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The Last Will and Testament of Circuit City
Harry writes "Sunday is the final day of business for Circuit City, the once-dominant national consumer electronics chain done in by the rise of Best Buy, the crummy economy, and multiple failings of its own. I paid a final visit of respect to my local store, and found that they'd gotten rid of just about all the unopened electronics products, and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom. Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene." NPR has a segment on the end of the Circuit City era as well.
"Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene"
Newbie.
Circuit City cut their own throat in a series of dreadful missteps(culminating in their brilliant "Hey, let's sack all the halfway competent salespeople and attempt to hire them back at downright insulting newb wages" scheme), their demise is well deserved. Even in death, their prices are high and their service lousy. Why is their death sad?
I remember in the early nineties when the Circuit City car audio installation department employed all those otherwise out of work recent EE grads. Good times.
Where do EE majors work now? The wife is looking for work.
Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).
I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I call dibs on the lady that worked in printers.
"Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene"
Hey, that reminds me of something...
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - electronics retailer Circuit City was found dead in its Stripmall, Illinois home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying its contributions to mass market electronics. Truly an American icon.
here in washington they couldnt even go out of business right!! The prices at 40% off were either the same as best buy or more!!
and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom
At the checkout:
"You know, I've got a couple of these toilet paper dispensers, and they always seem to jam at the most inopportune times. Could I interest you in purchasing our exclusive 5-year extended warranty protection plan for only $179 more? It would really give you more peace of mind in the bathroom."
I quickly had written it off my list of places to go when it was in business and hadn't been there in years. When they were shutting down, I figured I'd go and check to see what kind of deals were available. Answer? None that I could find. Most things were no better than retail, I could go to Best Buy and get the same price. Oh sure they were "marked down"... but they'd been marked up first. There were a few things I saw that were lower than you might see in most brick and mortar stores, but not by much and not any lower than you'd find online.
I never understood why they thought that their high prices were sustainable. I mean I understand that retail stores charge more than online. No problem, you are paying for the convenience. However they charged more than other retail stores. Well guess what? I can drive to Best Buy just as easy.
Also you can justify higher prices with better service/experience. Some high end AV shops are like that. The prices are high, even when you consider the gear they sell (which is already very high priced) but the service is top notch. You can spend hours milling around, trying out things. They have knowledgeable people who will answer your questions and such. Thus you are willing to pay more.
Well CC didn't have that, at least not the ones I'd tried. Their sales people didn't know shit and were rather pushy.
Ok so if you aren't going for the service, and aren't going for the price, why go? Well the answer to that question for me and apparently many others was "you don't." Thus they are out of business.
I feel bad for their employees as this is not a good time to be looking for a job at all, and probably doubly bad looking for a retail job, but I do not feel bad for Circuit City. They were a crap business, and that's the whole idea in a capitalist market: You run a crap business, you fail and are replaced by someone better. Best Buy is by no means perfect, but they are better than CC.
Circuit City was dead to me when they lauched their DIVX plan back in the late 90's between that and their jacked up warranty policy (back then if you returned an item that you had purchased an extended warranty for, they pocketed the warranty fees) I had vowed never to step foot in one again. I managed to steer free from CC until a few months ago when I went by the local one to pick over the corpse during its going out of business sale.
I really think their biggest problem is the whole time they thought they were competing with Best Buy, but they were really competing with Target, Walmart, and online retailers like Newegg, Buy.com, and TigerDirect. Best Buy should try to learn from their demise.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Even under liquidation they were selling their stuff for maybe 10% off. I can't tell you how many I watched walking out and telling each other "This is why they're going out of business..."
"I am writing this message in representation of the employees of Circuit City here in Richmond who are having to deal with inexcusable conditions being brought on by customers with retribution. Walk into any Circuit City store on any given day and you will find a handful of employees and a sea of customers. The fact that people have flocked to our stores en masse on a daily basis, creating Black-Friday style crowds, has been insulting to our employees and our business alike.
Where was this support when we needed it? Liquidation, for us, has brought great havoc on a series of levels. I've been working for the company for almost two years, and I have never seen anything worse than I have seen over the past month. Customers have gotten enraged over the fact that our discounts aren't good enough for them."
While I only shopped there if I wanted something *now*, I did go in once the closures were announced and you could see people loading up on stuff just because it was some % off. I never saw anything that I couldn't get a similar deal online at the time (and also came with warranty) so I couldn't understand the why people descended on the store en masse. The only explanation I can think of is a feeding frenzy brought on by greed. So from that perspective I can understand where the letters author was coming from
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I was never really a huge fan of Circuit City I still miss Computer City, though. Was pretty good in my area.
It was a sad day when Enron closed its doors after making horrible management decisions that cost their employees, customers, and the general public billions. But curiously enough, nobody ever blames management. "The market is bad." Yes, the big bad evil market -- tell me, even in a recession or depression, does the market for electronics suddenly disappear? No. It might shrink, but a business that's properly built will shrink with it, not simply die off. A corporate mass-extinction like this has only one cause: Bad management. Period.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What happened to their boneheaded execs that cut their own throat? Took their golden parachutes and went screwing other companies?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I never put much stock into the psychological games retailers play to get you to buy products until I went into a Circuit City. Whoever they got to design their stores obviously didn't understand what makes people feel at ease and happy. Every time I stepped into a CC, I couldn't wait to get the hell out. Something about the layout, the ceiling, and/or the lighting just made me feel uncomfortable. Then on course, you had the staff. When you wanted help, they were no where around. When you wanted to be left alone, they came in droves.
I admit their online->in store pickup functioned much smoother than Best Buy's.
Ford and GM will be next. It will be sad to seem them go, but someone smarter than the idiots running those companies will fill in their places.
Nobody bailed out Edsel and Packard and tons of other motor corporations 'back in the day' that went under, and the world kept on turning.
If you get lazy and don't inovate or rape your customers (Circuit City) then you eventualy lose. BestBuy is big now sure, but the same thing will happen to them eventually, especially at the rate they discard customers.
Results for circuitcity.com
Found 12 sites
Site Site Report First seen Netblock OS
1. www.circuitcity.com Site Report march 1996 adsl endpoints nat conections only linux
2. entertainment.circuitcity.com Site Report june 2004 alliance entertainment corp. f5 big-ip
3. email.circuitcity.com Site Report june 2006 epsilon interactive f5 big-ip
4. investor.circuitcity.com Site Report november 2002 nasdaq stock market windows server 2003
5. circuitcity.com Site Report january 1998 akamai technologies linux
6. weeklyad.circuitcity.com Site Report november 2003 westwood vista shopping center linux
7. newsroom.circuitcity.com Site Report may 2004 nasdaq stock market unknown
8. media.circuitcity.com Site Report august 2008 trueffect, inc. linux
9. ssl.circuitcity.com Site Report august 2004 akamai technologies linux
10. answers.circuitcity.com Site Report january 2009 adsl endpoints nat conections only linux
11. internalforum.circuitcity.com Site Report september 2007 ibm f5 big-ip
12. business.circuitcity.com Site Report december 2004 ibm unknown
I suspect 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 will be dead soon, and wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall for 11 :-)
It is sad for so many employees there. It is certainly easy for us to sit here and comment on how crap their knowledge was, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, most of the people that worked there were not bad people. They were in a bad business, though. Their company did not support them through adequate training, etc. Couple this with declining margins, and the bottom falling out of several of their key products (PCs, TVs, etc) and they didn't really stand a chance. So all of the points here are valid, but I really feel for some of those folks that showed up, and worked to the best of their abilities. This is a shitty time to be looking for a new job.
Prices are still crap.
There's the time I was pricing DVD drives, and got thrown out of the store because I dared to -write down- prices.
And the time we bought a 'open box return' DLT TV, and the bulb blew out a couple weeks later. The installer pointed out there was about 150 hours on the bulb, a lot more than you'd expect for an 'open box', but consistent with this as a demo/floor model.
My neighbor had a disastrous experience with their installation service, he ended up having to redo it all.
And of course, that's before their dumb-assed management failures. Unfortunately, I'm sure the -corporate officers- won't suffer (except in the loss of future rip-off income...)
So Good Riddance, Circuit City! You sucked!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Circuit City was found dead this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss them - even if you didn't enjoy their work, there's no denying their contributions to layoffs and unemployment. Truly an American icon.
I suggest you read Slashdot
In my personal experience, the place was full of sharpie sales clerks with an attitude. I was treated like a freak when I went in there wanting a USB to RS-232 adapter. It was like 'who would want something like that?'
I've detested Stereo Store Salesmen since I was a young teen, wanting connectors and what-not. Particularly because I always know more than them. And that's basically what Circuit City was packed with. Hucksters with an attitude.
Not necessarily, it never looks good when a company liquidates under your leadership.
I haven't owned a game console in a few years and I had become jealous of some of my buddies' XBoxes, so I decided to pick one up during the liquidation. I managed to pull 30% off, which actually is a pretty good deal on something like a game console, which usually will have a very strict price set by the manufacturer and is constant at any place you try to shop for it (including online). Of course, when I got it home, I realized it didn't come with an HDMI cable, and that's the online type of inputs my current monitor has (plus old timey VGA). So, I crawled back to Circuit City expecting a good deal on a cable. I found two crates full of 3 ft HDMI cables, priced at nearly $40 apiece (this is the price AFTER the discount, and about a quarter the cost of the console itself... wtf). They were all Monster brand, of course. I asked around to see if there were any cheaper ones, and I was told that there weren't. By pure chance, I happened to find one in a torn up box, that was shoved in the wrong place. It was another 3ft cable, but it was different than the others and had no price on it. After looking around for someone for about 10 minutes, I found one of the sales dudes and he told me it was $18, but that he had been hoping to pick that one up for himself. I halfway felt bad for him, but if he really wanted it, he could've stowed it somewhere. Anyway, it was only through sheer luck that I managed to not get screwed by them on my very last outing to that store.
Why is their death sad?
I think many people remember Circuit City from when it's employees were paid on commission (and were competent). I worked for them for 2 years in that time while I saved up for college, and I was amazed at the education and professionalism of the staff there. The sales people (Sales "Counselors" at the time) were encouraged to spend their time ensuring all the equipment was in good operating order, tidy up displays, and study up on new product info. They even had a monthly magazine for "each" department where they would have pretty in depth articles.
Here's the important thing, most sales people knew that the way to make the big bucks in sales was to get your customers to remember you *and* recommend you to friends. This meant wowing them, being polite, and giving them sound advice. Through caring about their customers many of the salespeople of that time were pulling between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. Yes the extended warranties sucked but the salespeople were required to sell a certain percentage of their volume in them.
As far as the service, CC was proactive in pricematching the competition, when the website came up, they matched their on-line pricing, and most importantly, they had one of the best customer data systems I've seen. Though it looked dated, the system CC used allowed any employee to quickly pull up any old receipts for any product you've bought. This meant that returning or exchanging an item without the original receipt was a painfree experience.
Open box items were always marked down aggressively to move them off the floor (which also gave an incentive to visit some stores frequently). This is in stark contrast to other stores which will mark down a product a paltry 5-10%.
I'll miss Circuit City, mainly because of the quality store it was. Though it had changed in recent years, I still got better service from CC stores than I did at their main competitor. I'll miss idly stopping by the stores to check up on open box deals. Lastly I'll miss my Sunday morning routine of digging through the paper for the burgundy colored sales ads.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
Borders and Blockbuster - coming to a bankruptcy near you!
Bury their ass in unused Divx DVDs.
I like microcars
1) customers do not owe businesses "support", If a business treats their customers with courtesy, good service, and respect for their intelligence they will earn customer loyalty even in bad times.
2) Customers tend to get outraged when they hear about 40% off sales and then go in and see that the 40% off item was marked higher than it had been the week before the sale started. Its not a matter of "didnt get the discount they wanted" its a matter of being suckered into a store and having their time wasted.
3) Their customers didnt kill their store, their bosses did. They shouldnt blame their customers for simply looking for an honest bargain.
My whole state of Maryland only has one Microcenter and it's miles from me. Microcenter seems to have very conservative growth plans. I'm hoping this will interest them in moving into the void left by Circuit City, MC is way better than BestBuy or Circuit City.
First a Mitsubishi from their one brand store as it was really the only game in town. Next from Sears as they had a decent price and I was there after visiting Best Buy and not deciding. 2 days ago after visiting WalMart where they were out of every one of a size and brand I'd consider, was it Costco and drove home with it. Their selection was medium, price good, condition of box (and product on installation) perfect, sales pressure/help not needed.
Interesting article in Business Week on liquidators and how they operate. Don't expect bargains until the last days when there is darn near nothing anyone wants left. It wasn't Circuit City people selling in those last days, it was the liquidator setting the prices and hiring the existing staff.
Remember DivX? Not the DivX of now but the pay-per-view DVDs that you had to buy. Back in 1999. The ones where people bought Silver and Gold membership so they could view them "unlimited" only to find that the program was canceled. The ones where the DivX machine hooked up via a phone line. That was Circuit City in conjunction with the DivX company which was basically three lawyers. Well you know what? I never forgave them for that and I never shopped at Circuit City after that.
When I went in on the last weekend when Good Guys liquidated a few years ago. I actually had good memories of GG, as a highschooler drooling over various high end audio & video. They were one of the first to have plasma TV's, if you had 20K than you could also take one home. Even better, the one on La Cienega in L.A. was open an astonishing 24 hours (unheard of in the day). I did find un-blown-out speakers at a third of the price and stands at the GG liquidation that I still enjoy now. CC always blew monkey chunks, their big DVD sale a couple of years ago was a joke. Never set foot in one again.
bought a TV there several years ago. good knowledgeable salesman, steered me away from an idiot mistake i was trying to make, matched my price range and excellent service. Went back several times and paid a higher price than on-line or what it would have cost for BB. when they sacked him and the rest of the competent salesmen, i never went back. I would rather pay 10% more and get excellent service, and 20% more for excellent service and convenience.
Lastly I'll miss my Sunday morning routine of digging through the paper for the burgundy colored sales ads.
Don't tell me Burgundy World is closing down, too.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I remember The Good Guys! But that place was even worse IMO!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You forgot another big reason for a company to disappear instead of shrink : Governmental involvement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
KBToys went out of business much more quietly than Circuit City or LNT, but it was equally depressing seeing them move the last remaining products to the front so they could strip the paint from the walls in the back.
Having an extensive memory like I do and also having lived in Richmond many years ago and then most recently; I feel I have a pretty damn good over view of the whole fiasco. The problem was with management. The problem was with management every single step of the way.
When I was a teenager, Circuit City was THE place to buy anything electronic. Why? The salespeople worked on commission so it was in their best interests to know what they were talking about. You could stand and talk with them for however long it took and the lions' share of them knew what they were talking about in every aspect of what you were considering buying. The service was so good that people used to refer other people to the salesman that had helped them by name.
I can remember CC winning design awards for stereo eq that came out on occassion as well as many other things. At the same time, their return policy was bar none, the best you could get anywhere. So what happened?
First, management decided they wanted a larger chunk of their employees pay. To that end, they cut all the salespeople and offered them entry level wages on a per hour basis. Almost immediately, the good sales people left. They moved on to greener pastures. Instead of walking in and talking to someone who knew what they were talking about, you got a teenager who was more concerned with who he or she was going out with on Friday night. Not that there is anything wrong with teenagers, I used to be one too. But, a teenager making minimum wage is never going to be able to compete with someone who lives and breathes whatever the product is that they are selling.
Next came the elimination of the large appliances. Who is honestly going to buy a washer and dryer from a 16 year old kid? You see, when people realized it was kids in there, the high dollar purchases ended. It ceased being THE store and became a store...like so many others. As many of the commissioned sales people left, many of the management also left. What they were left with was a company with salespeople who did not understand what they were selling along with a management team whose understanding of technology was "It's the next big thing!"
In a mad dash to recoup the losses generated by idiot management, they turned to many deals that were ill advised at best. The most glaring of these was the DIVX support. They tied almost all of their fortune to Toshiba and in turn provided the buffer zone financially if the whole thing fell apart. As we all know...Americans like to own their media (we can argue about that later).
When DIVX collapsed as everyone who knew anything about formats knew it was going to, CC took the brunt of it. Then as we all know, the dot com boom blew out and that was it. One of my favorite incidences that occurred was about 10 years or so ago, you found out you had been laid off on Monday mornings by a sign on your desk. If your stuff was in a box and there was Kleenex next to it on your desk and a security guard in your department wandering around, you were laid off. You can only do that so many times to employees in your headquarter town before you hit a point where noll amount of advertising is going to save your company from bad press.
But, time had moved on and Best Buy had shown up on the sidleines and was edging their way in. BB opened stores that were clean and bright and made their fortune off of friendly helpful people who knew what they were doing. As CC began to circle the drain, more stores closed, more layoffs took place, items got cheaper and their price went up. Where at one time in CC you could walk in and buy just about anything for a great price and have your neighbors over and have them oohh and ahh for the next three days; now, it was a shady looking place where you kind of expected someone to offer you 'grey market' items in a dark corner.
