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CompUSA To Close All Stores
An anonymous reader writes "Mexican telephone and retail magnate Carlos Slim, in a rare defeat, will exit the US consumer electronics market, shutting the last 100 CompUSA Inc. stores after sinking about $2 billion into the business. Gordon Brothers Group, a Boston-based retail store liquidator, will oversee a piecemeal sale of the Dallas-based business, the company said in a statement. Financial terms were not disclosed. Stores will remain open through year-end under the supervision of Gordon Brothers, which will also negotiate the sale of real estate and other assets."
CompUSA is the only real computer store near me (in Rochester, NY). Of course there's Best Buy and Circuit City (etc) but the selection was always a lot better at CompUSA. When I needed a hard drive or something in a hurry that was always where I went.
When is Fry's going to make it to the east coast?
Search first, ask questions later.
Back in the day, CompUSA was a decent place to buy computer parts. They had a good selection, knowledgeable sales people, and good prices. Those days have been gone for some years now. It got to where their prices were so ridiculously high without a sale, and the "sale" required a rebate to get a decent price, that it was no longer worth shopping there. Especially when Fry's opened. I haven't been in the local store in 4 or 5 years.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
What I remember about CompUSA is that on multiple occasions, when I went into the store looking to buy an item, they were sold out of it. It's like it didn't occur to them, "hey, we're sold out of this. Obviously it's popular. We better buy more of it, and put it on the shelves, so we can make more money". After that happened two or three times, I got tired of dealing with them, and would go online or to a different store. So I'm not that surprised to hear that they're going out of business.
We don't have CompUSA in Israel, either, but the name is as familiar to me as McDonalds or Coca Cola (both of which we do have). That may be because I spend just a bit too much time online...
I'm also surprised to see that they have but 100 branches. The fact that I am familiar with them shows how influential they are. I suppose though, that influential != [ big || successful ].
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
How about flying off the shelves before the store opened the day the ad came out? This happened all the time. The last time this happened my buddy needed an HDD and CompUSA had one on sale in their ad with a mininum of 10 per store. We met up at a local restaurant for breakfast, then went to the store. We got there 15 minutes before they opened and there was 1 person waiting outside. When the doors opened there were 5 of us waiting and we all went in different directions. My buddy and I went back to the counter were they kept the HDD's and he asked for one, only to be told by the clerk that they were out. Out? The store had just opened and we were the first ones there. The clerk wouldn't answer why they were out, but the answers are obvious:
As we left the store empty handed we came across 2 other guys who were outside when the store opened and neither of them got what they came for either. Needless to say neither my buddy nor I have been back since.
I personally will miss CompUSA. In our area they are in the same shopping center as Best Buy, and it was very common for me to park midway between them and get prices from both stores before buying. And contrary to most folks' comments, our local CompUSA was always very well-stocked. If both Best Buy and CompUSA had a good sale, we would be almost guaranteed of getting it at CompUSA, and almost guaranteed of NOT getting it at Best Buy. Of course you had to pick-and-choose what you bought there, like any store. Their cable prices were ridiculous (I buy all my cables from newegg), but they often had really good deals on hard drives, memory, video boards, keyboards, mice and such. And they always had a much broader selection of computer stuff than Best Buy.
Anyhow, where I think they went wrong was getting into consumer electronics like big screen TVs. Their prices were outrageous and their store displays were woeful. And the thing that drove me the most crazy was they never even bothered to properly set up the TVs. They would always be running noisy content with maladjusted displays in the wrong aspect ratio, in a bright environment. I was actually embarrassed for them. In all my years of going there I never, ever saw anyone in a checkout line or leaving their store with a TV in their cart, as contrasted with Best Buy, where it was commonplace.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Actually, Newegg and Egghead had nothing to do with one another. Amazon bought what was left of Egghead back in (I think) 1999 or so when their online-only strategy failed. Newegg was a separate startup that was started down in California (Egghead was based in the Seattle area).
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
":The employees bought them before the store opened. This should never be allowed. "
Likely it was this one. My wife worked as security at Sears for a span, and it was routine to allow associates to purchase items at sale price (minus an employee discount) before the store opened.
Fair? No.
Did I tell her to grab an Xbox 360 for immediate resale on eBay? Betcherass I did, but they were all gone by the time her shift started 1/2 hour before the store opened. Other employees came in early.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I ordered a video card from Tiger Direct. Later on I started receiving emails from them with subject lines like "Important info about your recent order" but the emails were just advertising and had nothing to do with my order. To me that is dishonest and underhanded. I will never buy from Tiger Direct after that.
MicroCenter?
I know they aren't available everywhere, but those that do have them, I would take them over CompUSA or Fry's. These days I usually go to Best Buy, as I've been rather unimpressed by the CompUSA near me, and there aren't Fry's or MicroCenter around here, but I can't help feeling a little dirty when I do.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
You are correct:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egghead_Software
"Egghead was hurt by a December of 2000 revelation that hackers had accessed its systems and potentially compromised customer credit card data. The company filed for bankruptcy in August of 2001. After a deal to sell the company to Fry's Electronics for $10 million fell through, its assets were acquired by Amazon.com for $6.1 million."