I've left it a few days and I have a huge list of uninteresting things to talk about. Drat.

I tried to blog, but yesterday you couldn't publish, so... It's not entirely my fault that I left it so long!

As I type I'm using two computers at once. To my left, on top of the scanner, is Brian the laptop. I downloaded an MP3 encoder, so I'm putting lots of CD's onto his hard drive. I've always wanted to do that, but this desktop (Paul Colin, if you wondered what he was called) only has an 8Gb hard drive, so... If I have any disposable income in the near future I'd love to get an MP3 player. Those Discmans are so 1990's. *grin*

The other day the papers were saying that Tony Head (Giles in Buffy) was going to be the next Doctor Who. Unfortunately, this seems to be completely made up. I suspected as much. He would make a good Doctor Who, though, wouldn't he? But then I'd like to see the Ripper spin-off from Buffy, and you can't have everything. If you know what I mean..! Hmm.

My brother John bought a new computer Thursday, and it's made me very annoyed. The purchase of a new computer should be a cause for celebration, but alas, PC World have made it something rather different.

Perhaps you've heard the stories of people being pressurised into buying service warranties on toasters. Well, it looks like I escaped fairly lightly when I bought my digital camera. John spent £999 in their shop, but we nearly walked out before it got to paying. I was soooo annoyed. And I still am. Just thinking about it again makes angry buzzing things start moving around inside me. It's a strange feeling, but that's what it feels like. It's probably just me who gets that. :-)

Anyway, we got there at about, oh, 6pm. We browsed a bit, and John chose which PC he wanted. An AMD Athlon 1.1Ghz Advent PC. Very nice. But that's where the horror began. First of all he spent ages finding a boxed computer we could have. This was fair enough, an understandable delay. Then he took a while to find the paperwork he needed. He needed a £20 off barcode or something, which was also fairly understandable. Although such a delay would indicate he hadn't sold many PC's. Which is weird.

The filling in of the paperwork was where things got nasty. He proposed that we pay £250 for a 3 year warranty of some kind. Annual PC Healthchecks were included in that price. And that covers any repairs that needed to be done, too. John said he wouldn't be interested. The man asked whether we'd be interested if it cost less, and John (being polite) said maybe. The man rushed off to see his manager (or hang around out of view, who knows?). He came back and said he could do it for £200.

He was rather confusing.

He said that the healthchecks alone made the deal worthwhile. Unless I'm missing something, the healthchecks cost £39.99 a time. Three of those doesn't add up to £200.

He said that we wouldn't be able to sort the computer out if there was a problem because there was no recovery disc with Windows XP. Well, there's a recovery disc. It sounds fairly easy to use. Let's see, can I put a CD-ROM into a CD-ROM drive? Hmm, I think so.

He said that any repairs would cost a lot because it was a proper Advent PC, not a "do it yourself" job. (He said this after I pointed out that getting stuff repaired would probably not come to £200). I can see that we might have a problem if the motherboard exploded, but really, how likely is that? I'm no expert on this stuff, I haven't exactly kept up with developments as much as I might have. Perhaps Mark knows, since he's such an avid reader of PC magazines..! As far as I can tell, the things that generally go wrong are floppy drives and CD-ROM drives. In ten years or so of home computing, that's all I've had break down. And they're not exactly expensive, are they...?

John still said no. The man said, "I hope you won't be offended, but I think you're being extremely foolish by not taking up this offer". Fair enough, we thought, the only reason we came here to spend £999 was to be offended. Does he think saying that won't offend people? I can run system maintenance on my PC, thanks! I don't want someone "health checking" my PC! I don't want "upgrades" recommended to me!

A three year service agreement? It'll be obselete in three years! This desktop's only three years old, and who'd want a 350Mhz processor these days?! *sigh*

Anyway, after making us squirm for a while, he deserted us again. I don't know where he went. I felt like walking out. I don't appreciate being kept waiting for no apparent reason, especially after being made feel like an insignificant person who knows nothing about computers. After a while he came back, and repeated the fact he thought we were being stupid not to take up his offer. By this time I felt like shouting "shut up!!!" really loudly.

He escorted us to the till, and we paid. The person on the till was much nicer than evil man. Or maybe he just seemed nicer after evil man's hard sell. I don't know. :-p

He didn't help us out to the car. I think he lost interest once he realised we weren't going to pay more for his "deal".

I was sooo annoyed. I'm never going to shop at stupid PC World again. I'm fed up with their stupid "customer service". I'm going to complain, before I explode with indignation.

Shouldn't you be nice to people who are spending that much money? At work I'm nice to people who're spending any amount of money. We have "mystery shoppers" who come around and make sure we're being lovely and polite and efficient.

Why was he so eager to get people to sign up? Was he on commission? Do they know that people won't need to spend that much on repairs, so the best way to make money is to sign them up to a service agreement?

Ooooh, I'm so angry...!!

Grrr....!