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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."
I never really liked them, personally. I don't know if it was different on other regions of the country, but in the Sacramento area the CompUSAs were always overpriced. I guess it's sad to see any store that sells computer products die on some level, but there's better stores still on the market. ;)
That being said, if CompUSA was the only brick and mortar computer store in your area, I guess this would be a sucky development. Maybe a Fry's will move in.
-Vendal Thornheart
I purchased a computer from Computer City just before CompUSA bought them out - and it had trouble reading CDs. It was transferred from Computer City's shop to CompUSA's shop, where it languished for 13 weeks while I pleaded, cajoled and threatened. Finally liberated, I fixed it myself with a CD-ROM from Fry's (discovering in the process I didn't need some big box store to build PCs for me).
Fast forward two years. I'm building a new computer, and Fry's doesn't have the graphics card I want. In a charitable mood, I buy one from CompUSA. It doesn't work. I return it to find they've sold out, too - but insist on charging me a 15% restocking fee, even after I complain to the manager. I asked him if he would enjoy my $30 (since it was the last dollar they'd ever see from me), and he simply assured me they would. He never even apologized for the trouble they caused.
I never set foot in CompUSA again.
Perhaps I'm not the only potentially loyal customer they drove away through sheer greed and incompetence.
In short, you lose some control of your own name, and while you can impose conditions on the franchisees, there have to be limits.
Now, the benefit of a franchise is also its disadvantage; people associate the local franchised operation with its original owner, and if this isn't up to scratch, then- at best- people may assume that other franchises are run to poor standards and- at worst- people assume that the original company is responsible and at fault.
"But... but... it wasn't us, it was one of our franchisees" won't cut it in the face of widespread complaints that swamp the ability of your PR to explain the true situation. And do the public care anyway? It's a double-edged sword- if a company is willing to exploit its name (and associated reputation) by selling it to others, it has no right to complain if it's too lax or greedy in controlling the franchise and these actions come back to haunt it.
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Likewise an ex-employee (store #349 in Lexington, KY). I definitely feel the same about the place going. They treated me, and all the other employees-- up to and including "back end" people like HR and low-level managers (front end, inventory)-- like complete trash. About a year after I was laid off (because the store was losing money) I heard that the then-General Manager had been embezzling money from the store and had finally been caught and fired. No clue if they ever pressed criminal charges. We actually had a lot of good experiences with their warranty, especially the full replacement. They followed it well enough that salesmen weren't unknown to use it to close a sale (ie: "accidentally" break your shiny new PDA two days before your 2 year warranty runs out, and get the dollar value toward the purchase of a new one). The restocking fee always came down to how much we didn't like a particular customer's attitude. There was a lot of stuff that went on to basically screw the customer (like fast-talking old people into spending 100 dollars on getting a tech to "set up" their computer before they took it home, for which the techs just held the computer for 30 minutes before bringing it up front). Given shit like this, and the way the stores were managed, it's no surprise to me they're going out of business. At my store we had probably 6-8 sales people and 4 cashiers working at any given time, and we had 8(!) managers-- General, Sales, Asst. Sales, Front End, Operations, Inventory, Business Sales, and Tech. No wonder they couldn't afford employees! I'm not the least bit sad to see it go.
--Obyron
The problem is that in the United States the local shops have several things going against them. First, the selection is often not all that good which is a problem for informed consumers who usually want one of a couple options none of which may be carried by the small retailer. Second, and perhaps more important to Americans is the price difference. It's usually a lot more than the few cents you cite. Often a product will cost at least tens of dollars more and depending on the price of the product perhaps $50 or $100 more from a local store. These are not insignificant price differences and people, at least Americans, will put up with just about anything to save $5. Unless your local store is within $5 on just about everything you will loose customers to the big store no matter how much better your service is, many are not. This is not to say there are not successful small, local computer (and other) stores but there are a limited number of them, usually in densely populated cities making it much more convenient for most consumer to shop at the (much closer and much less less expensive) big box retailer.