Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!!
That's because they fired all their employees and offered to rehire them at a lesser wage. Some Exec somewhere decided that 'knowledgeable' and 'trained' employees were stupid for the kind of job CC did so lets replace them with some HS kid off the street that doesn't know a thing.
The ONLY reason I set foot in a brick and mortar store is to feel in my hand what I'll be buying online. I did it with my Rebel XT before I pulled the trigger on an awesome online deal.
Best Buy and Circuit City have both appalled me as of late with the prices of their cables. $30 for a 6' USB cable? Sometimes if I know I'm going I'll take a MonoPrice print out and stick it up by the cables.
I have to wear headphones when I go in too because of the insane amounts of stupid spewed by the staff. On more than one occasion I've corrected something they were telling some poor soul.
I like Office Depot things I used to go to BestBuy or Circuit City for that I don't buy on NewEgg. Cables, SD cards, maybe a keyboard, a landline telephone. They have a nice selection.
If you hate it now, you're gonna get to hate it even more in the future ... Bell wants to buy 'The Source by Circuit City' so they can pimp their crappy sympatico and bell mobility brands, screwing their franchisees in the process.
Sounds like a marriage made in heaven. After all, there's no love lost for BCE either.
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.
The *are* terrible, but every once in a while (once in a blue moon) you might (if you're extremely lucky) find something useful or interesting.
I once found some self-contained karaoke mikes (the microphone is it's own karaoke machine, just plug it into the TV - on sale for $29.99 - they were on sale , but not at that price - a pricing error. Bought both, and had them get 2 more from other stores at the true sale price of, IIRC, $49.99. Made great Christmas gifts 5 months later ...
Have I seen anything since? On the one or 2 occasions per year that I go there, no. Just a store with too much junk merchandise (it's only "eclectic" if your store is making enough money to be called "eccentric", and not "crazy stoopid") crammed into too small a floor footage.
I don't see how they stay in business ... oops, they don't.
And the practices they carried over from the Radio Shack days - always asking for your name and phone number so they could sell it to marketers - always pissed me off.
I worked for Circuit City before and during liquidation. All the prices for the items went back UP to MSRP. I was part of the stocking team at the time and we had to rewrite almost every single tag in the store to reflect this. We used to sell stuff at (usually)below MSRP, usually by $10 to $20. This is how every retail store works generally. In liquidation they take a small discount off of the MSRP price(the "was" price), and sell it at that discounted price(the "you pay" price). Over time they increase that discount off of MSRP until they reach 90% or some other high number. Only at about 40-60% off do you finally get a better price than it was originally.
Very insightful post, but I'm wondering why you call Fry's "the worst of all". The Fry's near me, unlike most B&M stores which have horrible selections of computer equipment, usually (I haven't been there in a while) has a very good selection, amazing actually compared to a typical BB or CC. You want a CPU, memory, case, etc.? They have lots of them. They also have weird parts, like laptop-to-desktop IDE converters, and also lots of electronics stuff like soldering stations, oscilloscopes, components (at a high markup of course), big spools of CAT5e cable, etc. Their prices really aren't that great compared to Newegg of course, and to be honest shopping there is an ordeal unless you like noise and chaos and annoying salespeople (they also have a horrible location in my town: Tempe, AZ. It's right next to Guadalupe ("Little Mexico") and is a great place to get your car stolen), but if you really need 1000 feet of CAT6 cable and connectors and a crimping tool, and you need it today, Fry's is the place to go.
2) It is cheaper for the merchant. Cash = no merchant fees.
Depends. Often large stores want to get rid of cash as over a certain point the handling fees become prohibitive. Ever noticed how they always try to offer cashback?
2) Loose your wallet, loose your cash. Loose your wallet, deactivate your credit card.
loose (verb)
1 loosen, relax, loose
become loose or looser or less tight; "The noose loosened"; "the rope relaxed"
lose (verb)
4 misplace, mislay, lose
place (something) where one cannot find it again; "I misplaced my eyeglasses"
I'm pretty sure that someone made this story up as a way of characterizing the poor customer service at the individual stores.
This is the keen insight that keeps me coming back for more.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Mod this poster up. While companies pay credit card handling fees, handling cash is often more expensive. While banks generally don't charge them for depositing, etc, you have to have places to put the cash, deliver it to a bank, etc. All this costs money. More importantly is the concern over employee theft. If most everyone pays in credit there isn't much cash in the drawer to hide the fact that someone stole a $20. Most stores do checks at the end of the night, but don't care too much if its off by a few dollars as employees make mistakes. The more money in cash they collect the more mistakes are allowed. Credit means that the exact amount is charged, and the employee has no easy way to take the money.
Plus of course there's the fact that credit cards tend to move lines faster. If this means a store can have only 4 lines open instead of 5, they're saving money right there.
Phil