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CompUSA Closing More Than 50 Percent of Stores
Zurbrick writes to tell us that CompUSA hs announced that they are closing the doors on over half their stores over the next three months. "CompUSA said in a statement it would close 126 of its stores and would receive a $440 million cash capital infusion, but it was not specific as to the source of the cash. The company also said it would cut costs and restructure. The company operates 225 stores, which its Web site says are located in the United States and Puerto Rico. "
Disclosure: I worked for CompUSA about 18 years ago during a court-mandated stint forcing me to have a "real" job. It was a 6 month stint at which time I was the top performing sales person month after month, even though I was only 16. I learned a lot of corporate retail problems, which continue to this day.
I have 2 CompUSAs in my area, close to clients that my company still maintains. They're both depressing -- too many workers, but no one with knowledge. I hear a lot of lies, get pushed on extended warranties that don't work, and have to deal with waiting and waiting when I need to find something that their website shows as in-stock. The company is inept because the company is trying to compete in the wrong market.
I honestly see a lot of retail collapsing because the time is getting close that the manufacturers can sell products cheaper, and at a higher profit for themselves, directly or through direct-partners. I can't imagine a Luddite like my father trying to buy something at CompUSA when the typical sales person there is no different than Best Buy's brilliant teen workers. But that's the end problem: CompUSA is still trying to be a consumer store rather than business-oriented.
CompUSA has a much wider inventory than Best Buy or Circuit City, but they obviously can't compete with those power houses who have more stores and also have a lot of value-added items they can sell to make up for what they don't make on popular laptops and LCD monitors. Yet the typical business that I deal with still prefers solid advice over bottom-line price. Consumers want it cheap, and they tend not to have long-term relationships with a particular sales person or a store. CompUSA dropped the ball when they started to lose to CDW and MacWarehouse -- the corporate clients of mine haven't used CompUSA in years because of their change from business-focused to consumer-oriented and cheap.
Even on price CompUSA doesn't compete -- often times when I need something I am shocked at the prices. Sure, we're all familiar with the $6-USB-cable-that-sells-for-$39, but even basics such as a stand IEC power cord are overpriced. Their selection is decent, but they are trying to compete in a market that they can not penetrate, especially with Amazon and eBay destroying the price competitiveness of the big box PC store.
This is a good thing for CompUSA, but I don't see them lasting. Every CompUSA near me has both Best Buy and Circuit City nearby, and I admit that I've had more intelligent sales staff at the big box store than at CompUSA. If they want to save their business, they have to focus on local businesses rather than trying to be the answer man for people who want cheap prices and sales. Without the business customer (who tends to accept a higher cost in exchange for GOOD advice and support), their business is heading to the toilet.
Dumpster Divers around the nation weep a bitter tear. So long, old friend!
I guess that's just Louisiana. We're keeping our Baton Rouge and Metairie locations, but we can't get a Fry's or an Apple Store to save our lives.
I guess that's a good demonstration of the mean intelligence level here. People would rather go into ChumpUSA and be abused by surly salespeople than order something online to save a few bucks.
The way the headline reads, I thought they were closing the left half or the right half (or back/front) of each store. Maybe if they Sublease the other half out.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
The CompUSA's in my area closed a long time ago. Can't say I'm disappointed or anything. The last time I went to one looking for an external HDD enclosure. I was shocked to discover they really were hardly selling computers anymore, but were very intent on selling me a flat screen TV (way over priced compared to the nearby Best Buy, Frys, even Circuit City...) They had no more Mac stuff. Their PC displays were about 2 years old, and still selling at full price. Made me wonder why the store was called "Comp" anymore since that certainly wasn't their primary business.
Then I heard they merged with Good Guys, and now all those stores are gone too. At least the folks at Good Guys were friendly and knowledgeable even if their stores and selection was small.
Between its crummy customer service, bad sales people that make Frys employees look like geniuses, terrible prices and even worse selection, does ANYONE actually shop at CompUSA anymore?
Hard to remember the last time I went retail. If I must get a part by evening and don't have one in stock, maybe I go CompUSA. I don't expect the prices to be good, or the staff knowledgeable. I expect there to be a slow moving line, no matter how empty the store. 3 stores in my local suburban philly area. They could close 2 of them without much impact on me. When I look back into the past, I was in CompUSA several times a week, now more like every other month.
Here in the UK, there is 1 (yes one) company which pretty much has a stranglehold on about 90% of the bricks & mortar large computer stores. While smaller ones exist, I'm only talking about the large places with a reasonable selection that tend to be located in out of town industrial areas, since that's the fairest comparison with CompUSA and BestBuy.
It's the closest thing we have to Best Buy or CompUSA.
It's called PC World, and it's run by a company called the Dixons Stores Group.
Let's just say: £80 network cards (that was apparently the cheapest), £20 USB cables (again, the cheapest), £1,200 PCs. They stock cheaper ones but I've never met anyone who ever bought one - I suspect those who are savvy enough don't go there in the first place, and those who aren't are generally told "You want to send email? Well, in that case you'll need this...". And extended warranties which cost 70% of the value of the PC, yet are serviced by spotty 16 year olds who wouldn't know a PC if it dropped on their head.
Here on the east coast, we don't have fry's electronics. Where i'm at, the nearest circuit city is in the next city, the best buy usually has like 3 video cards, 1 sub-par motherboard, and approximately 23 hojillion music cd's, dvd's, and washing machines.
For all its shortcomings, when my hard drive failed, i went to compusa to get back up and running the same day, when the 9700pro didn't offer an oem, compusa ran a special that was cheaper than the internet in general (same price + shipping). With a corporate buyer, they beat the other big box stores in both volume pricing and responsive service (usually 2-3 account reps on staff in the one by work).
Reasons why i'll miss it aside, I've gotta say that compusa is failing for a reason. The corporate office treats its parts, employees, and customers as commodities. Refunds are a pain if its open box (like a laptop keeps overheating, you gotta take it in 3 times, and the 4th time it fails you get a refund), the repairs are shoddy and if its dll hell, rather than find and replace the dll or do some other moderately advanced repair, they'll charge you 200 bucks for a reinstall of windows, provided you still have the disks. The employees will rarely be honest or knowledgeable about if a product is in stock, and most likely will say yes just to get your hopes up and you in the door.
I've also heard stories where the cashiers are told to cheat the sales people out of commissions for big computer sales, where they'll "forget" to punch in a 3 digit code that signifies bonus to the sales rep. No wonder you get minimum help for minimum wage.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
CompUSA is a major competitive threat to small buisness. First the take potentional Customers away. Next they sell them Crap that makes people in general hate PC. Then when they break They take the buisness and because they have under trained people fixing the systems they do a halfassed job and charge 2/3 the price a Pro will do it right. CompUSA was much like the Walmart of Computers. It really hurt the sales of companies who pay more for skilled labor.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Which was a surprise to me as I always see customers in there.
I cannot say I am surprised that the corporation is having problems, moving into TVs had to be painful and their pricing strategy cannot withstand the big box stores. Now with Best Buy offering Apple products there is less reason for many to visit a Comp USA
So, when does the Radio Shack follow suit?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This is the beginning of a trend - IT will move away from USA. More and more IT companies are closing their doors. In India workers do much cheaper work so these companies will move their activities to India and China.
Why make the headline longer and less precise?
It's just bad management! Fry's is doing relatively well in most of their locations. Best Buy is doing okay. Circuit City is limping along. Shipping costs negate the whole buying direct thing. Who wants to spend $3 on shipping for a $5 cable? Radio Shack is having similar issues. There are way too many non-Slashdot consumers that like their hands held when purchasing computers and other electronics. Yes, computers are electronics with semi-conductors. Wal-Mart and Target carry common USB cables, blank CD's, etc. IKEA carries powerstrips.
15-20 years ago, the big box discounters were putting the smaller mom and pop retailers out of business. Now, the better managed (Wal-Mart, Target, Fry's, OfficeMax, IKEA, BestBuy) big box stores are putting the lesser managed (K-mart, Toys'R'Us, Circuit City, CompUSA) stores out of business. Retail is obviously still strong for even the smaller players. Apple and HP are doing well with consumers via retail. Dell and Gateway? They are both in a small funk right now.
