoft mindset, software is considered part of the computer, and therefore replacing it would be analogous to replacing a hardware piece which would naturally void the warranty. Personally, I have always viewed installing Linux as being on the same level as installing any other software; saying it voids the warranty is, in my opinion, like saying that replacing a factory installed MS Office trial with some other office suite would void the warranty.

    Also, this is evidence that Linux systems are gaining ground -- issues like this are "growing pains."

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  7. Riiiiight by Romancer · · Score: 2, Informative

    A mistake, that's it.

    And I'm sure that there was some policy that they can quote to back up that "misunderstanding" and it was a totally isolated event.

    Pretty cut and dry denial of warranty of hardware based on software. If the manager denies service it's not a misunderstanding it's policy. Unless they can show the documents that the manager specifically didn't follow, it's a case of consumer backlash changing a companies operating practices.

    I'll believe the "misunderstanding" cop out for the responsibility when they can show policy documents that state that the OS doesn't matter in cases of obvious hardware defect. If they've got that on file, if it was a misunderstanding and every higher level employee involved in that case goes back through basic training for service repair qualification, I'll believe it.

    --


    ) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
    ) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
  8. As usual... by Speare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A junior employee or contractor made an error that is against our policy.

    Translated:
    A local store manager is foolishly given broad discretion to run the local store and making ass-pulled risk estimates such as "this guy can't possibly escalate his complaint from porch-seat grumbling to global public-relations catastrophe."

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
  9. PC World got Slashdotted!!! by darealpat · · Score: 2, Funny

    Once more it pays to be well connected in the online community. Now if only this would work with the IRS and DMV.

    --
    For every present, there is a past
  10. I'm sure this has been said already by Neuropol · · Score: 3, Funny

    but i'm certain linux caused this cracking of the hinge. if the user had continued to run windows, it would have actually gone the way of Christine, the Stephen King novel car character, and repaired itself magically.

  11. Re:Interesting... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Funny
    It's offensive propaganda because blastocysts don't post on Slashdot.

    I used to be a blastocyst, you insensitive clod!

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  12. Re:Oh no. Re:It appears... by calebt3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    He's (Tank) lucky that his email address wasn't included in the post. Give me a few minutes...

  13. How to fix all of this by SlappyBastard · · Score: 4, Funny

    Take a crowbar and a fish. Pry the broken hinge open so as to free the penguin, then toss the fish to give the penguin an incentive to get out of the laptop. You may need to clean out the accumulated penguin filth.

    Then take the laptop to a replacement window specialist to put windows back in the laptop. Once that is done, take the laptop to have the hinge serviced. Tada! all is well.

    --
    I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
    1. Re:How to fix all of this by SlappyBastard · · Score: 2, Informative

      I didn't think of my remarks so much pro-MS as pro-smartassed. Usually when people suggest tossing fish and using crowbars and taking laptops to a window replacement business, they're not being peculiarly serious. BTW, in the original story part of the issue was the company refused to service the laptop because it had Linux installed and thereby was considered to have a voided warranty. Hence, the joke.

      --
      I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
  14. Summary by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dear PC Superstore Customer,

    Our bad.

    Sincerely,
    The Management

    --
    The game.
  15. Re:Not a big deal by compro01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I owned a store... I wouldn't worry about it at all.

    3 words : word of mouth

    Us Linux users are the ones that friends/relatives/etc. turn to when they need computer advise. If they piss us off, guess who we aren't recommended to those friends/relatives/etc.

    --
    upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  16. Re:it was a theme by deniable · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the hinge problem persists with Windows it wasn't an OS problem.

  17. The Microsoft mindset does not determine law by cheros · · Score: 3, Informative

    This was a UK incident, and the customer in the UK is pretty well protected against this sort of nonsense (caveat: as demonstrated, they will still have to put effort in - retailers still don't seem to care enough not to piss off their customers). The shop effectively broke the law by refusing to repair the laptop (but why did the guy not contact the manufacturer directly instead?).

    I specifically state 'UK' here because that's the only country I know this for sure of. It's pretty reasonable to assume this sort of protection is available elsewhere as well. What you suggest would amount to an override of local law which is impossible. You can't even get rid of such a law in small print in the contract as it will be found invalid in court - not that everyone + dog in business doesn't try..

    I had Dolphin Kitchens try to pull a fast one on me that way, all the way to a 'regional manager' telling me that I signed and it was thus valid. I spoke to Trading Standards and approximately 15 minutes after they had a little chat with the company I got a phone call claiming a 'trainee manager' error. The moment I hear that excuse the company's off my list. If they can't even be upfront and tell me they screwed up I can't invest any trust in them.

    The incident response of "it was a mistake" is total and utter BS. I'm pretty sure that the customer will have asked for a manager to discuss this, and said manager will have told him the same which suggest it's company policy (not store, COMPANY policy) rather than "a mistake".

    I think the only mistake they feel they will have made is not even the public relations hit because it's mainly on geek sites and sufficiently 'geeky' customers avoid that shop anyway unless it's something simple. No, the mistake they feel they have made is attracting Trading Standards and Consumer Direct's attention to the store - no store likes to be picked over by a Government department proving they're needed, especially if the validity of the complaint is well above doubt.

    So, if you want to do anything I would suggest telling you NON-geek friends. See if your local newspaper wants to carry the story..

    --
    Insert .sig here. Send no money now. Owner may sue, contents will settle. Batteries not included.
  18. Re:Interesting... by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shouldn't it read:

    Day 2: Got a job at PC World.

    Day 3: I've been promoted to manager.

    --
    Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  19. Re:Huh? by jonbryce · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What's wrong is that it has absolutely nothing to do with PC World's ability or otherwise to fix broken laptops, or about tech matters in general.

    If I had mod points at the moment, I would be giving out a few -1 offtopis here.

  20. Re:Ready to burn some karma. by marcello_dl · · Score: 4, Funny

    > There is no such thing as an "admin". In windows everyone has administrator rights.

    I know, my other computer is your windows box.

    --
    ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol