Took broken vega back to Currys

[Guest zzleezz]

Nice! Would you mind taking some screenshots of your set-up and posting them in the VintageVega thread? I've yet to see any screenies of someone else using it :D BTW sorry about the thread hijack :D

HOW VERY DARE YOU! I would never do such a rude thing as highjacking someone else's thread ;-)

Not much point in my screenshots right now as they are pretty identical to your examples. If I get round to doing something original I promise to post some pics but time a little tight atm.

Really sorry to hear your experiences schooleydoo :-( again sounds like a similar start to mine but you had a whole heap of bad luck mixed in with being one of the first to attempt this. All sorted now?

[Guest mhos]

Update on my previous post re faulty Vega and Currys.Recieved phone call from Currys last night advising me that they are unable to repair my faulty Vega,I can either have a replacement or select another product, I am considering paying the extra for an iPad.

[Guest zzleezz]

Update on my previous post re faulty Vega and Currys.Recieved phone call from Currys last night advising me that they are unable to repair my faulty Vega,I can either have a replacement or select another product, I am considering paying the extra for an iPad.

Good luck to you mate :D Hope you consider ALL the implications of going down the iPad road, its not a route I think I will ever want to take. Dont get me wrong, I think the iPad is a really great gadget but I would soon get bored with something that "just worked" :D

[Guest newbe5]

Update on my previous post re faulty Vega and Currys.Recieved phone call from Currys last night advising me that they are unable to repair my faulty Vega,I can either have a replacement or select another product, I am considering paying the extra for an iPad.

Make sure you do your research before making a decision!.

[Guest CrArC]

Good luck to you mate :D Hope you consider ALL the implications of going down the iPad road, its not a route I think I will ever want to take. Dont get me wrong, I think the iPad is a really great gadget but I would soon get bored with something that "just worked" :D

This is the reason I got the Vega in the first place. The iPad is much more polished as far as products go, but the sacrifices in do-what-you-wantedness make it a turn off for me.

Also... I used to work for Currys/PC World... *hides*... In my experience, the problem was never the stores themselves, but the operations going on higher up the chain. I would describe it as a sensation of disorganisation that comes from taking a system that works well on the small scale and blowing it up to massive proportions without making the necessary changes. I'd be doing everything I could to help the customer, but that often wound up with me stuck on hold to and at the mercy of some faceless entity on the phone.

There was no "what product is a code 5 and what isn't" sheet, you were just expected to remember it all. So we'd have rules, like how TVs and laptops would generally be collected to send off for repair. Unfortunately, DSG decided to treat tablets as laptops (which usually meant send for repair!), as opposed to digital picture frames or something, which would've gone better for customers.

Other things I'd get yelled at for included the atrocious performance of the installations company who worked on our behalf. We in the store hated them, because they ruined our good sales. I guided a woman through a great sale, got her loads of bits and bobs and all, lots of money off, and one of my colleagues even carried the unit across the entire shopping centre and into the neighbouring multistory for her to place it in her car. That was one happy customer! A week or two later, she was screaming our store down. They'd failed so ridiculously to perform a simple wall mount of her telly (turned up first time without enough men to do the job, left. Turned up a second time, didn't have the screws, left. Turned up a third time, no screws, left.) she just went bonkers. I think she went to the news or something. Probably tore our store to bits in a statement.

[Guest CrArC]

Good luck to you mate :D Hope you consider ALL the implications of going down the iPad road, its not a route I think I will ever want to take. Dont get me wrong, I think the iPad is a really great gadget but I would soon get bored with something that "just worked" :D

This is the reason I got the Vega in the first place. The iPad is much more polished as far as products go, but the sacrifices in do-what-you-wantedness make it a turn off for me.

Also... I used to work for Currys/PC World... *hides*... In my experience, the problem was never the stores themselves, but the operations going on higher up the chain. I would describe it as a sensation of disorganisation that comes from taking a system that works well on the small scale and blowing it up to massive proportions without making the necessary changes. I'd be doing everything I could to help the customer, but that often wound up with me stuck on hold to and at the mercy of some faceless entity on the phone.

There was no "what product is a code 5 and what isn't" sheet, you were just expected to remember it all. So we'd have rules, like how TVs and laptops would generally be collected to send off for repair. Unfortunately, DSG decided to treat tablets as laptops (which usually meant send for repair!), as opposed to digital picture frames or something, which would've gone better for customers.