CompUSA would be better off emulating Fry's. K-mart is one retailer that as proven that one can't shrink it's way back into the hearts of consumers. (Note to those in the Bay Area: The Fry's in Austin, TX actually has competent employees!)
--Al
Crow T. Trollbot
Wherever will I find gold-plated $30 USB cables?
Oh, okay, Best Buy will still be open.
--saint
The Arlington, Texas store has high-quality people but they are overpriced compared to the Fry's Electronics a mile away. They are also smaller than the Fry's and the even-closer Circuit City.
Trivia tidbit:
CompUSA started life in the '80s as SoftWarehouse in the Dallas area. Before the other big-box stores, they were THE place to go for computer software selection.
CompUSA has become CompChina
I sure hope mine doesn't close. It's the only place within a 5 hour drive that I can buy Bawls! My only alternative is to pay twice the price from thinkgeek...
This is the moment many of us have prayed for. The beginning of the end of one of the most incompetent technology chains to have ever existed.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
It's better than paying $29.95 for a cable worth $5 at a big box store. Cables seem to be right behind extended warranties and printer ink in the retail cash cow category.
...would receive a $440 million cash capital infusion, but it was not specific as to the source of the cash
Someone finally paid for the retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate.
First Computer City, now CompUSA. We have 2 CompUSA stores within a half hour so hopefully one will survive. I find CompUSA has always had a much wider selection of computer parts like video boards, drives, networking gear, etc. And their sale prices are often excellent. For example their hard drive sale prices are usually very competitive with the best mail order prices. Ditto for memory and video boards. I think their downfall was getting into home theatre gear like flat screen TVs and such. Every time I have checked out their TV offerings I have found them sorely lacking. They are over-priced and, worse, their displays are not properly configured. Most of their display TVs have poor picture adjustments and they almost always have incorrect aspect ratios. They are a tech store; they should know how to set these things up. It's pathetic. Hopefully they will get back to their roots, which is computers, computer accessories and software, and leave the home theatre, cell phones and digital camera gear to others.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
NewEgg 1 CompUSA 0
Anyone know when NewEgg is going public?
Original COMPUSA business plan: 1. Sell customer overpriced item with big rebate 2. Find any reason to not pay rebate 3. ????? 4. Profit! Since they are forced to actually PAY their rebates they find it suddenly hard to stay profitable?
"CompUSA, pwned by Fry's"
-SmR
From this article: The closings will leave 103 stores. Nunez said CompUSA said the restructuring will include receiving $440 million from Mexico City-based parent U.S. Commercial Corp, a holding company controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
I'm curious, I mean, people have talked about them my whole life, but I thought they were a small western-only chain.
Clear, Dark Skies
I only go into a store to "try" a product, clothes to get my size for example, then I go online and purchase it at the best price shipped anywhere in Europe.
Why pay the shelf price tag these days?
It's better than paying $29.95 for a cable worth $5 at a big box store. Cables seem to be right behind extended warranties and printer ink in the retail cash cow category.
I think the point was that CompUSA was one of the few retail stores that didn't gouge like that. Sure, they weren't as cheap as mail-order, but they didn't try to screw you the same way that Best Buy, Staples, and the rest of them do.
I have a very nice CompUSA down the street from me, and I tend to go there whenever I need something that I either don't want to wait for, or don't want to pay the shipping on. I've gotten some great bargains off of their clearance table over the years, too. I'll really miss them if the store closes.
For me, if I want a cable, going down to CompUSA and paying $8 and having it in my hand immediately is a no-brainer, compared to having to order it online, pay perhaps a dollar or two less when you factor in shipping, and waiting three days, or going to Best Buy, being assaulted by the noise and idiot salesdroids there, and paying $30 for a sub-$1 part.
If they go under, at least I still have a MicroCenter in my area, which is decent, but it's a heck of a drive.
There is a market for a store that's in between the Best Buy big-box stores, and the mail order IT supply houses, so if CompUSA fails, I think something must have been wrong with their management.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I stopped shopping at best buy due to an extended warranty fiasco, and nearly everything at my frys electronics is refurbished. Circuit city doesn't really carry much hardware. So I guess that pretty much leaves newegg and tiger direct. They tend to be cheaper but sometimes instant gratification is good as well.
We can't forget about Ultimate Electronics... Deja Vu?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
From what I hear from Radio Shack employees, the bulk of their sales are those cheap cables, and it's going poorly for them as, unless it's Monster branded, they're not making any real money off of it.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
office supply story
Once upon a time, there was a brave little stapler, who was running low on staples...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I specifically go to CompUSA to buy LCD monitors... if there is even one dead/stuck pixel, that sucker is going back. Recently purchased a Gateway FPD2275W that I took back twice till I got one without issues. I really wanted the PIP, formfactor and touch panel... so putting up with shoddy QA is okay. Yes I'm spending more than I would at newegg, but I also have a perfect monitor for the extra money. Well worth it in my book.
I have not been to compusa for more than a year. Prices are much worse than newegg. Service stinks and it seems like everything there was tied to a mail in rebate.
..
WARNING. RANT. .
The last mail in rebate was for two sticks of memory. Guess what. The person at the store said it was good on a pair. The letter telling me my rebate was rejected said it was only good one one stick of DDR and not on the other identical stick.
END RANT. . .
Thank you, dont come again!
I worked for Compusa in Chandler, AZ (Store 249) for two summers and it was almost too much to bare. The sales people on the floor are generally lazy, dishonest, and unwilling to go out of their way for customers. We were in a relatively low traffic store because of our location. The managers were generally 23 year old kids in there to make their $35k a year until they got fired.
The thing I always was frustrated with was we were threatened into selling warranties that would not cover anything other than factory defect. For each warranty we sold we got anywhere from $1-$4 on cameras, peripherals and $5-$10 on computer warranties.
We almost never had anything in stock. Probably 50% of the questions we got we sent to other nearby stores.
The other problem I had was the amount of time it took for people to be able to buy laptops. Somebody would pick out a laptop, then I would need to check the stock on the item, then go back up to the front of the store grab a UPC sheet for that laptop for the person to get checked out, and we could only ring the person out through the tech shop, so I would need to page a manager to unlock the register and check them out. Usually it takes at least 5 minutes for the manager to come over, then the manager would raz you for not selling warranties as we walked over to laptop lockup. We had to Find the matching UPC laptop, which generally we could not find because somebody took that one already (in which case we would have to return and re-ring the poor guy's laptop), but if we do find it, we fill out a checkout form. walk out and hand it to the guy. This process usually takes 30 minutes if the store is at all busy.
The other thing was the stores stocked so much shit in them. Paper.. landscaping software.. desk gadgets..lame PC mod stuff & lame cases... off brand overpriced external drives.. offbrand networking devices.. Video Games.. Books.. We spent more time moving old shit around than we actually spent on the sales floor. They should should have less selection.. more stock. They needed to go through with a fine tooth comb and fix that.
It was a great job in the summer because it was indoors, pretty easy, the hours were flexible, the people were okay, but I have seen a big decline in the last few years.
FTA:
CompUSA competes with Best Buy and Circuit City.
I never knew they existed until visiting up north (black friday in OH).
But got a BB and CC nearby and there is a fry's in atlanta (never been, yet).
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
There are 2 CompUSAs in my Metro area (down from 3, believe it or not). Everything said above is pretty true about them, but you know what? There is ONE thing they are good for (around here at least). They provide weekly sales on quality blank DVD media that the Media pirates/bootleggers eat up like catfish! Half the people that go into the closest CompUSA to me are going there to buy blank DVDs/CDs ($20-$25 for 100 DVDs, $10-$15 for 100 CDs). Brands like Sony, TDK, and Memorex. If they close the last two left, the bootleggers will have to start clearing out Office Depot I guess....
Their biggest mistake was not letting Belkin build the entire store. Their lack of gold-plating around the buildings led to low performance.