They never dropped their prices after they stopped paying their commissioned salespeople. In many ways, CC was THE MOST EXPENSIVE place to buy something. Yes, you
They prices weren't competitive at all and even during their closeout sale... I went there 2 weeks ago and most items were still more expensive than other stores I usually shop at and by far more expensive that online stores. I'm sorry for the employees but C.C. deserved what was coming to them.
The one single decent feature of Circuit City was being able to order online and pick up in-store within half an hour. If they had what you wanted, and at a reasonable price, you had it right now.
Walmart.com has a store pickup option, and it sucks so bad in my experience (huge delays with poor notification, backed by a customer-hostile call center) that the downsides *far* outweigh their price advantage.
If Walmart's online operation had to compete only with amazon/newegg/BB, it would already be dead. As it is, the brick-and-mortar operation is in an upswing in this economy, so the online folks can continue to fail it without competitive pressure.
Circuit City won't be mourned, except that it's nice to have an alternative everyonce in a while when you need to have something, and it's out of stock at Best Buy. Yes, I get the majority of my media and tech stuff online, but CC didn't start that way, they started as an appliance vendor. So did Best Buy, and there's a nice bright corner of BestBuy that nobody notices that has fridges, stoves, microwaves and that kind of crap you only buy once every ten years. So what did CC do wrong? 1) Crappy selection: Once upon a time, I liked CC's CD selection better than Best Buy: it was large, well organized, and deep. More recently, they've got squat for selection, the same lousy prices as every other retailer, and when they've got big sales, everything's just basically in a pile, no alphabetizing to speak of beyond the first initial, if you're lucky. 2) Crappy service: Buying a camera or a laptop (I helped an idiot relative buy one of each, even though I told her the prices could be beaten online), requires the attention of a sales droid, and printing out about eight yards of paper, none of which are a receipt. 3)Computers, HD-TV, Blu-Ray are a commodity: if you can get them in WalMart, they're not a specialty item. Don't sell them like they are. but mainly 4) Failed to adapt: Their stores continued, even after recent revamps, to look dark and scary, the way TV stores always used to look in the 70's. Who wants to go in there? The color red may have been a failure too: it means warning, danger, stay away (then again, BestBuy's black on yellow is the classic warning color combo, our eyes see that contrast better than anything else). I seldom went into a Circuit City. The ones nearest to me were closed long ago (one's an Off Track Betting parlor, another became a Bed Bath and Beyond). They won't be missed.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I hated when they were paid on commission. I just wanted to buy what I was after in peace rather than get assaulted as I enter the door.
I've never understood how they stayed in business this long.
Their loss leaders were over retail, they lost their shirt on DivX, and their service and selection have always been miserable.
I had always assumed the whole thing was a tax shelter or some large scale money laundering scheme.
Pretty much you are left out in the cold.
There is way better arguments for using cash than tin-foil-hat paranoia though:
1) Banks fucking suck. They don't always post your CC transactions right away so they can lie about your true balance and fuck you over with overdrafts and NSF's.
2) It is cheaper for the merchant. Cash = no merchant fees.
3) You can tip waiters and know they have the option of pocketing the cash instead of reporting it.
4) That is about all I can think of.
4.1) Oh yeah, the NBA, CIA, and Odwalla is spying on you when you use credit/debit cards. Only Russians and Odwalla spy on your cash transactions.
That said:
1) Pay in cash, and you can't reverse the charge if the seller fucks you over. You can sue them, yeah, but that is more expensive and you might not win. CC's let you chargeback.
2) Loose your wallet, loose your cash. Loose your wallet, deactivate your credit card.
3) You can import your bank statements (after everything settles down and posts correctly) into your favorite financial app and account for your spending.
4) The NBA and the NSA have joined forces to provide you with personalized mind control based on your credit card transactions. This is a good thing because all hail Uncle Sam.
Where are they gonna find the upfront capital to start said business? Banks? Nope--they aren't lending, too scared. Private investors? Nope--they aren't investing, too scared.
[Sarcasm] I know, lets enact a government spending freeze. Surely that will jump start lending and get investors investing, right?[/Sarcasm]
But seriously? Your idea is sound when there is a functioning source of capital.
Don't know about CC in the US but here in Canada the products the (still?) sell are expensive and crappy. I can get better quality and less expensive at Futureshop. I was hoping I would find some deals at CC but that company would rather hit the bottom than lower their prices. Such are the thories of the markeing experts in the "market economy": never negotiate, positioning is key, offer more for the same price rather than lower the price, a.s.o. The same applies to teh auto industry, I can't wait to see how the "bailout" pans out for them.
Some billionaire from Mexico tried to buy CC from CC and was refused. So he tried to buy it from BK and was refused. He tried to buy the residual assets from BK and was refused.
I presume we here do not like foreign ownership of domestic assets even if it does save jobs and leases.
Good riddance.
Circuit City is text book example of what attempting to become very rich very quickly almost always results in. It is a perfect analog of the national and world economy. The blue print for demise Circuit City followed:
Action: Remove staff with knowledge and ability and start paying less to less capable people.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Reduced sales due to less customer service.
Action: Leave prices high.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Failing to see that the consumer electronics market is shifting to a Walmart model (aggressive pricing, low profit, high volume) sales go down.
Action: Eliminate deep discounts on open box, out of production, or discontinued merchandise.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Reduced repeat and casual traffic resulting in reduced sales.
This is what happens when any business runs itself based on the principle of "Keep immediate profits high" rather than "Keep customers coming back".
Gordon Gecko was wrong - greed is bad.
Figured maybe in the throes of final clearance, i might be able to snag a decent deal on something.
Found a nice sony bravia TV, only a couple left and marked down some $800. Did a quick check on google and it turned out that the sears next door was selling the same tv for $20 less.
