EC Proposal Puts Upgrades at Risk

Home PC buyers in the UK who upgrade the hard disk capacity of their machines could find themselves in direct conflict with the proposed EC directive on guarantees.

According to the latest survey from Inteco, 21 per cent of home users expect to buy a larger hard drive in the next six months.

Pete Day, a consultant at Inteco, said the company had seen high upgrade expectations in every quarter for the past year and a half, despite the fact that the entry level specification for the retail PC had risen dramatically.

But Keith Warburton, executive director of Personal Computer Association (PCA), said the market to upgrade home PCs will be affected by the proposed EC directive on consumer guarantees.

Under the proposed directive, buyers of consumer PCs will be entitled to a full refund in the first year of purchase if they are not satisfied with the machine. The onus will also be on the retailer to prove that the PC works.

Warburton said retailers would be forced to sell PCs as sealed units and certify that they work. Consumers would invalidate the warranty if they upgraded the PC themselves.

A representative of Micro Anvika disputed whether all consumers would upgrade their machines.

He admitted that the Tottenham Court Road reseller sold a large number of hard drives, mainly to customers that had bought a PC two to three years earlier.

But he pointed out that many consumer PCs are just used for wordprocessing and so there was no need to upgrade them.