Vonal Declosion
Last I heard from the management, only four of the stores were closing down so far, the rest was up in the air. That could just be a calm-the-sheep lie though, so I'm not arguing. I do know that the last six or seven American execs just got canned and replaced with imports (money from Mexico, execs from Mexico), and that they're doing a level-by-level layoff scan. With any luck this might be a good thing though; my store is one of the better performing ones, with a few actually honest people. I'm one of the repair techs, and an honest one at that; they don't pay me enough to lie for them, and I've told the managers that. My little badge of honor is that no customer has ever asked me about Vista and then went on to purchase it. The stores are desperately understaffed though, so maybe we'll actually get some funds to fill out the staff (right now if anyone in the tech department calls out, a manager has to take his place, and the sales floor isn't doing much better). On the other hand, if my store was one of the closers, that'd be okay too.
Paying $3 to ship a $5 cable beats the hell out of paying $30 to buy a $5 cable at retail, at least in my book.
Moof!
Fry's and some other big-box stores sell 4 kinds of merchandise:
*New in factory-sealed box.
*Factory-refurbished items. These have a different SKU, a lower price, and a shorter warranty. Consider buying if you can get an extended warranty for less than the price-difference or you can afford to take the risk.
*both of the above in customer-returned "open" boxes
Customer returns may or may not have an "open-box" discount depending on if parts are missing or damaged.
If you buy a customer-returned computer that has an OS installed, insist they reformat the disk FROM REMOVABLE MEDIA while you watch them do it. They usually reformat using the on-disk reformatting software but that won't wipe viruses that corrupt the restore partition. Obviously if you are going to nuke the drive you can skip this step.
Sometimes older models are marked down for clearance. Get a factory-sealed one if you can to avoid surprises.
I generally recommend against extended warranties unless the manufacture warranty is under a year.
However, some stores have warranty features that may make it worth it to you. For example, Fry's has a 2-year "one time exchange" warranty on its cheap printers. If you are buying one as a gift for someone this might make sense.
CompUSA seems to be going through the same type of identity crisis that is common amongst retail stores that are soon to be out of business. What do they sell? Computers, and accessories? Software? Video games? Consumer electronics? Cell Phones? They do a dozen things and none of them stand out. There is nothing that people want to buy where they think "CompUSA" when they are deciding where to go to get it.
Since they've lost their focus, things that they used to do well have suffered. They used to have a wide variety of computer parts and accessories. Now it seems they've opted for the "thousand types of the same item" style over the "thousands of options". If you want a wireless router or a video card, sure, you've got a huge selection. Otherwise, sorry... Best to shop online. In the new areas they've pushed into, they are only making a token effort. Why would you go to CompUSA to look for video games? Sure, they sell Video Games, but they only have a few titles, and low stock levels, so chances are you're not going to find what you're looking for. Same goes for TVs, or Cell Phones.
They should pick something and do it well, or they should go out of business.
"CompUSA Inc. will close six of its seven stores in Massachusetts by May 31st.."
p usa_to_clos.html
http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/02/com
Between its crummy customer service, bad sales people that make Frys employees look like geniuses, terrible prices and even worse selection, does ANYONE actually shop at CompUSA anymore?
Yeah, I do. I don't know what they must have done to the store in your area, but the one near me isn't like that. Yeah, it has a TV section in it somewhere, but it's small relative to everything else. They have a big (compared to other B&M stores) selection of parts, including barebones systems, cases, power supplies, etc.
Their employees weren't geniuses, but they weren't too bad either. When I've gone in and asked "where are your hard drives?" they've generally been able to gesture and mutter in such a way as to convey to me the general location in the store where I might find hard drives, which is pretty much all I ask from retail-store workers anymore. (This is superior to Best Buy, who, I am convinced, have attempted some sort of cost-savings by taking on the least trainable residents of local State-run mental health facilities and setting them to work on the sales floor.) They've also accepted returns without a huge hassle.
My local store still has an "Apple corner" with a measly selection of software, and some Mac-specific hardware, which I occasionally have got stuff from. They seem to move their fair share of Apple CPUs, particularly around the beginning of the school year, although I assume their business has been hit hard by the Apple Store nearby. I guess I wouldn't blame them if they cut back on the Mac stuff (but then again, I don't fault Apple for going ahead with the standalone stores either, since I always did question CompUSA's commitment to that particular venture).
A typical trip to CompUSA for me happened a few weeks ago, when the power supply on my SO's Dell (thank God it was one of the ones with regular ATX supplies) blew. I went down, picked up a new 400W supply for $29.95 (after 'instant rebate'), and the computer was back up and running inside of an hour. With a mail-order place, she would have been out of a computer for most of a week, and I don't even know if Best Buy or the other places of its ilk sell power supplies. (I'd prefer not to find out, since the lighting in the place just makes me ill.)
It's not a real 'computer store' in the sense that I'd really like to shop at -- some sort of small independent place with a bin full of parts that I could paw through -- but those places basically don't exist in the suburban strip-mall hellhole that's my neck of the woods, at least that I've ever found. They were about the closest thing to one.
There are a lot of things I could say about CompUSA, but in general, I'd sum them up as being reliably inoffensive. They weren't great, but they didn't make me want to set fire to the place in the same way that Best Buy does.
How's that for a eulogy?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I shop CompUSA - although I'm not a great customer - I shop the rebate sales and actually complete the rebate paperwork, and no, I don't buy the regularly priced merchandise while I'm there.
:)
I find that they don't consistently post pricing for items, and their customer service is terrible. Ever order over the web for in store pickup? I keep going to the store hours after placing the order and then waiting in line for the management to task a sales clerk to go fetch the products from the shelves. Ick.
They don't know their products, nor do they know where the inventory is, they advertise products at a cheap price that are sold out when I arrive 2 hours after store opening (and when their inventory system says that they have items in stock.) They have been doing an awful job of meeting the market needs, and this is what happens in a competitive market.
I hope that a well stocked, fair priced alternative arrives. Shockingly, I'd pay more for good quality products, skilled sales people, and efficient customer service when I go to a store. I concluded long ago that this was out of the question for CompUSA, and decided to work the angles for cheap after-rebate merchandise from them while waiting for them to collapse.
It's the old Montgomery Wards -> Sears story repeated a hundred years later. Wards was a huge mail order powerhouse, but were upstaged by technology and marketing powerhouse Sears when they didn't adapt to new technology and business models in time. Of course the same thing happened to Sears, too.
Good by, CompUSA. Hello Buy.com, NewEgg, and Fry's!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
They try to have competent employees... it just depends on what you are looking for and when....
If you search for a store on their webpage the two current locations in the St. Louis area are already gone. I guess if any employees are looking to see if you have a job you can just check online. What a way to find out.
CompUSA's instore inventory is not so good compared to the online inventory but that ship to store option was great. I picked up lots of rebated gear that way. An 802.11g PCCard NIC for net $5 including tax.
I don't go to CompUSA much any more--It's downtown and there is a BestBuy, CircuitCity and Staples nearby, but I always thought that CompUSA tended to be a lot cheaper than BestBuy and CircuitCity.
I really don't ever expect help from any tech salesperson, but I can't imagine them being less knowledgeable or helpful than BestBuy (although I have to admit that BB's salespeople are always bugging you, so at least if you need to get into a locked case you can.
What I do remember from CompUSA is they used to have fantastic sales. at BB if a $32 product goes on sale, it always seems to be for $29.99 at best.
CompUSA sales often featured products at 40% or half off. The first week a game was out, I used to always look for it in the CompUSA flier because they always seemed to have a great sale the first week--like $30 for a new $50 game.
On top of that, with all these stores I couldn't find a single decent hard-drive enclosure, CompUSA had a dozen to choose from, and I know that there are many other components I won't find at any of the others..
If our Spokane store closes, we're going to have to travel 500 miles to Seattle to get decent computer parts, or we'll have to pay BestBuys terribly inflated prices for what little they do stock.
Strangely enough, Staples has decent sales. I consider that my best alternative, bought a 20" LCD monitor there for under $140, but the selection is probably the most limited.
