Sounds to me like you were hoping to escape the debt? Don't know whether to sympathise with yourself or congratulate the person that set the Sheriff's on you.

I'll wager that had I been that cashier and I had charged you £150 on your debit / credit card you would have noticed..... Funny how people don't notice that they've been undercharged isn't it.

8 months is a hell of a long time that you have let elapse before asking this question. Note also that it won't be Carcraft chasing you, they get their money from the people that gave you the finance. I'm sure that you must have had several queries about lack of payment from the finance company by now? It's even possibly been sold on (the debt) and someone else will be chasing it. Either way, cars bought on HP can be reclaimed upto a certain point (think it was 50% payments completed to escape it last time I did HP) but as pointed out above you will need to read the small print. Even if you're past the point of no-return (HP payment wise) it doesn't mean that some nasty bailiff fella isn't going to take the car anyway! More details needed here.

And in my view the customer got more than his moneys worth considering that he himself actually created the problem. Ok ok, I'll shush, you can have the last word.

Fair comment. My response was designed to show that staff at department stores and otherwise are faced with questions that could be answered by Bill and Ben (The Flowerpot Men) or may need Stephen Hawking to solve it. I'm by no means pro-megastore, I've had bad experiences too. Being fairly clued up myself on PC things and having contemplated going into the PC repair / service industry the above posts illustrate to me why I just can't. He may not have got the response that he wanted but he ultimately admitted that he himself caused the problem and then went on to blame PCWorld for not fixing it. Sheesh, I'm sounding like that idiot that worked for PCWorld some years ago now! I'm just seeing both sides here and I'm certainly not defending them.

My apologies for ressurecting this thread but I feel that the balance should be redressed. I in no way support or defend the actions of the big stores but I do feel a little sympathetic when they come across customers like this. The poster has made a grand total of 2 posts here, one detailing the problem and the second post admitting that it was something he / she had installed that was causing the problem and further to this they have decided that they will never shop with said store because of their own stupidity. I hate helplines, I've had to go through the most basic of questions whilst resolving broadband issues with Sky but people forget that all of these companies have to deal with people that have never used a 'mouse' to others that could tell you how to FTP into MI5's HQ. I applaud the OP for eventually finding the issue that was causing the problems but feel that the views expressed after a total of 2 posts are a little biased and wrong. I don't work for or know any employees of any major electrical group nor do I defend them generally, but this one stinks, sorry.

Laptops will generally shut down in cases of overheating before any damage occurs.

Yep, that'll be the one.

Just to add to this, I bought an Advent laptop for my daughter and in month 11 of ownership one of the hinges gave way and she's not used it since. I should have gone and fighted for my rights but having seen the many responses I just decided to put it down to experience and never buy the brand again.

My biggest annoyance is the great pint to litre conversion. Now to be fair, the big supermarkets do appear to play fair on this one, it's mainly the corner shops and / or the merchant supplying the milk that's profiteering. Bought what we would typically call a 2-pinter from said corner shop earlier, it was actually 1 litre which is 1.76 pints. So for a comparable (if not slightly more expensive!) price you lose nearly 1/4 of a pint. Ok, it's not huge but think 10 litres, that's 2.5 litres near as damnit. Ultimately, for every 4 litres they sell they get one free. Working in the quantities that they do that's one hell of a nice, free mark-up for them!

Yorkshire Bank also recycle account numbers - or at least did so three years ago when I opened a new current account. When setting the account up the lady dealing with me consulted a huge book of account numbers where many had been crossed out, allocated me one of the ones that wasn't crossed out and then put a line through that one as the account was now mine.

That pipe is so photoshopped that it's untrue!

Clearly not worth the aggrevation then. I better tell her to start saving for a new one.

Bought an Advent laptop (£550 as I recall) in September '06. I still have the receipt kicking about. Being November now it's obviously out of its 12 months warranty. This is my daughters laptop, it's come adrift at one of the two hinges. It still works perfectly fine but having the screen rely on just the one hinge now is scary. She obviously hasn't abused it as it's still in damned good condition apart from the broken hinge and I've read threads where other people have had issues with hinges on Advent laptops. My question is, do I make an issue of it with PCWorld (bearing in mind it's over 12 months since purchase now) or do I just forget?

Hard to answer without knowing the cost, value and postage service used but generally, raise a dispute with Ebay.