PC World Tech support - any good?

[HobnobHeaven]

Has anyone ever used the Tech guys at PC World?

My laptop has given up the ghost, despite only being 3 years old, and is refusing to boot. My brother's had a look, and thinks that the hard drive will be recoverable, but I need a new boot drive (or something) to get it working again

I'm worried about handing it over to a stranger and getting them to play around with it incase all my photos etc get lost forever, but I need to get someone technical to look at it.

Has anyone had any experience (good or bad) with PC World?

Please god, no.

They don't know anything. The only reason PC World products come with the Tech Guys warranty is because they are so shoddily configured that you'll need to take them back soon.

There must be IT local to you, have you tried your local free paper? Or a friends recommendation?

Since you've posted this from some other PC, can I suggest getting a device which allows you to read your 3.5" and 2.5" hard drives, by connecting on a USB port. Please do as TLD suggests and ask around friends and family to find someone technical first.

I won't drop into geeky techo babble about the differences between SATA and PATA disk drives, but let's just say the odds are high this can read your disk, so a backup of your family photos and music should be quite easy.

I would suggest PC World as absolute last resort if you have searched and found no small PC shops within 25 miles. PC World probably charge 30 to 50 pounds to "have an opinion" which you'd get for free from a smaller shop.

DSG (owner of Dixons, Currys, PC World and The Link) used to make a large portion of their income from pushing selling their own insurance and were criticised for not mentioning (and even removing!) the manufacturer leaflets re insurance, often much cheaper than their own.

Now they are likely to push other 'services' as people are more savvy about insurance costs these days.

Cheers for the advice guys. I have a work laptop, so I'm not without connectivity, it's just the photos etc I'm worried about

Will look for someone local instead, glad I asked rather than blindly marching on in there!