Hmph
CompUSA is a good example of bad management. They are in a perfect position to make a fortune, and they can't do it. I will never shop there again because they refused to honor the extended warranty on my laptop. The manager even acknowledged to me that he was refusing to honor it. How can they possibly expect people to want to shop there when they act that way?
One of my local compusa's just went through a remodel. It now sells plasma and lcd tvs. Though, I think it should dump it's Apple store. My area finally has a Official Apple Store. I highly doubt it will close. And if they close down apple part, they can use the space for DVDs. CompUSA is a Mexican company.
\
The comp usa by me stunk. They sold one sound card and that was the audigy se. Not another single sound card around. They have a stamples in the same shopping center that s4ells the same exact stuff for sometimes $50 or more cheaper. Comp usa had a 50 pack of dvd + r's for $30. The staples had the same exact 50 pack for $15 . I am glad comp usa is going out of busines. Thier prices where so high.
I've had problems purchasing anything the last two times I tried to buy something in the middle of the business day. There were no registers open either time. The only way out was through the customer service counter. They were either busy doing returns or some other paperwork. One time I left without buying anything and the other time I waited the 5+ minutes it took to find someone to open a register. I hope Gaithersburg MD is one of the ones being closed!
One of my favorite things is to look in the Sunday paper for the CompUSA sale ads and see what I *need* to buy. Between them and Office Max, I've stocked up over the years with tons of 'free' with rebate blank CD's, $0.50 DL DVD's....250G and 300G drives for about $100...and 4-5 Haupauge PVR x50 cards for Mythtv boxes...etc.
Damn..I'm gonna miss all that cheap stuff...Best Buy simply does not have the inventory or prices you can get from CUSA.
Guess I need to stock up on what I can next few weeks.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Just yesterday, at lunch, I went looking for a second Wiimote, after two months of having just one.
Leaving my office, the first electronics store I drove past was a Circuit City. I didn't bother to stop - even if they sell game systems, the odds that they have Wii hardware in stock are next to nil. (Do they sell game systems? Their signage doesn't say.) In the next shopping center up the freeway, I skipped the CompUSA. The last CompUSA I was in (around Christmas) had completely removed its Nintendo section, and was trying to sell PS3 in $1000 bundles. Again, not worth my time.
At the other end of that same shopping center, I stopped in a Best Buy, which had no stock. They also confirmed the next nearest store was also out of stock. Then I checked a GameStop, and had them call the next nearest store, too.
Finally, I went to Fry's which had one in stock I picked up.
The stigma of CompUSA and Circuit City keeps me from trying; I've been disappointed too many times before. To get me back in their stores, they need to completely revamp their product lines. I don't buy car audio systems or productivity software or big screen TVs or digital cameras often enough to check them, and I honestly couldn't tell you what else either of those two stores sold.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
if it's not on this new list, it's closed:
this list
It's about time. I have so many unfound memories of CompUSA. When the store first came to my town, I thought it was a God-send. Then, I actually stepped foot in the doors. The only thing that ever keeps me going back to CompUSA are the deals on "Black Friday".
I really hope CompUSA leaves my town so they can build a `real' computer store.
Oh yeah -- Is it really called "CompUSA" in Puerto Rico? Shouldn't it be CompPR or CompRico or something like that?
CompUSA is the most irritating, useless waste of space. Surly, clueless employees, rebates that are never honored, over-priced crap, utter ignorance on basically every level. You're always going to run into good and bad employees everywhere, but when every time you go someplace it's always consistently bad you know it's not just you and it's not just chance, but systemic.
The location in Manhattan in 57th and Broadway is a perfect example. All the businesses and corporations in the world within 5 blocks' walk and yet the place is always empty. You ask an employee an incredibly simple question like, "where are your flash drives?" and the answer you get is a surly, "what's a flash drive?"
Contrast that with the Apple store in SoHo, which is crawling with people every second of the day they're open. After many years of dealing with CompUSA for PC parts I went to the Apple store to check into buying an iBook for my girlfriend running the spiffy new OSX OS (yes, a few years ago). I dubiously asked a salesperson, a random salesperson, how to open a terminal to work on the command line. He did so and wrote a quicky little PERL one-liner to demonstrate that, yes, the kernel really was *NIX.
I nearly wept.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
A few people have commented that they attribute this to the steady death of brick-n'-mortar stores due to internet vendors undercutting them. Let me tell you a story that should illustrate the (lack of) truth of that idea...
10-15 years ago, back before our favorite set of tubes made online shopping easier than physical shopping, my friends and I used to have a game we'd play (when very, very bored).
Back then, geeks had a huge thick magazine full of nothing but mail-order ads (I think it might have had some content, but no one read it for anything but the ads) called "Computer Shopper". Need a computer? Check the CS. Need a video card? Check the CS. Need a printer? You get the picture.
Anyway, CompUSA carried this magazine. So, my friends and I would go to CompUSA, grab a Computer Shopper, and start playing as follows:
We would walk around, comparing in-store to mail-order prices, looking for the worst deal in the store (and of course, correspondingly, the best deal in the magazine). The person who found the best worst deal (ie, the highest markup over the lowest mail order price) after an hour (or when we got thrown out) won.
CompUSA's average prices usually came out to roughly double what you could get the same thing for in Computer Shopper. The "winner" of the above game usually managed to find something in the 10-20 times more expensive range.
CompUSA won't die because the internet undercut them. It should have died years ago from simple competitive market forces, and having held on so long says a lot for the saavy of the average tech consumer.
I used to shop at CompUSA extensively, spent thousands a year for both myself and clients, had a CompUSA credit account, yadda yadda yadda.
I stopped shopping there mainly because of their damned rebates.
I live in a small town. To shop at CompUSA, I had to drive about 125 miles round trip. I can drive a few miles further and shop at a Fry's and get both better prices and (usually) not have to deal with a fucking rebate to get it.
When I shop at a brick and mortar store, I want the best price when I walk through the door. Not 8 to 12 weeks later. And if you want my business, then you're going to offer your best price when I walk through the door.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Here, in Tampa, we have to CompUSA stores that are withing 5 miles of each other. They would do well to close one and open a new one farther away.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I worked at a CompUSA back in 1994 for about 6 months. We made about $5 off each printer. The printer cables listed at $2 for our costs, and we sold them for $20-$30. So we made more off the cables than the printers. Thats why we "didn't throw in a printer cable".
CompUSA in 1994 was far nicer than today, at least the store I worked at. Now it looks like a warehouse with boxes all over the floor. At least it did the last time I was in there.
I bought my wife a Sony Clie PDA the weekend they were released (the flip up, rotating screen one) and the compusa two year warranty. About 15 months later, the battery wouldn't hold a charge, and the device lost all its data a couple of times as a result. Took it in, since that model had been replaced, we got a store credit for the original purchase price, she immediately bought the new model of the same clie (nx70? I don't remember anymore). This time it was about a year or so again, and the device started locking up for no reason (no extra software installed). She took it in again, under warranty, and this time switched to an ipaq 4355. She still has the ipaq (3+ years now) and it's been great for her.
I bought a computer from them ($299 july 4th special) with extended warranty. It had a drive failure before the first year, and I took it in. That was a frustrating experience, because they had to wait for parts since it was under the factory warranty. When the drive failed again outside of the factory warranty, they pulled a drive off the shelf at the store and had my computer back the same day I dropped it off.
They still have some scary overpriced items, but I recently went in there and purchased a 5.25 hd mounting kit for $9.99, 18 or 24" ata133 ide cable for $6,99, 36" for $9.99, and so on.
I whole heartedly agree; the people selling merchandise typically don't know what they are selling. But I disagree about their extended warranties. Their extended warranty (after the factory expires for computers) is one of the best things about the store. Now, I've heard the PDA warranty has changed: you no longer get store credit and I think you have to mail the device off or something, so that's a negative. For other things that can be handled in the store though, they seemed OK.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I stopped visiting CompUSA after I went there for a DVI cable, which they had, but for $100, Newegg had the same thing for $12.
