Is this legal?

[analyst]

This, of course, is nothing new to PC World

Phil Clayton was puzzled when he found pictures of someone else's children and personal documents on his PC after it had been repaired by Mastercare, the Dixons/PC World/Currys repair group, although only the usb ports had needed attention, Mr Clayton realised that his HD had been replaced. To make matters worse, the new disk was of a lower spec.

He contacted Mastercare and again the had his PC back to their workshop, two weeks later it was returned still containing the smaller HD also attached was an invoice stating that "this is the original HD that was remastered on a previous visit"!

Mastercare refused to admit any mistake but Mr Clayton found the previous owner of the HD from the personal info on the drive and contacted him, the previous owner a Mr Gregson was rightly appalled that pictures of his children and personal documents were on someone else's PC and that Mastercare had told him that his PC was "beyond repair"! Both men were dismayed by the shoddy way that Mastercare had treated their data and privacy.

Apparently the Data Protection act does not cover personal data on home PC's. neither is there a law that covers the overall right to privacy in this country.

Dixons defence was that it's terms and conditions clearly state that "the company will use refurbished components in repairs" !

Imagine a situation where some poor innocent sod takes his PC to them for repair and they replace his HD with one from someone with the personal taste of say, Gary Glitter, next time it goes in for repair Mastercare sorts through this HD and finds material of 'questionable' nature, the poor unfortunate will have a hard time convincing 'Plod' that he is innocent!

(Story published in Computeractive Magazine Thursday 10th July 2003)

[analyst]

and it just goes on


PC World can you fix it? | Channel Register

and on


'NEVER, EVER buy ANYTHING from Curry's or Dixons' | The Register

and on


Mastercare - Read Reviews

and on


Untitled Normal Page

and on


clik2complaints.co.uk-Sounding Boards - Consumer Rights - Legal Matters 'n Opinions - HAVE CURRYS MASTERCARE / TECH GUYS COMMITED FRAUD?

and dammit, I can't find the one where they put the HDD from a Police computer they were fixing (ha ha) into someone else's machine.

[Cpt Black]

Hi, Some interesting reading there plus the operation ore from Tim, cheers!

I have to say these companies seriously need to fix communication problems, staff reliability, complaints procedures etc. etc. ad nauseum!

On another point though, I bought a dell laptop from eBay without realising it had warrenty on it. After 18 months the DVD drive acked up - I made do without it for a while, and then the screen started getting funny lines down it a few months later. With the screen incident I emailed Dell,they ran me through a couple of diagnostic tests but realised it couldn't be fixed so they sent an engineer out the next workingday to replace the screen and it cost me nothing.

However, the engineer broke a piece of plastic cover when removing the screen, and I told him about the DVD drive. The following monday (again next working day) a new DVD drive and plastic screen was couriered to my house (and having moved over the weekend, to a different address) where I had previously agreed to fit both myself (not a problem)

So their customer service and repairs worked out fine, although the original fault was for a faulty product, after some research on the net, these problems have become popular with this model

[bigkacker]

Forget trading standards, forget the Sale and Supply of Goods Act Phone the Police. NOW!!!!

These are little bairns getting abused sort the trading standards thing out later. Time to prioritise.

[rosiecotton]

I didn't read that it was child porn that was downloaded in PC World, did I miss something?!

[demon_x_slash]

'lolita' is a term for underage or underage-looking pornography, taken from Lolita by Nabokov. OP found search terms including lolita in hir history after the 'repair'.

[JonCris]

& they where advised to report it to the police asap otherwise THEY might get a knock on the door in the middle of the night. If they did that I don't recall

[Cpt Black]

Hi, I just got a report to write about the Data Protection Act so any
discrepancies will go down down nicely - please post ASAP!! Problems, beliefs and issues voice here! Cheers, CB

[justinp1]

Originally Posted by JonCris

I understand that Garry Glitter was reported by PCW after taking his computer in for repair.

Thats correct. By a strange twist of fate I was working at the very store at the time. I also know for a fact that as a previous poster may have mused that as a defence it could have been put there by staff. I knew they guy who found it really well and heard his story of finding it first hand as well as the decisions made in reporting it to the police.

The decision to report him of course was vindicated by his conviction.

[Advoc8]

Couple of points here:

1. The OP is not suggesting that porn was downloaded in PC World, rather that files were viewed from a removeable drive that was attached to his PC whilst it was in the store. There is no direct evidence that child porn was viewed, only a suggestive title in the media player history.

2. If the OP's PC was used to download porn whilst in PC World or at an employees home it is unlikely the OP's own ISP account was used unless he had a dial-up account and a dialup modem installed and configured with his details.

Not that I'm saying what allegedly happened was right, but the story is becoming a little distorted.

[justinp1]

Originally Posted by Advoc8

Couple of points here:

1. The OP is not suggesting that porn was downloaded in PC World, rather that files were viewed from a removeable drive that was attached to his PC whilst it was in the store. There is no direct evidence that child porn was viewed, only a suggestive title in the media player history.

2. If the OP's PC was used to download porn whilst in PC World or at an employees home it is unlikely the OP's own ISP account was used unless he had a dial-up account and a dialup modem installed and configured with his details.

Not that I'm saying what allegedly happened was right, but the story is becoming a little distorted.

Of course, yes, my comment with regard to my experience was more concerning another posters comment about the defence used in that particular case rather than a general comment or advice to the OP.

I would be personally disgusted if my PC was used in that way. If it could be proven that these files came from an external drive whilst still with an employee I am very surprised that no further action was taken.

As to a way forward, I am not sure. Although there may not be, it does seem that there may be more to what has happened here. I did note that the receipt shows that the same motherboard had already been swapped over once. Of course there may be a very valid reason for this, or the customer service guy was putting 2 and 2 together and making 6 and thinking there was something strange going on.

They should not have added that to the receipt though... that just makes them look silly. However, it must be pointed out that a motherboard is a very difficult thing to diagnose a fault in, and being the second faulty motherboard the OP has had it would seem the best thing to do would be to see the PC to see if another component is causing the fault.

[MrShed]

As a point of note - off topic I know, but the IP address does not give a physical location, as it is assigned dynamically by the ISP(ie it changes each logon). However, ISPs will have a specific range of IP addresses that they assign, and so an IP CAN directly give the ISP, although it CANNOT directly give a physical location. But, chances are, that the ISP is tracking which user has which IP at which time, and so the customer can be traced in this way.

[reidnet]

Nothing unusual with 2 or 3 Motherboards being faulty, we have had some supplies that we have found 6 out of 12 Motherboards to be faulty, needless to say never bought any more of that brand.. And PC World will buy in bulk.