Currys ‘misled customers into buying costlier cables’

CURRYS PC World is accused of misleading customers into spending up to £40 extra on TV cables which make no difference to picture quality.

The UK’s largest electrical retailer sells three options of one metre HDMI cables in store – priced at £39.99 for the black version, £59.99 for silver and £79.99 for gold.

They are used to link devices such as laptops, DVD players or games consoles to TVs.

However, Professor William Webb of the Institute of Engineering and Technology said there was no difference between the cables other than the materials they were made from.

But sales assistants in Currys PC World stores – who earn commission on sales – used false information to encourage customers to buy the more expensive cables, according to the Channel 4 consumer programme Supershoppers.

Professor Webb said the three products would all ‘work perfectly in pretty much any application you can think of’.

Asked if an expensive cable makes any difference when used with a 4K – very high resolution – TV, he said: ‘No, it doesn’t. Any of these cables will be absolutely fine for that.’

Supershoppers, which airs tonight at 8pm, visited five stores and was given the correct advice only once. One Currys PC World assistant told an undercover shopper that the £79.99 cable would improve ‘brightness, your more vibrant colours’.

Another said of the cable: ‘For 4K, data transfers really quickly on that one.’

A third said of the cheapest cable: ‘It wouldn’t always … actually give you the 4K.’

But Professor Webb said the advice was ‘ fundamentally wrong. Even the cheapest [cable] would be perfectly adequate.’

Curry’s PC World said ‘staff only receive performancerelated pay if the store’s customers are happy and satisfied’.

A spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘We offer great value. We strongly refute any allegations of misleading customers.’