I don't think i found a single price that was less than the same item would have cost brand new online. Open box tomtoms in plastic bags with half the parts missing were still more than amazon was charging new.
The sad thing is that people were snapping this stuff up like it was going out of style. How did we end up with such an ill-informed customer base?
I used to occasionally purchase things from Best Buy, but in the last several years I've been offended by their markups, mediocre selection, mostly ignorant yet presumptuous salespeople, and pushing of retarted service plans. I don't see much difference between Circuit City and Best Buy. Like another said, I'm generally happier purchasing from Amazon, NewEgg, and TigerDirect.
Well, I happened to be by my local CC yesterday and went in to see what they had left. Very little, but I did get some deals. Today they were selling off all of their racks, shelves, etc.
I got:
Two toner cartridges for my laser printer @ $14 each.
A PCMCIA USB port for my laptop with broken USB @ $3
Several DVD-R DL disks for $0.40 each.
On the one hand it is said that they are gone, because there is basically no competition hereabouts (unless I want to drive 70 miles to Best Buy), but on the other hand, it took a 90% discount to get me to buy from them.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
I walked in to a local Best Buy today and was surprised that they had completely rearranged the place. The loud stereo section was history. When that loud base started going, it put me on the fast track to the front door. The tall isles were gone as well - all of the shelves where no higher than chest height, making the place seem much more open. I was looking at LCD TVs - usually I got about three people asking me if they could help me (which I can't fault them for, but it did get annoying). Today, one person asked if I was "browsing" or if they could answer any questions. Overall it was a much better experience than I'm used to at that store. The only thing I didn't get to see is if they were still required to try an sell me junk at checkout time.
Yeah, I went in there yesterday for the sale. Got a pretty sweet deal on a Divx player. Anyone know how long the "waiting for server" screen takes?
Went to the CC in my city, as I was out anyway, and the place is empty. There were workers in the process of dismantling the shelves, but other than that, nothing. A group of 3 people were at cash registers. They were selling anything left in the store. Hell, for $50, I could have bought those alarm devices that beep if you walk out of the store without paying.
They pretty much tossed what was left in the store into bins, and threw a "$2.95" sign on it. I bought some box thing whose function I have yet to figure out (but it looks uber h4xxy), a barcode scanner (which I have working using Linux drivers), and an IP phone.
Honestly, on their LAST day of business, I STILL can't believe a fucking BOX whose function is unknown costs $2.95. Typical CC, I guess.
I picked up an Onkyo AVR for $299, when it listed for $580 and "net retailed" for $450, so I did really well. The problem is this...The Best Buy up the street now has zero competition for many items. When Home Depot came into the area, there was good stuff for competitive prices. Once they wiped out the two other retailers, none of whom could match loss-leader competition, the prices went way up, and the quality dropped a lot. I will miss the competition and the lower prices.
I miss Crazy Eddie.
Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene.
That's just capitalism. The sad thing is that the same thing is not happening to failed banks, insurance companies and investment companies.
Over the years I've bought a couple of laptops at Circuit City, mostly because I found them at a good discount. Service was either non-existent or worse: it took them 15 minutes to fetch from their stockroom what I asked for, and then it was up to me to notice that the model number was the wrong one. They didn't know what they were selling.
It was also downright insulting when they checked at the exit all bag contents against the sales slip, radiating suspicion that their customers were thieves. Fry's Electronics has an exit check too, but much more low-key
These days I tend to visit B&M stores for a hands-on experience and then order what I choose online. I would accept paying a $50 markup for the convenience of having a $1000 laptop in my hands on the spot, but B&Ms seem to want more than that. It doesn't fly.
Don't worry, BB is next not the list of mismanaged companies that will die.
Reason:
- The company doesn't give a crap about customer service, only selling and upselling
- They won't hire real technical people for market rate, only high school kids. They then tell them to solve every problem by reformatting the machine, reinstalling the OS, charge 200$ and then try and sell Norton to them so it won't happen again.
- They only keep their most sleazy sales people. Fine fine, doesn't matter if they lie through their teeth, they make bales of money, and drive the customer support staff into fits of profanity. The sales staff pawn off customers to the technicians for actual questions, and then try to take credit for it.
It's rather sad that I would rather buy online so I can avoid the sales people trying to sell me crap I don't want.
When I can buy ALL my clothes online and buy vegetables online, I'll never go outside again except to walk the dog... and I can pay some kid to do that.
I think there are several poor business decisions that the company made in the past 10 years or so that can explain why they failed. Starting with their venture into the DIVX fiasco (hint: if your "partner" in a business venture is a law firm, it's probably one to avoid). They probably could have recovered after they finally killed DIVX, if it wasn't for also deciding to get out of the major appliances business. Talk about pure stupidity there -- you see, most major appliances customers are older people, homeowners, with money, and while they're buying that refrigerator or dishwasher today, in six months, they'll probably be looking for a new wide screen television or laptop. Getting rid of appliances just eliminated a huge segment of the market, and lots of sales!
Mistake #3 was just simply not figuring out your basic store structure. After I left the company, every time I walked into the store, I swear to God, they had a new format and arrangement! I could never find anything! If you can't figure out something as simple as this, you're doomed. Going along with this, Firedog was simply at least three years too late in responding to the Geek Squad -- Best Buy won that one easily.
The final nail in the coffin (and I'm sure this has already been stated in this thread somewhere, but I'll put it here just for my own completeness) is firing all of their experienced salespeople and replacing them with non-commissioned, inexperienced, Wal-Mart-esque, clerks. I do understand that ultimately, they had to ditch the commissioned model, simply because of the change in the marketplace. But they went about it totally wrong -- a better solution would be to take advantage of the high turnover rate in retail as it is, and just not hire new commissioned salespeople, and grandfather the experienced ones, who can then be a huge resource to the newer salespeople in teaching them the ropes.
