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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."
Glad to hear that they're shutting down. I worked there for nearly a year on the front end...awesome coworkers and general atmosphere, but store policies, managers, etc, sucked. Bad(ly?). Ripped off customers on return policies, warranties, replacement plans, etc. Restocking fees? At the manager's discretion, of course.
Thank god, is all I can say.
-- 297504 from store 354...
my first tech job was refurbishing a certain model of PC at the CompUSA tech shop - got me to where I'm at today - many a techie got his start in one of those little tech shops at a retail store.
lower profit margins are a drag on any business - almost inevitable but a fact of life - they lasted longer then the company I left them for by trying to diversify but I guess BB/CC will be taking over the world now.
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Quad Slim jewel cases
Seriously, I know I accept the risk of being modded down here but I use these guys. They fit 4 CDs in the size of one standard jewel case. It was a pain when they left my state, and it'll be a bigger pain when they close their doors.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The local Comp*USA went out of business about six months ago. They were like the pricier, smaller, and less exciting version of Best Buy (which is the pricier, smaller, and less exciting version of Fry's - God, that's the one thing I miss most about living on the west coast). Anyway, long story short, the only good part about Comp*USA was not giving money to Best Buy when I needed something computer-related that day, right then. Fucking D.C.
The "final week clearance" finally had some okay deals. Nothing too great, but stuff like no-name PS/2 keyboards with the stupid "function" key for $3 a pop, 100-spindle DVD-Rs for around $40... I picked up a couple SD-cards as well. You know it's sad that when stuff's 70% off, it's still barely less pricey than ordering online.
They finally opened up a MicroCenter in the location where Comp*USA used to be. Sweet, sweet heaven... it's like Fry's, except, yeah, only about 1/3rd the size.
What I remember is a service manager who said he'd look into something for me, and then didn't. And then when I confronted him with the fact that he wasn't following through on a promise, he didn't care. Neither did the store manager. It was clear that in their minds the problem was with me, rather than their crappy service or in not keeping their word.
I don't much care what happens to the corporation. I want justice for those employees.
What's stupid is that I'm told by an employee of CompUSA that they've been working on opening a new store in Colorado this coming week. Only, now instead of having a grand opening, the first day the store opens will also be a liquidation day.
It's kind of amazing how fast they did all this. Management got the news Friday afternoon, via telephone. Within a couple hours, there were a couple of guards on premises to make sure employees did not steel anything. Employees were forbidden from buying anything "at cost" which employees apparently have always been allowed to do. By the end of the night, liquidation guys had arrived from corporate and were going through the process of taking inventory and repricing so they could (presumably) begin actual liquidation sales this weekend.
It's just damn crazy. I've never cared for CompUSA except that since there are no longer any real mom and pop independent computer stores around, your choice is between CompUSA and Fry's. And Fry's isn't available in most places (which is a shock to those of us from the west coast when we visit other parts of the country). Without even a CompUSA around anymore, I don't know where you're going to pick up hardware in person? It was always nice to have a place you could go to as a last resort if you needed to replace a mobo RIGHT NOW.
How can they re stock a defective product?
... and throw it back on the shelf for the next sucker that comes along. Best Buy did that to me several times, so now I don't go to Best Buy. I'd rather order online and wait a few days than give those bloodsuckers another penny of my money. The last time I went there I bought a cordless phone system with three handsets: when I got it home and cracked the shrinkwrap and opened it up, I found that the handsets were all scuffed up like they'd been through a war, only one of them worked and it rattled when I shook it. Took it back and got a hard time. After talking to the store manager, they finally took it back, and I have no doubt it was out for sale again within the hour. I had similar experiences at CompUSA, and stopped going there some years ago as well. So far as I'm concerned, the big retailers have no cause for complaint when their sales drop: they've cut the quality of their operations to the point where you're safer buying online.