Here's the list of stores they have announced as closing thus far: Long Beach, CA (PCH) (Store # 175) 6310 East Pacific Coast Hwy, Long Beach, CA 90803 San Mateo, CA (Store #728) 41 West Hillsdale Boulevard, San Mateo, CA 94403 Mesquite, TX (Store #127) 1515 Town East Blvd. #168, Mesquite, TX 75150 Skokie, IL (Store #177) 7011 Central Ave., Skokie, IL 60077 I found these on their website at http://www.compusa.com/about/news.asp under an article called: "CompUSA Announces Comprehensive Realignment to Better Compete in Changing Marketplace"
Harm
Back when the Pentium was state of the art machinery, I brought our computer (we only had one cause they were kinda pricey) to CompUSA to get some RAM added. We were called the next day to pick it up, and for a while, I was kinda impressed how they didn't break the warrenty seal sticker on the side of the case (It didn't dawn on me they might have spare stickers). Got it home, powered it up... no change in the RAM size, but it didn't stop them from charging my credit card. I brought it back and asked them to explain what they charged me for. Guy behind the counter looks at my bill and says "We added 64Mb of RAM". The case still had the ORIGINAL STICKER that said 64Mb of RAM inside. That schmuck had the audacity to tell me I was running my PC for weeks with NO RAM, and I paid them to put in 64Mb of their RAM. I had them open it up and show me where their RAM was. As soon as the side of the case came off, the first thing my eyes locked on to was my dusty RAM chips... I wanted to see him explain how/why they put in dirty RAM in my box. I told them to either give me my money back, or put the RAM in since I already paid for it (receipt was in my hand). Guy goes in back, comes out 5 minutes later with "We don't have the kinda RAM you need" (PC33 or whatever was the only kind back then) and refunded my cash.... no apology.... no admission of guilt. After that, I figured a PC is like a car... it's better to take care of it yourself, lest some monkeys fidget with stuff they don't understand. K-Mart went bankrupt for similar reasons... not being honest to customers.
Looks like ALL the stores in Southern California are gone - there are none in my area listed any more, and I know there were several in LA/Orange/San Diego.
Maybe they can only make money in smaller markets (by and large, that's all that's left, for their locations.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think CompUSA needs to make a bold move and be more like the Apple store. I love CompUSA's big selection, but their stores tend to be cluttered, hard to find things in, hard to find a competant person in, and then try and buy something without being pushed the extended warantee. Often the actual computers and other big ticket items are way in the back and the displays are nearly falling apart, and have lots of empty slots.
What makes Apple stores work? The stores have a clean open layout where it is easy to find things. The stores are designed beautifully but simply, letting the products really stand for themselves. They have the Genius bar, where you can talk to someone who actually knows what they are talking about. The Apple store almost never has the best price, but they provide a complete and pleasant shopping experience, and even a certain ammount of "cool".
Its not beyond CompUSA to do this. In Manhattan there are two stores (although I've not been in a while). One by Columbus circle which is like a closterphobic version of the usual CompUSA store. The other is on 5th Ave and 37th st, and is beautiful. Its two floors, the first floor full of rounded "islands" of displays of every kind of something there is. One for pdas, one for laptops, one for cameras. Plus a lot of the popular software and accessories and scattered about, and people man each station to answer your questions. Upstairs is more like a traditional store, with rows of shelves and such, but the shelves are not very high and there is a wall of windows, so it feels bright and open. The Columbus circle store is probably bigger and has more stuff, but the 5th ave store does a brisk business and is just nice to be in.
Circuit City stores tend to have a haphazard feel to them, and Best Buys feel vacuous and dark. If CompUSA brought that 5th Ave feel to all their far and wide suburban stores and they would be doing something so far only Apple is doing, but they would be doing it with a much wider product line, and will make computer shopping cool again.
That's almost half!
It is the 21st century and the time for Klax has passed.
That's almost half of the stores! :O
Fry's is no place for a non techsavy person. In San Diego my technically challeneged friends always haul me down there with them. You have a better chance sprouting wings than you do getting a hold of a sales person to help you. When you do get one you must wear your sewage protective gear. These guys spew so much BS it's amazing. I will sometimes pretend to be clueless just to see what lies they will throw at me. When I worked for Roadrunnr Broadband we had issues with Fry's too. Many of their cable modems were crap and didn't have the current DOCSIS version. The company got so tired of having customers yelling at us for outdated modems they bought from Fry's that we actually sent peopel to Fry's to drop some knowledge. It didn't seem to help. Their sales reps still pushed the old modems as Roadrunner ready. My supervisor cought a rep he already spoke to about the Roadrunner issue lieing to another customer saying "You have Roadrunner Broadband? This modem will work just fine for you." Fry's has good deals but I wouldn't send a non-tech friend there alone.
Brings to mind the time I had a disk drive that I purchased shrink wrapped from the store fail about a year later. Could not get an RMA from the manufacturer because the serial number of the drive was a "stolen one". Apparently that was how they stocked the shelves in that case. I had to go buy a brand new one froma reputable dealer.
Last time I set foot in one of their stores, I got something or other, and then waited literally five minutes for an employee to deign to take my money. It was the worst customer service I've ever seen. Literally ten employees within sight and not one at a register. It was idiotic. Yet at this branch, this happened repeatedly. It was not uncommon to see employees everywhere but at registers as ten people waited for one person. Finally, someone at the service desk waves me over, and after their stupid card reader failed to read my card twice and he went to get a manager, I said "fuck it" and went and bought the damn thing at Circuit City.
The cake is a pie
It's because there are fewer "real" tech jobs for geeks in Austin Texas. In the SF/SJ Bay Area, all the geeks are hired away by tech companies, so you're stuck with trash. There's two top tier Universities & numerous smaller universities, but all those students are hired away as interns by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Sun, etc... Why would you work at a Worst Buy, or CuntUSA in the Bay Area? (Unless you're a dipshit who can't find a job)
In Austin, there's fewer of the high end tech jobs to go around, so some of the geeks end up working for the next best thing, a big box store specializing in tech stuff. I know some people in Austin who are out of work now. They wanted to move there, but the jobs just aren't there. When they were in California, both spouses worked. After moving to Texas, only one of them kept their job. Considering that the cost of living is lower there, it's not such a bad trade.
it's funny how /. readers are complaining about customer service. I've experienced bad service in every chain you can imagine. Living in Miami, which is famous for poor customer service. (imagine walking into best buy and none of the employees speak english).
the real problem is, walking into a store to decide what you want to buy.
I know before I ever set foot in a store exactly what I want and a second choice in case it's out of stock.
I never comparison shop at a store. That's what normal people do. That's why I want to kick salesmen in the head everytime they come up to me.
the only time you ever need to set foot in a computer or electronics store, is to pick up an item that you need today.
amazon offers free shipping a lot of items. That's who I use.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have a CompUSA near me, and I won't be suprised if it's closed and flipped into something else. Best Buy is right...next..door. Literally you walk 30 feet and you're at Best Buy. I NEVER go to Compusa. I did a little bit before Best Buy came along, to sort of check out palm pilots(when they were still alive) or to get network cable(I use all wireless now...cheaper at Best Buy). I never go now. The sales staff are...impotent...when it comes to advising you on anything, and yes their prices are pretty silly when it comes to whole PC setups. I hope this is "Goodbye CompUSA", I honestly feel the usable life of that organization has been reached and it's time for something different.
You are kidding, right? They do nothing but gouge. In colorado, we have no fry's, but we have a microcenter. The only times I will go to CompUSA is when I do not feel like taking a 45 drive. Sadly, it is normally cheaper for me to go to Microcenter WITH the 45 minutes vs. CompUSA with a 20 minute drive.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They are only good when I desperately need something RIGHT NOW. Otherwise, they can't REMOTELY compete with the likes of Newegg. Right this moment, there is a $29 difference on the Intel E6400 processor, not including tax (which I don't pay to Newegg since I'm not in their state). There is no shipping charge at either place. So unless I burn out my processor and I HAVE to be up and running, who am I going to buy from?
An ATI branded X1900GT is $413.99 at CompUSA - Newegg has a Connect3D version of the SAME CARD (ok,the core/memory clock speeds are a little different - one is higher on the ATI, the other is higher on the Connect3D) for $169.99. It's a no-brainer.