Other things I'd get yelled at for included the atrocious performance of the installations company who worked on our behalf. We in the store hated them, because they ruined our good sales. I guided a woman through a great sale, got her loads of bits and bobs and all, lots of money off, and one of my colleagues even carried the unit across the entire shopping centre and into the neighbouring multistory for her to place it in her car. That was one happy customer! A week or two later, she was screaming our store down. They'd failed so ridiculously to perform a simple wall mount of her telly (turned up first time without enough men to do the job, left. Turned up a second time, didn't have the screws, left. Turned up a third time, no screws, left.) she just went bonkers. I think she went to the news or something. Probably tore our store to bits in a statement.

[Guest zzleezz]

Make sure you do your research before making a decision!.

Subtle mate! :D

This is the reason I got the Vega in the first place. The iPad is much more polished as far as products go, but the sacrifices in do-what-you-wantedness make it a turn off for me.

Also... I used to work for Currys/PC World... *hides*... In my experience, the problem was never the stores themselves, but the operations going on higher up the chain. I would describe it as a sensation of disorganisation that comes from taking a system that works well on the small scale and blowing it up to massive proportions without making the necessary changes. I'd be doing everything I could to help the customer, but that often wound up with me stuck on hold to and at the mercy of some faceless entity on the phone.

There was no "what product is a code 5 and what isn't" sheet, you were just expected to remember it all. So we'd have rules, like how TVs and laptops would generally be collected to send off for repair. Unfortunately, DSG decided to treat tablets as laptops (which usually meant send for repair!), as opposed to digital picture frames or something, which would've gone better for customers.

Other things I'd get yelled at for included the atrocious performance of the installations company who worked on our behalf. We in the store hated them, because they ruined our good sales. I guided a woman through a great sale, got her loads of bits and bobs and all, lots of money off, and one of my colleagues even carried the unit across the entire shopping centre and into the neighbouring multistory for her to place it in her car. That was one happy customer! A week or two later, she was screaming our store down. They'd failed so ridiculously to perform a simple wall mount of her telly (turned up first time without enough men to do the job, left. Turned up a second time, didn't have the screws, left. Turned up a third time, no screws, left.) she just went bonkers. I think she went to the news or something. Probably tore our store to bits in a statement.

That sounds about right, the other one that gets me is the "can I sell you product replacement guarantee for a third of the cost of the product?". Erm NO? Even the nice lady that sorted my vega as detailed in the first post had a sheepish smile when she offered this to me for £89. I actually felt guilty not taking her up on it!!!

[Guest CrArC]

That sounds about right, the other one that gets me is the "can I sell you product replacement guarantee for a third of the cost of the product?". Erm NO? Even the nice lady that sorted my vega as detailed in the first post had a sheepish smile when she offered this to me for £89. I actually felt guilty not taking her up on it!!!

Yeah, that's particularly annoying. We'd always expect to get our heads bitten off/alienate the customers asking about that. But it's not optional - we had to ask customers and try and push the coverage. Not only are you graded on a million things (how many extras you push with cameras, laptops, tellies, etc - which is why every PC World/Currys customer got asked for cases/WEH/screen protectors when they bought their Vega 'laptop') but as I recall they had a particular preference about securing the paid-up-front coverage, is its 100% profit margin was a great addition to the store's daily targets as well as the employee's own, whereas monthly did nothing except for upping your percentage of sales with coverage. I think there was some vague benefit to the employee who shifted enough prepaid coverage too - so I definitely felt bad when I said no to that £89, too :D I actually took the monthly coverage (the way my life works, if I didn't I'd have drop-kicked my Vega down the stairs on my first day) whatever, it's £5/mo.

Usually, the store itself and its staff were only too happy to not sell it to you (although many of us believed in the product and used it ourselves - I have it on my telly) as well as the billion extras like cables and cases. Sometimes, we'd need to give occasional items away for free, just to hit store targets.

Yup. Give away the high-profit extras so we didn't get in trouble for not 'selling' enough. As I understand it, most branches do this under the radar. All will probably deny it, though. If the higher-ups just relaxed their insane targets a little, they'd probably see more money flow in. If you didn't seal a deal with extras, your percentages went down for those extras. If you didn't have high enough percentages, you were in trouble. You also dragged down the store's overall score.

EDIT: additional stupid stuff - how many DSG customers got handed their receipt in a bizarre, sideways, two-handed manner? This was enforced for psychological reasons I forget off the top of my head. Actually, a lot of the training we received was in ways to interact with the customer based on the principles of neuro-linguistic programming. It allegedly helped boost sales by putting the customer in the right frame of mind for a purchase.

Edited March 29, 2011 by CrArC