So, it's sad to see them go, but not surprising based on their business decisions of the past 10 years. I did learn a lot from working there back in the 90s, especially regarding computers, installations, and technology in general, so I thank them for that. In the meantime, I guess I'll get my electronics from Newegg or TigerDirect. At least until some new entrepreneur decides to open up a Buy More,... ;-)
I worked in there on weekends for a third party company "selling" crap software. I put selling in quotations because in reality this meant jacking off for four hours. I came in, punched in via telephone, went to Panera Bread, ate breakfast, came back, stood around for an hour or so, went out to lunch, came back and stood around for a while. When I wasn't screwing around in the break room or out eating, I was screwing around with CC employees, joking around with them, making fun of dumb customers. Making fun of a customer that used the term "Gigapixel" stands out. The worst part of it all was that I got paid like twice the minimum wage for doing this. I heard other employees talk about how execs, store managers, assistant store managers, and district managers made crap loads of money also. Also factor in that instead of having commissioned sales people, it was like reversed. People that didn't have high sales would get less and less hours. The top sales person at the one store I visited didn't know crap about computers. Another employee lashed out at me for trying to help him explain something that he didn't fully understand. So yeah, it was a group of high school, right out of high school kids. I had fun, but I feel bad for the people that really depended on those jobs.
My first purchase at CC was a remaindered Compaq Contura Aero 4/25. It was a 486sx (no h/w fp) mini laptop that could barely run X (black and white with 16 grey levels), and excellent battery life. Despite it's limitations, it's probably my favorite among the laptops I've owned. (I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 1420, which is superior in most ways, but has a shorter battery life and today's cheap design with little sharp plastic edges sticking out everywhere.)
After 1995, unfortunately, everything I've bought at CC (mostly Sony stuff) ended up being of poor quality...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Were they still pushing them during their clearance "sale"? Are they worth their weight in toilet paper now?
Banks notoriously like to post your transactions NOT in the order in which you make them, but in the order the merchant reports them. ...
So if you've got a balance of $1,000 on close-of-business Friday, make $900 worth of purchases over the weekend, you should have a balance of $100.
First thing Monday, you know you've got a large bill coming due on Wednesday, so you make a $500 deposit, thus bringing your balance to $600.
You make the payment Wednesday, taking your balance down to $50, and your Cheque Register (& spreadsheet) show your balance as $50.
Except the Bank posted them in some twisted order that leaves you with $200 worth of NSF fees because you supposedly left your account overdrawn.
And there isn't a damned thing you can do about it because they say "We can't control when the Merchants post your transactions."
Yeah, except my Cheque Register & spreadsheet show all my transactions AND the balances, and MY numbers don't match YOUR numbers.
Guess who loses - it sure as hell isn't the bank because YOU get to pony-up the NSF fees.
Changing banks won't help, they all do it.
So, please, honestly, explain to me how the spreadsheet is supposed to help?
It hasn't so far, and I'm so anal-retentive when it comes to my money, it pisses me off that I can double-check my math with a calculator & come up with the same answers every time, but the bank seems to be pulling numbers out of its ass
=(
Sadly, the hard working good people lose out, and the execs live like kings.
Cicuit City came to my area (Philly suburbs) about 20 years ago. They practiced the business art of "dumping"- selling at below cost to drive out competition. They killed most of the local small electronics chains and mom-and-pop stores around me- I bought stuff at their liquidation sales.
The US is a sitting duck for this- US electronics was destroyed by it in the 60s and 70s. People love to speculate and argue, but regardless, I feel it's morally wrong and should somehow be illegal. The economy has been destroyed by unbridled competition and clever games. It will always be driven by greed; the rest of us need to force the government to do its job and restrain the greedy $ aggressors.
There are many lessons to be learned, but "business intelligence" has a very short memory, so I'm sure others will repeat Circuit City's many mistakes.
I'm proud to say I've never spent a penny at a Circuit City.
All matter of taxation is intended to inhibit unlawful activity through economic burden. They right to tax is derived from an equitable relationship between the enfranchised person (citizen) and said trustee (government). The "government" has an interest in the transaction, and anything bought with a "credit" account is as though their agent (the sworn trustee deciding where to invest) is present at all times. The State Legislature is clear on this fact, so far as the legal form permits three different names (First Name, Middle Name, and Last Time) to lay dormant the charitable/public-general trust of the original estate.
When the people liquidate all their credit and debt, redacting to that of a lawful market in using lawful money on account exempt from the Coinage Act, then there is no more government relationship (only ministers, not administers or administrators). Back on the land/soil original estate, not a State of Mind, there are no trustees and residents; there are abodes and castles, and negatory to the diversity of citizenship clause in the First Judiciary Act there is only true name without legal name and the limited liabilities contracted through religious intervention devised through a legislature.
Your ideal to "hide" in the system is as misplaced as a pig that doesn't like getting mud on his feet. IIRC,IANALBIPOAP,BTW...FTW!
I called their death a long time ago. Their death has *NOTHING* to do with the economy.
I more recently called for Best Buy's death. Mark this post.
Yeah Circuit City and CompUSA are gone. Now if I want crappy service and overpriced consumer electronics I'll have to go to Best Buy. Or just keep doing what killed Circuit City and CompUSA in the first place -- buying all my stuff off the Internet. There I'll find much better customer service and exactly the items I want.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I, and I suspect many others, vowed to never shop at Circuit City again when they decided that besides selling electronic gear they should wade into the waters of digital content protection and forcefully impose their unwanted formats on their customers and the industry as a whole.
As retailers of entertainment gadgetry I think they would have endeared themselves to their customers by advocating on their behalves.
A company focused on its core business would have been smart enough to see that getting into bed with Hollywood and a bunch of attorneys was going to cost a ton of money and not contribute to the bottom line.