It's really the age-old comparison of online (needs really only a warehouse, warehouse employees, and a corporate office in which all marketing, website management, customer service, inventory tracking/purchasing, etc. is handled) vs. bricks and mortar, which have to maintain all that PLUS retail locations with employees who may or may not be presenting the best possible face for your company - see above arguments about clueless employees making barely minimum wage.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know why anybody shops there anymore, unless they HAVE to have an item immediately. I've been in that boat, but not frequently, certainly not enough for them to consider me as any kind of regular or repeat customer to the point where I can depend on them for business.
I guess I can see them being useful for people who want to buy a complete system locally, and want the local support of being able to bring it in for repair or servicing - but I can't believe that they base their entire business model off such people, can they?
Ah I'll miss the CompUSA in Roseville if it closes down.
Several years ago there was one employee, an older man in his 40s or 50s who was working behind the desk. He practically had a small audience in front o of him. He had this know-it-all attitude where he acted almost like Nick Burns(your companys computer guy) berating the hell out of customers about various computer topics. It was fun just to watch him treat customers like dirt.
Alice and Bill's The Hard Edge was/is great stuff. I also know somebody who has the issue with an Amiga 500 on the cover. Gosh, was that twenty years ago? cringe. There was also a column that explored the history of computing. I think Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols did that one. I bet you only look at the pictures in nudie mags, too :)
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Any word on if they are going to have clearance sales at the stores that are closing?
"Who wants to spend $3 on shipping for a $5 cable?"
For most things, the time+mileage expense of going to the store far exceeds the cost of shipping...then that $5 cable is being marked-up to $23.50 in the brick-and-mortar shop. Unless it's something that weighs a ton, and ergo costs a fortune to ship, I find it just isn't worth the schlep.
I needed a stack of smallish cat-5 leads, a couple TV cards, a few extra USB cables, a few sticks of RAM, etc. Total weight was practically nothing, so my shipping was $15. The excess markup on the cables alone was about $85 and the rest was about 10% more expensive at the "big box," which would have cost me $90 is time and $5 in mileage to boot. That is to say, the hassle of immediate gratification would have cost more than the final invoice, shipping included.
Its about time that CompUSA closes their doors, or at least most of
them. After the hell that i went threw to get my laptop replaced,
because they couldn't fix the issue. I refuse to go in one of them. Why
should it take 3-6 weeks to fix a simple touchpad issue. When If i send
it into HP it takes 3 days. Screw them. I can't wait to see the rest of
the stores close. There customer service reps are rude, and eve hung up
on me a few times. All i have to say is, Good.
Welcome to Dell,
abandon all hope ye enter here...
Here's the local newspaper article.
I'm not sure if the Softwarehouse chain from Dallas is the same as the one in California. It wouldn't surprise me if they changed names over a trademark conflict.
I used to say this same thing, but I came to realize otherwise over the years. Here in St. Louis, Missouri - we have 3 CompUSA stores open right now. When they first came here, I believe they only had one location (and another similar-sized competitor, Computer City). At that time, we also had a good 50+ "mom and pop" type corner computer stores to choose from. The REAL reason CompUSA grew and the little guys dwindled? The little guys generally didn't have a good understanding of what the customer really wanted and needed!
I worked for several of these small stores (and like you, used to curse the big guys, saying they were stealing our business, etc.). But each and every time, I saw the small shops screw up and hurt THEMSELVES. They *should* have been able to provide better customer service, but usually didn't. (As minimally staffed as they were, people calling in with questions were lucky to get more than 30 seconds of someone's time on the phone, since they were pulling them away from making sales or fixing a PC that had been sitting on the bench for days.) Returns and exchanges were usually another nightmare for customers. The small shops HATED to give a customer his/her money back on anything that had been opened! Customers often felt like it was worth paying more to a "big box" retailer, who would really honor the "30 day return policy" printed on their sales slip without hassles.
On top of that, a lack of inventory was a killer problem. The small stores just didn't secure large enough business loans to stock their stores very well. Every other customer seemed to be told "We can order one of those for you and have it in by next week!" Nobody wants to hear that! They can get online and do that themselves, saving the sales tax too! They shopped locally because they wanted it NOW!
It's true that you generally get a "half assed" repair job at a store like CompUSA. But increasingly, those retailers aren't even trying to do the repair work themselves anymore. They just send it out to the original manufacturer, who usually DOES do a competent repair job. As long as the store can handle putting in a proper repair request and mailing off the computer, they can usually call the customer back in as little as 24-48 hours, saying "It's ready!"
Didn't this happen back around 2000?
Now when will this happen to Radio Shack?!
I am another employee of Compusa. I work in the Techshop not on the sales floor. Unfortunately many people on the sales floor do indeed lie and say things to make customers buy. They say the warranties cover everything, Bull. They cover all hardware issues with the unit as long as it is not customer abuse. Things like customer deleting their partitions, customer dropping the unit, missing keys from laptops, and similar cases of the customer just not taking care for the computer or device. Now any time you get an extended warranty with us you do get the option to protect the screen so it can be replaced no matter what happens to the screen. The best plan that we have does cover software issues and a multitude of maintenance tasks for free. Nothing in home though like some of the sales people say. Now on to what I do as a Tech, I do not do poor repair jobs and only one of my fellow techs messes up with any regularity but he's getting better. We do however have problems sometimes getting parts in, if done improperly parts can take weeks instead of 3-5 days. I won't order a part hastily if their seems to be a problem, this way time isn't wasted on a messed up order. We still have a Apple department but only one Apple tech so don't expect quick service from all locations, Besides Apple sends everyone in the area to us even though we just have to ship off the laptop to apple for repair anyway. Apple is the culprit with these delays. I cannot confirm or deny that the stores are closing, management told us it was a rumor. I doubt their telling the truth.
Oh my god, is there a list of which ones? There's going to be some pretty good close-out sales!!!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Its funny HP was brought up. Yes, I know they're posting incredible sales right now - at least compared to a few years ago. Any event, I went to the HP.ca site to look at their current offerings. I clicked on 1/2 of the desktops on the site and they reported they were all sold out. I also checked a few times over the last few months - when there was news of HP within the past week in the newspaper. Only the lowest and highest priced PCs seemed to still be avialable for sale. Hardly confidence inspiring for a potential buyer. I don't think they have any Canadian stores so I'd be suprised given this venture they're pulling any great sales.
With their horrible prices, who didn't see this coming? Newegg.com and Zipzoomfly.com are your friends.
Believe it or not, I can say the same thing about Best Buy. My family has owned a series of computers from there, starting in 1995 with a refurbished Packard Bell 486 and currently with a 20" iMac Core Duo, which were all the result of free replacements due to the extended warranty. In other words, the total cost of all that over the years was (price of iMac) + (Best Buy "performance service plan") * 4.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Uh, I'm going to guess that list is incomplete. If that list is correct, there will be no CompUSA stores in all of Southern California; specifically, no stores in the greater Los Angeles area. There are currently more than a dozen CompUSA stores in Los Angeles.
(That list shows only 8 CA locations, none of which are further south than Santa Barbara.)
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
With shipping the cost of the less expensive cable off the net may still be cheaper, but dont' stop there. Consider also the impact of tax (almost 9% in my area) and worse, gas. With prices pushing $3 per gallon in areas, consider a 20 mile round trip run to get that cable and you've just used up $3 of gas (and possibly more), not to mention added mileage and other assorted costs of operating a vehicle (or bus fare). I've come to realize that it's not even worth my time and gas to pick things up at the staples around the corner if I don't need it right away.