... and found another destroyed device. Scuffed, scratched, case cracked, springs broken and yes, it rattled. I was back at Computer City's service desk within fifteen minutes, and was told that they couldn't take it back, because it was in "unsaleable condition". "Why is that a problem" I asked "I mean, you just sold it to me in that condition not half an hour ago." Guy refused to take it back. After a few more minutes of this, I'm starting to get upset, other customers are starting to take notice, an the store manager comes over. "What's the problem here?" I told him "I want to return this piece of junk I just bought." He also refused, and he said, "You must have done that to it." I said (rather loudly) "I JUST BOUGHT THE THING HALF AN HOUR AGO!" to which he replied, "Well, sometimes they come from the factory like that." Well, at that point I get very angry and all the checkout lanes have come to a halt as people are watching this byplay. This idiot looked around and saw that people were putting their purchases down and heading for the doors, and decided to give me my refund. Wanted to make it a store credit, and I said, "No way, I'm not coming back." So I got my cash, but I really had to work for it.
That's an easy one. It's called a shrink wrap machine. All the big stores have one. They just take the product you returned, shrinkwrap it and put some official-looking stickers on the outside so it looks factory fresh
Anyone remember Tandy's ill-fated "Computer City" stores? Same problems there, and guess what, they also are out of business. Hell, I spent fifty bucks (fifty bucks!) on a nice joystick, back in the days when I was playing Descent II a lot. Got it home, opened the box
And they wonder why nobody wants to shop brick-and-mortar anymore. It's not just that online ordering is somehow magically "better", sometimes it is nice to walk around an actual store, but these guys don't seem to be working very hard to make it worthwhile.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm from Europe, so I don't really get it... but please, help me. Why is it that the majority of Americans (and many Europeans to be fair) seem to think that only "Big Name" chain stores can provide these essential services to them? As far as I can see this model seems to cater only for corporate greed mongers, and the crappy service you recieve seems directly related to this. What's was flaunted as capitalism has emerged as an oligopoly of one or two market leaders at best. I read here that people have only 2 stores to choose from in their town, or not even that many. Wow, there's choice in action. Might as well sell only two brands of cola and be done with it. You say "but hey, it's cheaper this way..." and sure, the chain stores might save you a few cents due to their vast economy of scale, but what about everything you loose to tighten the purse strings?
You complain about the service, but greedy corporate chains don't pay much, so who works there? As the old adage goes, pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Moreover, as they're the only store in town you can like it lump it as far as they're concerned. No wonder they treat the public with contempt, we let them. Perhaps its time we returned to the old days of smaller, private stores??? After all, if my business relies on a good reputation and repeat trade I'm likely to offer a good service in return. Yes, things might cost a little more, but then you have to also ask the question about whether you're paying the true cost of anything these days. For example, I live in the Sub-Carpathian region, but amazingly bananas are cheaper than apples in the supermarket! Eh? Same for most products now, be it computers, food, clothes... all the same, someone gets screwed somewhere because the end user is tight fisted. Maybe, just maybe, we have to stop thinking about everything in simple $$$$ terms. People say they saved x number of cents on a product, but wasted x number of hours (and stress) when it didn't work, went wrong etc.
I for one will continue to support my local, privately run computer store. I pay a little more, but I get to talk to a guy who knows what he's on about, can find what I want and competently fix my machine when it's wrong. I save a lot this way, time and blood pressure namely, and as an added bonus I know a decent chap's getting paid fairly for his work. Chain stores will never compete with that level of service, not in a million years.
I used to work for CompUSA in the 1992 time frame, in Skokie IL.
Back then they were paying a living wage to their hardware salespeople (Or fairly close to it), had a decent tech department, and had a great Mac section.
I left in 1993 and ended up working for Apple Computer.
The funny thing was, I left just as Best buy was coming into the market, and CompUSA management was all freaked out about it. I didn't understand why Best Buy scared them (and still don't). CompUSA at the time was a "computer store" and a big one. Best Buy was what? Appliances, with some computers?