No I don't believe that the DIVX effort on its own is what killed the company but I do believe that it was symptomatic of the company's core problems which were a total cluelessness about its customer base, and a lack of focus.
I was a regular business and personal customer for a long time. Sadly they sank the ship themselves, with Acer & Microsoft's help. Vista was and still is pathetic defective crap. Shoving it up so many customers asses was a sure way to go down in flames. I payed the restocking fee on returning the utterly defective and useless Vista Christmas laptops, and they lost me as a customer, not because 'they couldn't do anything about it', but because they never even tried. Billy's ability to suck a 5 mile freight train through a coffee stirrer even caught me off guard. After having paid $3k for the worthless OS/2 1.0 SDK I thought I knew what he was capable of. Vista is a greed scam that makes Madeoff look like a choir boy.
> Slashdot is a place with a broken moderation system.
Is it broken because it allows the moderators to use their free will ?
Does this mean Crazy Eddie will be back?
Inboarding: I went to BB to buy a TV last month, one of their house brands. I thought in this economy--and with an ad from Target with a similar set for $100 less--I could bargain. BB dept manager told me "That's a very good price--you should buy it there" and walked away. Oh--and I just bought a $20 electric pencil sharpener at Staples, and was offered a $4 service plan on it. They're next, I swear.
They had an open box laptop I was interested in. One of the pretty red ones, for my wife.
It was an open box, missing battery and accessories, etc, etc. They had it priced for about $100-$150 less than I'd seen it selling for. (Not much of a deal.)
I made them an offer on it, a fair offer. They flat out told me prices weren't negotiable. WTF
You're going to be non-existent after this weekend. And you're not negotiating.
Please show me a single corporation more greedy than the U.S. government.
The U.S. government receives trillions of dollars and accomplishes far less for it's money intake than pretty much any business in the scene.
People talk about Enron and MCI Worldcom scandals. Our government loses the equivalent of an Enron everyday. And people argue that more government is the solution?
Only in America would anyone consider mourning the closing of a retail store.
Fucking pathetic really...
I remember applying for a job at Circuit City while attending college for computer science.
The application essentially boiled down to "Would you lie to make a sale to the customer. And would you hard sale push the service plans."
As I endeavor to lead an honest life, most of my answers to their veiled questions were no. But I don't need to. I used to wander the aisles of CompUSA and Circuit City and sell goods for them. Because I was pretty much always more knowledgeable than the salespeople.
But I believe the above philosophy is in part why Circuit City went under. When you build a foundation on lies, you're not going to have good customer loyalty in the long run. And the only thing you're going to have is price-stalkers.
You could always stop by your local Altex Computers & Electronics store for some great values! Primarily on computer and bulk cabling - various conductor and gauge, CAT 5/6 Plenum and non, HDMI Cables, DVI cables..
Best deals in Texas!
You don't understand how liquidation works with major retailers. You see, it's NOT Circuit City who is running the liquidation sale! They have sold all of their merchandise to a 3rd party at pennies on the dollar, and now that 3rd party is trying to get as much $$$ as possible. They figure there are enough dumb people out there who assume that "if it's a liquidation the prices must be insanely cheap." Nope.
The BEST time to buy from a failed retailer is the week BEFORE the actual liquidation starts, when the merchandise is still owned by the original company - who would love to take 50% off from you rather than accept 70% off from the 3rd party liquidator.
we came we ripped off we left
Except they have half the products. I went to look at tvs for my bedroom. Years ago there was a whole isle of 19-27 inch televisions. I had like 3 to chose from. I ended up buying online because I didn't want a samsung, magnavox or toshiba. I miss choice. They seem to care very few brands now and little redundancy. For instance, they have hard drives from WD, but few other brands. In desktop drives, they only had WD drives as of thursday.
While Sunday marked the end of the retail stores, those of us in Richmond, VA can take advantage of the liquidation sale that is going on right now (and will continue for some weeks) at Corporate Headquarters. The corporate office sale is taking place in the DR3 building located at 9954 Mayland Drive, Richmond VA. The currently have lots of IBM and HP Laser printers, decent desk chairs, etc. They will have more PCs in a week or so.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I didn't like them but they were the only retailer other than Fry's that carried Onkyo. Of course the Onkyo receiver I wanted they sold for $1000 where Fry's sold it for $830 but I found it on Amazon for $620. =)
They never had what they advertised on sale when it came to video game related items.
You got the touch!
After a situation where an employee told me I was (and I quote) "fucking retarded" and walked away. After I had wanted to purchase an Aspire One for my younger brothers birthday.. They deserve no mourning.
I misread the headline as "The Last Wii and Testament" and thought it meant they had a party for the person who bought their last Wii - like a 1-millionth customer thing. That woulda been a nice touch, actually. Even though it'd almost certainly end up on eBay soon after...
So if the logic holds true, the next dominating retailer to put Best Buy under will be A.A. "Amazon Affiliates" perhaps?
When I browse Amazon.com I can't swing a dead cat without seeing a product coming from a third party supplier.
Their little clever plan of "let's have no checkout locations so people will HAVE to get salespeople to ring stuff up, and upsell them..." was transparent, annoying, and suicidal.
Frankly, screw them. I never did go back, that was about 9 years ago.
Yuppie food stamps ($20 bills or whatever medium denomination of the localized currency your ATMs spit out) hold lines up. Correct change (or nearly correct change) is almost always faster than plastic. This goes double for those ancient CC modems that take 2 minutes to run a charge.
And yah, large companies want more plastic use, partly because they pay lower CC processing fees than smaller businesses.
Cash will continue to be the best way to patronize your small and local businesses, especially those with one or two cashiers who aren't going to be able to cut a cashier from any time efficiency resulting from CC use.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
You shouldn't have been moderated "Troll" for this post. According to the slashdot guidelines, complaints about the moderation system should be moderated "off-topic".
