{"id":2957,"date":"2013-03-19T06:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T06:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/?p=2957"},"modified":"2013-03-28T08:33:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T08:33:36","slug":"why-i-wont-shop-in-pc-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/19\/why-i-wont-shop-in-pc-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Won&#8217;t Shop in PC World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I used this blog for what the internet invented blogs for: having a rant about things that pee you off!  And as I woke up this morning thinking about this, I figured a bit of rant-therapy was in order.<\/p>\n<p>I went into PC World in Stockport on Sunday to buy some DVD-R disks so that I could take a backup of my work&#8217;s Laptop.  I don&#8217;t normally shop in PC World for the very reason that pee&#8217;d me off on Sunday, but Staples had shut and PC World was open, and I couldn&#8217;t think of anywhere else to buy DVD-R&#8217;s at 4:30pm on a Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s changed a lot since I was last in there, it&#8217;s become what Dixon&#8217;s used to be: and general peddler of all things electrical.  Which is ironic as Dixon&#8217;s has disappeared from our high streets. Though not a lot realise that <strong>Dixon&#8217;s, PC World and Curry&#8217;s for that matter, are all owned by the same company.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I eventually found the DVD-Rs and after drooling at the 60&#8243; TVs for a bit, went to pay.  As these were for business use, I asked for a VAT receipt.  This is where it got messy, as the shop assistant then asked me for my name, physical address, email address and phone number.  <strong>Which I refused to give.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Even after getting her supervisor, they refused to budge and wouldn&#8217;t give me a VAT receipt without be giving them my personal details.  At one point the supervisor even said to me: <em><strong>&#8220;Well then you don&#8217;t need a VAT receipt!&#8221;<\/strong><\/em> To be fair, she did apologise later. The issues here are this:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; As a VAT registered company, PC World are obliged to give a VAT receipt if asked, that shows the tax component of the transaction.<br \/>\n&#8211; For retail sales under \u00a3250, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hmrc.gov.uk\/vat\/managing\/charging\/vat-invoices.htm#6\" title=\"HMRC Guidance on retail VAT receipts\">VAT invoice\/receipt does NOT need the customer&#8217;s details<\/a>.<br \/>\n&#8211; The Data Protection Act protects personal data from being collected, where it&#8217;s not necessary to collect it.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing the law is on my side, and as I get enough junk mail, junk email, junk automated phone calls, I refuse to give out my personal details, just because someone asks for them.  Realising that my Sunday afternoon didn&#8217;t need to be completely ruined by a blood pressure elevating episode in PC World, in the end just chose to walk away.  <\/p>\n<p>But it will be many more <strong>years before I step foot inside another PC World<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I used this blog for what the internet invented blogs for: having a rant about things that pee you off! And as I woke up this morning thinking about this, I figured a bit of rant-therapy was in order. I went into PC World in Stockport on Sunday to buy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[320,135,321],"class_list":{"0":"post-2957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-pc-world","8":"tag-rant","9":"tag-vat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}