I long since stopped going to CompUSA. If the surly/clueless employees, bad selection, and lousy prices weren't enough, I just can't believe they think they have the right to search everyone's bags on the way out! I mean I know there's the "shopkeeper's privilege" concept but it still depends on the same basic idea of probable cause (or something equivalent) that applies to any case of search and seizure. They just saw me buy my stuff at the register, so what basis do they have for pretending they think I stole it when they stop me ten feet later? Anyway I never agreed to be illegally searched, and there's no sign claiming that by going in the store you implicitly agree to be searched. Anyway they only search the bag, don't you think if I were stealing something it would be somewhere else? The explanation I've heard is that the real problem is catching their own employees who are in cahoots with a customer/friend, and charge them for a CD-ROM drive but send them out the door with a laptop (and the friend pays them off). Well if they're hiring the dregs of society that's their problem, it doesn't mean I have to give up my rights. Same reason I stopped going to the Guitar Center. There are plenty of stores in the world that don't treat their customers like criminals, so I'll shop at those, thanks. CompUSA deserves what happens to them.
It's the SouthCenter one, a strip mall close-ish to Seattle.
There's no large official looking signs, just some single page notices stuck to the doors saying that they're not taking in any more repairs, and that all sales are final. Nothing inside pointing out where the bargains are, and there wasn't any bargains other than the regular sales anyway - if there's going to be a clearance sale then it hasn't started yet.
But there's a lot of staff, talking in groups, many more than usual, and it seems that some of the displays are being taken down.
Compusa has always been an expensive place to shop. I've recently seen mice and keyboards 2x the actual value of them at other stores.
They're an ok place to shop but i dont never go to compusa unless i'm on the hunt for something i cant find somewhere else locally when i need something asap.
If you're ever in the Orlando area, Skycraft is awesome. They have pretty much everything. It's right off of I-4 on Fairbanks.
They have an online store, too.
I was a member of the "Small Business Sales" group, then the "Government Sales" group. A few weeks after I walked out on them, CompUSA dropped the business sales groups. They really couldn't compete with CDW or any of the big government contracting groups. We sold network cable installation, at $200 per drop. Couldn't compete at those prices. This was in the DC area, with the average being $100 or less per drop, and they only had one cabler. No sense or business sense with how they did things.
:) On my first real day of employment with CompUSA many years ago, in a far away land.. our "team leader" had us all gather at the front of the new store. We were told, when somebody says, "what day is it?" we were to then repeat "every days a great day at comp usa, WhooOP there it is!"
needless to say i would not partake in such annoying behavior and was singled out, brought to the front of the crowd and told to say the phrase with all the cheer of some HR fool. I went to the front, waved goodbye, turned and left. The store has remained a joke to me ever since.
morons selling warranties sums it up.
-and thats my story
Kill your TV
Anyone know where one can get a list of the stores that are closing? Likely to be some pretty fine deals if they are closing that many! Gotta get rid o that stuff...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I, like others here, enjoyed the occasional Sunday deals that CompUSA had to offer. They were also good for parts that you HAD to have right then and there ... like if you forgot to purchase a heatsink with your brand new computer parts :) But I completely gave up on them when I went spelunking in the CompUSA cavern in San Francisco (yes its actually underground) to buy an HDMI cable. They were asking $180 for a 9 foot HDMI cable for my brand new LCD TV. I got back to work and ordered one from monoprice.com for $8+$5 s/h, and had it in 2 days. CompUSA used to be even more expensive. They were forced to lower a lot of their prices once so many online entities started outselling them. I guess they even it out by ripping customers a new one on speciality parts (like HDMI cables). It's not like they have to pay their staff a lot of money. A friend of mine worked at CompUSA as a computer technician for $6.15 an hour (when minimum wage was $5.15 ... oh wait, it still is) while CompUSA charged customers over $70/hr for his services. Corporate greed FTL.
Yeah. Why would an electronics store stock popular electronics? That's f-ing retarded. They should be full of games and computer stuff. Oh, wait. Then they'd just be tiny little stores located in strip malls everywhere.
I can't believe you're holding a grudge against half the available retail stores over something so petty.
But that is the best description of a Wii remote shopping trip I have ever seen. I mean, I was on the edge of my seat! Where would he go after Game stop? There's nowhere left! Ah, Fry's appears like some Deus ex machina! God, I need a cigarette! Whew!
Maybe the CompUSA near me doesn't gouge as badly, because it has a lot of nearby competition (in the general area) from MicroCenter, Radioshack, and the big box stores. I don't know.
But I went in there a few days ago to get an internal IDE drive cable, and they had a whole bunch of them, ranging from the usual flat grey ones for $5ish, up to fairly long round ones for $12 or $14, after instant rebates. And then there were some generic/house-brand USB cables for under $10. I'd guess that all of them were probably 25% to 100% more than you'd pay on NewEgg for the same item (and the USB and ribbon cables I can sometimes find 3-for-$1 at hamfests) and I have no doubt the profit margin on them is enormous, but all substantially less than Best Buy, if you could find anything at BB.
A cable that's three days away has very little value to me. A cable in my hand, today, has a lot. So I'm willing to pay substantially more than mail-order for the convenience of being able to get something right the hell now. So comparing their prices on small items to mail-order houses isn't particularly useful, IMHO, because they're not the sort of items I'd probably order online. That's the sort of stuff I always went down to Best Buy for; not big purchases that I was willing to plan out and wait for a mail-order place for, but when I was right in the middle of a project and just happened to need something.
I noticed that they don't have the in-store prices for a lot of stuff that I've seen in the local store on their website, which makes me think that perhaps they vary the prices on items a lot, store by store. It could be that in areas where they don't think they have a lot of competition, they've been trying to screw people more than they have been at my local joint. If that's the case -- and it seems likely -- then I'd blame that attitude for their failure, since they're essentially damaging their own brand name. Geographic price discrimination in excess of the cost of transportation to different areas just isn't sustainable anymore, at least on anything but the smallest items, because people will just go online and have it shipped to them from a cheaper locale. If they didn't figure that out, they're in big trouble.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
one of those hired "going out of business, everything must GO! 5-12 percent off!" outfits with day-labor guys shaking signs on the corners, and so forth.
if you recognized anybody in there before, with one of these outfits, you won't, the outfit brings in all their own folks and rules.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I just called the store nearest me, which is closing. The associate explained to me that starting tomorrow, they will implement "progressive pricing" and their prices will get lower and lower until they close. The closing date of that store is in the next 60-90 days.
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I just did a search for all CompUSA stores in Nebraska and it said the closest one was Des Moines, Iowa. I guess the one I pass on the way to work will be gone soon. I was just there a week ago, too. I'll miss them. They always had 30 people standing around, but I could get stuff cheaper than Best Buy. Now, Best Buy is the only game in town. That's just miserable. Maybe http://www.ditcorp.com/index.asp will become a little friendlier. Peh.
AT COMPUSSR STORE CLOSES YOU!
If Bush wants to kill the terrorists, he should jump off a cliff.
Don't feel too bad. We've only had one for a few years. They took over the "Incredible Universe" stores.
the money probably came from it's owner Carlos Slim, he is Forbes 3rd richest man alive and owner of a quasi-monoply on mexican telecommunications. His companies are sommwhat notoroius for lousy consumer service.
Did it have an extra button for serializing to XML?
your correct, don't expect any deals, the liquidation company is a bunch of jack-offs
What is happening to CompUSA is essentially what happened to booksellers between 1997 and 2001 as competition on one side from online resellers like Amazon and the other side from bookselling "superstores" like Barnes & Noble and Borders wiped out most of the smaller shopping mall bookstores and independent bookstores (remember in the San Francisco Bay Area we used to have Cody's in Berkeley, Books, Inc. in Santa Clara, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books in Cupertino, Printers Ink in several locations, etc? They're all gone now, unable to compete against several Barnes & Noble and Borders stores in the same area and from online resellers).
CompUsa is basically useless. For any PC they sell, it is easier to get the product online. Their staff does not know anything. The Geek Squad (Best Buy) is alot more responsive for diagnostics and service. Other stores have much more friendly staff.
When CompUsa started selling more TV's than computers you could tell it was near the end.
Uneek
Because can't say lies just to get a better commission for the sale :)
ghostbar page.
it seems that the company does not think about the employees who can have, I I believe that they deberian to think it better but when the things single bring losses see cases like this, that badly
1) Organize software and DVDs in some fashion. I would suggest using a combination of genre and the alphabet (which is widely known outside of CompUSA), but really any system would be better than... none. For more information on the Alphabet, look under A in the... oh. Hmm. Well, ask around.
