Hmmm - I'd think about waht you say here - you might offend someone...!
Hehe - seriously though - I worked in PC World, as one of the technicians. My time there was as boring and stressful as hell, and I finally left to go on to better things. However, there are a few things to note about what you have said...
1. The technicians at PC world SHOULD generally be reasonably knowledgeable. It's up to the manager at the relevant store to get people in who are up to the job. Luckily, we had a good manager who knew who he was looking for (both of us were much more than adequate for filling the role).
2. The wages they pay a technician in PC World are absolute pants. For the knowledge I required, I should have been on at least 5000 more a year. Thus, in most cases, when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
3. PC World technicians have NO training as such before they start the job - no technical training anyway. Basically, most of the pre-job training is about selling - both their "PC healthchecks" and everything else.
When we had unanswerable problems, which was unusual between the two of us, we did actually have a large number of other branches with competant technicians to call up, so to say they're all useless is not true. Unfortunately, you rarely here people praising, as it is against human nature to do so. Agreed, most of the sales people in PC World don't know their arse from their elbow, but keep it in mind that their are an extremely large number of products on sale there, and many people expect the poor old sales lot to know every detail about every product.
Lastly, the 'Dont buy anything from PC World' thing is also not necassarily good advice. They do, on the odd occasion, have cracking deals, and their PCs are now of extremely good build quality (not always so in the past), unlike simlar machines from Tiny and Time (now 'The Computer Shop' - which makes me laugh!). PC world only make around 2% on most PCs, so the idea that their PC are expensive is, in all honesty, a load of rubbish. It's the add-ons that make it expensive (pronters, scanners inks etc etc), not the base unit itself. For anyone who wants to buy one, it's worth going down to your local branch and seeing what they have in the way of base-unit only offers - you may be suprised.
Sorry - I'm not pro-PC world, but I've seen it from both sides of the fence.
Cheers
