Scare tactics for up selling computer services and antivirus software

Yesterday 28Th June my second born son was 13, for his birthday his granny from Bulgaria wanted to buy him a computer, so we set off to Curry’s/PC World in Bangor to look for a desktop computer that he would like. We saw one which looked pretty good and asked about buying it but they where out of stock in the Bangor store.

The man attending us checked the Lisburn store and saw there was one left there and one in the Newtownabbey store. So we went online and reserved the one in Lisburn. We immediately headed to the store in Lisburn and went to go through the process of buying the computer.

As we have been through the whole upsell process multiple times we had no intention of buying the insurance, my son didn’t want the Microsoft Office as he uses Google drive for everything. As the guy attending to us in Lisburn was not getting through to us with the upsells he called over his supervisor.

That’s when the doom and gloom started windows 10 does not come with any recovery or rebooting CDs and we got what felt like a 30 minute lecture about the threats to the computer if it doesn’t boot up or goes off in the middle of an update, and that there is nothing to help the computer recover unless you pay them £35 to make a recovery disk.

He then proceeded to tell us how nothing on the computer is setup and you now have to do everything yourself and if anything goes wrong you now have a £500 – £2000 bit of machinery which is virtually useless. I think firstly as a shop selling computers it is crazy that they would sell something that they make out is so completely crap. Any establishment with any ethics when people are buying an investment like a computer ,laptop ,tablet etc. Should offer this service as standard.

Imagine if you bought a new Volkswagen Passat and the brain malfunctioned 10 mins out of the showroom your car was now worthless and the manufacturer tells you, You are on your own mate you didn’t buy the 5 year warranty..

Personally I think this is a crap buying experience and whoever is responsible, Microsoft,PC World<Currys ETC..

Should really get their shit together with regards to what they sell to their customers, Yes they did say Apple would not give you these problems, but in many cases an iMac is double or even treble the price of a Windows PC.

So after hearing about the Malware,Adware, Dos attacks on Twitter and a few other big institutions we didn’t buy the Macafee antivirus because I know it sucks from past experience and my son who bought it with his new laptop.

We did pay the £35 to get the computer setup and a backup disc which should come with any Windows PC as standard but does not. Thanks of course to our friends in PC WORLD,Currys my son did not get his PC on his birthday and his granny from Bulgaria will not get to see it. As we are waiting on a phone call from them supposed to be the next day , to tell us when it is ready for collection.

Update Saturday 1st July we went to Lisburn the next day in the evening about 7PM we were told that their Internet had been down all day and the computer was not setup then ten mins later we were told that the computer was ready.

So we took it home of course my son was beaming with excitement he switched it on and nothing happened.

The next day we rang up the store this time the Bangor store they said it would accept the return as we decided not to keep the computer that didn’t work on it’s first day. There was a very helpful man who went out of his way to help us and although the monitor my son wanted was not in stock he said it would arrive in the morning. And he would get the computer setup in the meanwhile, this morning we went in collected the new computer brought it home and it is running perfectly so as you can imagine my son is a happy bunny.

As for my other son he is still complaining about his macafee antivirus he got on his computer that we bought last year..

If you are planning to buy any Windows computers for your kids for a birthday or special occasion make sure to buy it well in advance and bring an extra £100 Quid with you for all the upsells if buying in the Lisburn store I count three at the moment it used to be two but I am sure as time goes on they will find new ways to increase them..

Happy Shopping..