Right after college, desperate for a job, I interviewed with Circuit City.
I had to go to the main place down near the city instead of out in Henrico.
First thing I notice is there are a bunch of people who look like a bunch of junkies hanging out in fron of the door.
I walk past that into the reception area. After a brief wait, a guy and a girl who I think were younger than me at the time, took me into an office for the interview.
As soon as I sat down they started reading questions from their clipboard.
These questions weren't the kind that would see if you knew anything about their products or could otherwise do your jobs. They were all about "If you saw one of your coworkers using illegal drugs in their home, what would you do?" With few exceptions they were all about drug use.
The last question was, do you have any questions for us? My answer was "Yes I do. Since y'all seem extremely interested in drug use, does Circuit City have a lot of employees with a drug problem? I certainly don't want to work in such an environment."
They gave me some BS answer about weeding out that kind of employee.
I walked out the door knowing I would not accept a job with them no matter what.
Of course they didn't call me either so I guess I didn't give them the answers they wanted.
I have to say that I don't agree that credit cards move lines faster. Perhaps they used to when all you had to do was sign, but many of them now require you to enter your PIN, and make a bunch of selections on badly designed and non user-friendly pads. (I guess it doesn't help that the location of the "yes" button tends to change on every machine.) The sole reason I usually do pay cash is purely for speed. Handing over a 20 and taking your handful of change back tends to be quicker. Have you ever witnessed the speed of those machines that still run on dialup? Stand in line at a merchant listening to dialup tones for a while and you might change your mind quickly on which one's faster.
because of their pour stocking policy, especially with respect to sales. To have a sale on an item, and then only have 5 of them in stock is ridiculous.
In that regard, circuit city failed to learn form the mistakes of CompUSA. Having worked at a CompUSA myself I can tell you that on a Sunday shift the phrase I said most often was
we don't have any of those
Which was often followed by
we didn't have any of them this morning at 11, either
Although from working there I can tell you that, at least in the case of CompUSA, it was not the fault of the store management. Store management would generally see the ads only a few days before the Sunday paper came out with said ad, which was not enough time to order more of whatever item was on the front page.
... well, I never met our purchaser in over a year of working retail 20-30 hours a week. We (the sales staff) tried to pass up requests to purchasing for items that sold well, but they were never fulfilled. Instead we got pallets of MIDI keyboards and Armageddon soundtracks on CD (I'm not joking here). One time I went back to the store I used to work at, and there was an endcap of radio controlled cars; over near the plasma televisions.
Rather, in the case of CompUSA, the company rotted from the top. There were purchasers for districts (not stores or even states, but districts) who were responsible for getting enough inventory to the stores. Purchasers of course visited stores
CompUSA. They carried a lot of stuff that Best Buy doesn't, at least in store.
I'm not sure of that, either. One particular example that occurred when I was working for CompUSA was with recordable CDs. Best Buy had 80 minute CDs (remember when that was a big deal?) at least a full month before we did. Some of my coworkers went over there on their breaks and bought spindles of them for their own use.
CompUSA deserved to die due to upper-level incompetence. It was sad that so many good people lost their jobs in the process. By my understanding the good managers that I had at CompUSA (there were some at the store) took jobs at Best Buy before the ship took on too much water. I hope they are still doing alright.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This is the chain that refused to either
A) Sell me the last remaining item of a sale item,
B) Give me a rain-check on it
C) Produce a policy saying they were not to sell display items, or
D) give me a working phone number to the corporate office - the number they gave me did in fact not work.
And frankly, they were *ass-holes* about the whole thing.
I wouldn't *wish* job-hunting on anyone in this economy, but the BS I went through (From the sales person through three supervisors and extending to a call to their corporate HQ) from the Indianapolis store over what should have been a simple purchase?
My shock is imaginable.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
dont be mad at any circuit city associate.....not a one of them had any control on the liquidation prices ....that was all under the control of the liquidation companies!
let me explain something to you all:
there is a thing called msrp = manufacture suggested retail price
circuit city usually had there merchandise below that msrp on most products in the store. now once liquidation started , the liquidators put everything back to its original msrp then start the discounts off of that, as well as the deepest discounts being on the items that have the most profit margin like accessories, because its their goal to make as much as possible.
The liquidators are the ones who say no returns, no exchanges, no other price changes. You are quite stupid if you think that any associate is going to lose whatever time is left of a job to do a return or whatever for you.
Most of you forget that these 34000 circuit city associates are real people that are losing their jobs , their means to put food on the table for their children, so forgive them if they werent so eager to sell you product during the time of liquidation, every item they sold put them closer to unemployment
I forgot to mention - they had an entire wall about half the length of the store filled with TVs. They were mostly LCD/plasma, and they had smaller ones on the shelves nearby. I was looking at a Samsung, because the particular model I was interested in was rated quite highly, and also had some of the newer features (120Hz scan rate and dynamic backlighting).
I must say that at least in my experience, Best Buy is not the place to look for a deal. To many a salesperson as soon as someone says "well I could get this cheaper somewhere else" the typical response is "then why didn't you get it cheaper there?" You obviously came to Best Buy for a reason which means either your deal doesn't exist or you know the deal is on an inferior product so why should we match that price? If, on the off chance you're one of the few people with a loyalty to the yellow tag then you likely wouldn't drop a line like that anyway.
To be fair, we have service plans on stupidly cheap items as well, but most of the time the cashier won't bother asking you (as we think it's as ridiculous as everyone else)
I knew some people on this website are dense, but damn son. You are really dense.
And the stuff 20% off was still 10% higher then any of there competitors.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
New's flash to all those who think these retailers mark up electronics so much. Most of the time they are actually losing money, especially on big ticket items like TVs, Laptops, Cameras, and Desktops. The only real markups and profit makers are household appliances.