One of my favourite Friends episodes is where an inebriated Rachel calls Ross' mobile in order to get closure. This is why I am writing this post - but no alcohol has been consumed. I have wasted far too much time and energy getting angry about the service and attitude of PC World. For my own sanity I have accepted their insulting £20 gesture of goodwill, and just want to share with you their appalling service, so that if you have a KNOWHOW plan, you can decide whether it is worth continuing with it.

In the year we had our laptop, we have used the KNOWHOW agreement twice. On the first situation, we took it to store and were advised after a week it was ready to pick up. We got there to find it had accidentally been shipped for repair. It was gone another week, they gave us a £20 gesture of goodwill and we just put it down to a human mistake that happens now and then.

A few months later the laptop froze. The telephone support advised that it may be in repair for as much as 5 days. It turned out that the hard drive had gone. The store backed up our data and arranged for the laptop to be sent for repair. It is from here on in that the service was so unacceptable I asked for our agreement to be cancelled and refunded. They were happy to cancel but not refund!

Firstly the laptop sat around in store for 6 days until it was shipped to the repair centre (it was stated in the notes they gave us.) I think that this is an excessively long time.

Whilst at repair we were given no updates. Our reference number was not recognised on the internet tracking system, or telephone call system. We traveled to store (20mins drive away) just to try and find out what was going on.

After 3 long weeks, we received a text message stating our laptop was ready to collect from store on Thursday. I drove to store with baby man. It wasn't there. They advised that it must be on Thursdays delivery and they would call when it was there.

I received no call, but that didn't surprise me seeing as we had constantly chased them throughout the repair. I returned to store with baby man the following day. No laptop. After about half an hour they tracked it down to the south coast. They were unable to advise when it would be back and said we shouldn't have received a text (it seems to happen a lot from what was inferred.)

So it was left to us to chase the order again. Eventually on Monday afternoon, after another phone call it was found that our laptop was still on the south coast and couldn't be returned til the Wednesday.

After a month away we finally got our laptop returned!

The service we received was a shambles. E mails weren't answered quickly, no updates on the repair were freely given and although throughout the process, staff were advising us to complain, the customer service department wouldn't refund us for our agreement as they stated that the time to back up data isn't covered in the repair length so they met their terms and conditions of 28 days.

My blood boils just thinking about it, so I gave up and accepted their gesture of goodwill as I would rather give it to charity than it be with an incompetent company.

If you have read through this - well done! If you still need convincing Google PC World complaints - you will find loads. Look at the watchdog site - yep they are on there, oh and their twitter feed is clogged up with complaints regarding customer service too.

So with a deep breath I shall now draw a line under the matter and never be so foolish again. Please make sure you aren't either. In the words of Rachel "And that my friend is what they call closure"