Back then CompUSA resembled Fry's more closely than Best buy, and they made the decision to go "retail". They could have gone the other way and been a little more "geeky".
Fry's, which currently looks like a big success story from my standpoint, flew a banner outside of their store at grand opening in Naperville IL which read: "Welcome IT Professionals".
I'm no fanboi for any retail chain. But there's some things I observed that first day shopping at the Naperville Fry's:
1. I ran into three of my contemporaries, all accomplished IT professionals.
2. When I talked to a guy in the computer components department about a logic board, he knew what chipsets were, which one I was using, why I chose it, and which boards used it.
3. It was amazing to me that I had the option of buying a 19" relay rack, an oscilloscope, coffee (Love their french roast!!), computer components, and a vacuum cleaner. (And have over the years bought some very strange permutations of geeky products, and rejoiced at the opportunity)
Strangest purchase combination: A DVD player, laser pointer, exercise DVD, tea, 19" relay rack, and a radio controlled car.
4. I noticed that under certain circumstances I'll forgo internet shopping for the brick and mortar shopping experience- even if I pay more.
Sadly, CompUSA never tried to touch the above market. As disjointed and strange as that product mix seems it *works*. CompUSA could have gotten a lot more techie in response to Best Buy. They didn't- and they lost.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
The first thing that built them up as a company. Good salespeople who were paid good commissions. It was typical for people to make 40-50k a year in sales. Even those in software did well.
Then, management(VP's, RM's, DM's) somehow went crazy. Sales were going down a little. So, they started to go crazy on people anytime something was amiss. Maybe perhaps pressure will increase sales, In reality more training and more unity would have.
Then they bought out good Guy's. They took away the commissions, and fired 95 percent of the sales staff who all ended up in better jobs. This left the incompetants on the floor who really had no motivation to sell other than pressure. They never trained them properly either. Even worse, they all now made about 6-9 bucks an hour. For these people the job was just a fling. Nothing they cared about beyond the next check for booze. Even the ones who did care weren't promoted to a place that they could do anything.
Then, they started to model what good guys had been doing in creating high end selling rooms with pretty fixtures(expensive). However, there were no high end sales people to sell them. So what happened? Duh....
The pay consistently sucked. Good employees where like finding needles in a haystack. Even then, they never respected them if they were good. The management was always overworked. What did they expect? It's like the entire chain suddenly lost vision with the real world.
who used to work there (10 years ago) i can tell you that this has been along time coming, yes they were somewhat overpriced on a lot of items but the worst thing was pissing people of with being out of the advertised specials as many people have pointed out
;P) and it was bsaically just used as a device to get people in the store.
what i've not seen mentioned is that this was done on purpose, at least at the store where i worked at (indianapolis) i worked at the parts counter selling harddrives/ram/whatever and they would put out massive ads for ram that was like half retail price but they would only stock maybe 5 or 6 sticks (which i often bought all of myself
on top of that they had a rampant theft problem, i worked there during high school and while i wasn't part of the group i knew about 10 people who were organized in stealing shit from the store and reselling it to their friends, that group expanded until they were eventually caught but even then they worked out a deal with some kind of minor fine and returning all the shit that they knew was missing (a fraction of the actual), that went on for at least a year that i'm aware of.
compusa has alwasy had a better selection adn lower prices than the likes of circuit city though (at least around here), so i am kind of surprised to see them closing down, they moved out of free standing buildings and into a nearby strip mall here cause the rent was too high on the land they were on (someone once told me it was like $30,000 a month or more and they supposedly owned the building)
i'm almost certain teh last nail in the coffin of the one here has to be Fry's even though its further away frys has an obscene amount of shit at far lower prices than anyone else around here (hardware specifically) and they finally made it out here, and when they did no one i knnow who builds their own machines goes anywhere else (myself included).
waspleg
apparently you weren't around for the short life of Incredible Universe?