2) Some stores put price stickers on their wares. I find this to be quite helpful. You should look into it.
I avoid the place, mainly due to their annoying marketing practices! They're completely rebate happy! On Saturdays, I'll often look at the ads in the Mercury News where there are circulars from Fry's (weasels), Best Buy (mass market junk), Circus City and sometimes "Chump USA". Best Buy seems to be trying to shed the rebate nonsense, the others less so. But I simply won't play the games that CompUSA comes up with to avoid being ripped off. What the ^%$#@ is "instant savings" anyway? How about just publishing the price, without a bunch of nonsense! I had to buy an IEC power cord the other day because I stupidly forgot one when I went to another city to install new gear. Chump wanted $9 for it because they're a Belkin house. I ran out of time and held my nose and vowed to never again do business with them, but they did get their nine bucks. Hope it was worth it, guys! When a store starts carrying belkin, they drop all the competing cables and suddenly you can't avoid getting ripped off anymore. Those kinds of practices make me avoid the place like the plague, and I control a lot of spending. Here's how I see it: Screw the customer. Go out of business. Eventually, bad business loses. It just takes too long.
Microcenter is my favorite "Big Box" store. The people who work there speak english. The stores are well stocked and merchandised, and the prices are fair. I meant to mention them in an earlier posting about "rebate hell" and Belkin cable ripoffs.
She just got the job a few months ago, hired in as a service writer. She consistently gets compliments and actually gets "spiffs" (little bonuses for selling things) over the sales floor people. She doesn't push people into things, is honest with them, and is actually pretty knowledgeable. The tech staff are all computer geeks and seem to be pretty sharp - I did my stint in both phone based tech support and repair for a computer builder and they're all at least as good as the guys I worked with.
So, this news partly sucks. CompUSA is trying to give them something though...they're all getting ramped up to 40 hours a week even if they were hired part time and apparently there are going to be severance packages. Sucks thought because she was working just across the street from my office and she just got the job.
the tip-off was the pioneer press online had this at late morning, even before slashdot.
all 4 stores in the twin cities are dussssstttt, dusssssttttt.
have to go to general nanosystems or tran micro, then, if you don't live on the right side of the tracks and getting to micro center is a RPA. and you'll be better off, frankly. both are about a half mile west of the university. in the anonymous poster's case, micro center in burnsville works.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Good-by, they make Radio Shack look like IBM.
I compared the Google cache of the CompUSA store list with the current list of 103 stores and found 120 of the ones that appear to be closing in the near future. You can find the list here and if any of you send corrections or updates, I'll try to adjust the list in a timely fashion. :-)
CompUSA is a national store, while Fry's is not. By closing half of their stores, CompUSA is becoming more like Fry's, although they'll still have more than double the number of stores.
Fast forward to today. It can be tough at times to even move around in an Apple Store with all the people. In just a few years, the number of Apple Stores has jumped to over 170 with more being built constantly. So to hear that CompUSA is having problems and is down to 103 stores seems a bit like....well....poetic justice.
I heard about this yesterday when I was forced to stop in my local CompUSA store here in Illinois... I say 'forced' because one of my clients absolutely had to have something NOW, and there was no time to run up to CDW for it...
While checking out the cashier said "I have to inform you that all sales are final because this store is closing in 3 weeks". I told her "Good, glad to hear that. You're a nice person, but the people who run this store are morons - I'd only come here when I absolutely had no other choice. The prices were too high, service too low, and the rebates were inane." Then I gave her my card and offered her a job with my company...
Really - I did.
I can't count the number of times CompUSA screwed me over the years - fubar'd rebates, equipment that was new - but obviously opened or returned when I opened the box; waiting for someone to 'get the key' to the security cabinet; high prices on cables; and perhaps the one that irked me the most - losing the information on my tax-free status (I buy for my clients, then collect the tax when I bill them - have a state issued number for that...) - then when they lost it in an update, and despite the fact that I'd be in there the DAY BEFORE making a tax free purchase (which worked), they told me I was lying...
Moronic workers.... a continual lack of cashiers... in-your-face advertising at the counters...
Blech... screw 'em... I can't wait until they close the whole damn thing... I'd rather buy from compgeeks.com anyway - good prices, and NEVER had a problem...
4 or 6, I forget which the news said last night.
Embarrassment of riches, I can walk to a Microcenter.
And do. Much too often.
they're working a deal with Apple for a 'store within a store' inside Apple stores. It's to fit in with Steve's Zen philosophy - they need an Idiot Bar to provide balance.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
People who know, know that Vista is not worth the money. I tell everyone who asks exactly what kind of experience I've had with it, and that I'd only pay money to keep it OFF my computer. I tell them if they really want their computer to act completely differently from the way it always has, they should buy a Mac or use Linux. That scares them into keeping WinXP. If we keep keeping it real, we can break the stupid cycle of bloating OSs just to sell more hardware.
CompUSA has always been a huge, shining repository of stupidity. They may indeed have what you need - if you have the time to examine everything in the store. But never expect intelligence from any of the employees.
I have never had a good shopping experience with CompUSA and I, for one, will be glad to see them close down. So this is a good start.
I just came from the CompUSA in Marietta, GA (Cobb Pkwy, near Windy Hill). The only indication that the location is a dead store walking was a small sign on the door saying that they are no longer taking checks. In the store there were no extra closeouts, slashed prices, nothing. C'mon, people! I wanted a carcass to pick over!
Back in the 90s, CompUSA just sold computers - they had THE BEST selection of computers and software you could find, before the market They even made a big deal about being THE LAST US chain store to sell Macs. But once the net caught on, they got gutted - online retailers were so hot, they opened their own stores just to bypass the middleman.
Today, they've managed to move into other markets, now that online / mail-order has taken the bottom out of the retail PC business, and software margins have fallen flat. But they've done a half-assed job, and that's why they're suffering.
Go to any CompUSA - they STILL have a software selection that is just way too large for the size of the store, often 1/4 of the floorspace. And unlike Best Buy's CD pit, a software pit is less likely to attract customers for the high-margin items.
Another problem I have with CompUSA is the inconsistency of products offered. There's overlap with the big-box stores, but they don't offer enough selection to really stand-out, so people don't even bother. Also, a lack of advertising these new product lines on-offer doesn't help things.
For example, in the last few years CompUSA has begun offering cameras, then televisions...but I have never seen an advertisement letting people know about it. Also, the selection is really tiny, even compared to smaller stores like Circuit City.
In addition, I've been astounded as-of late because CompUSA has begun carrying *A* game console. No, not ALL game consoles, just one: the 360. You want a PS2? A PS3? A Wii? Tough...you have to go to a Superstore location to get more than the 360, and even then the selection is limited. Who the hell is going to come to CompUSA for a console or game with such crappy selection?
Part of the fun of going to a store with consoles is you get a visual feel for what's available on what platforms - useful if, like most of the populace, you have NO IDEA what's going on in the gaming industry.
Today CompUSA is a wannabe - they don't have the breadth of different items carried by the big-box stores, and for the products they DO carry they don't offer more selection than a specialty or big-box store.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
When I first walked into a CompUSA store some 16 years ago , I had a feeling they were going to have some problems down the line. I was treated like a criminal. I would buy a product and as I walked out the door they would inspect the bag and validate my reciept. That alone made me look elsewhere.
There staff, aside from a handful is not very skilled. I asked a question once about a product, and the guy picked up a box and started reading it word for word. I told him I could read the box and left, no sale. I go online to get better answers and reviews and I try to support those companies when I can because of that insight.
They don't compete well in the market because they don't know what they wanted to be when they grew up. Best Buy beat the heck out of them in the consumer market as well as Wal-Mart, even Staples, and Office Depot cater better to the small business consumer. So what do they do, they start selling TVs. Now they have to compete against, Ciruit City, Sears, and Brandsmart. Didn't make too much sense to me.
They really could save themselves but they really need to pull a rabbit out of their hat.