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The Gradual Death of the Brick and Mortar Tech Store
Cutting_Crew writes "As we all know brick and mortar stores have been closing left and right recently. We had CompUSA, Borders and Circuit City all close their doors within the last 4 years. According to an article on Forbes.com, it is spelled out pretty clearly why Best Buy is next in line to shut its doors for good. Some of the reasons highlighted include a 40% drop is Best Buy stock in 2011, lack of vision regarding their online services, management too concerned with store sales instead of margins and blatant disregard for quality customer service."
Ummm.... doesn't Microcenter count? Guess not according to Forbes, because in 2006 they had 19 stores, 20 in 2007, 21 in 2008, and in 2012 Microcenter has 23 stores. Sure that's slow growth, but still growth none-the-less, and they're much better than CompUSA, Circuit City (is Circuit City "tech"?) and Best Buy because Microcenter actually has competitive prices.
Want a new MSI Geforce GTX 580 video card? $500 from Newegg, $520 from Microcenter. Think I'd just pay that extra 4% to have the card TODAY and have a local shop to return/exchange it to if there's a problem and judging from the 13% 1-egg reviews I'd there is a good risk there could be a problem.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
There is a franchise in Aus/NZ called Dick Smith. Same thing happened. Up until around 10 years ago they were an electronics store. 1/4 of the floor was components, 1/4 for audio, 1/4 for phones and 1/4 for computers.
Now its 1/4 cell phones, 1/2 computers and tvs, 1/5 audio and the last tiny section electronics.
They'll stay around a while for the TVs and refrigerators, you're not going to buy a refrigerator online (though the home improvement chains offer serious competition for appliance business). People will get their computers at places like MicroCenter, which gets the big box store stuff right, at least as it applies to computers.
I agree RatShack has gone downhill, and it's especially unfortunate that they no longer sell amateur radio gear. But I think it's actually been improving of late. They carry way more components than they used to and they finally took my advice and put them in drawers. They still have solder, RF adapters, antennas, some basic computer parts, kits, books, arduinos, basic stamps, 100 in 1 electronics sets (I've already bought one for my 2 year old, can't get 'em started too early!) Radio Shack is a hell of a lot better than nothing and let's hope this positive trend continues.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As someone in the Central Valley (California), with *2* Fry's stores, I can tell you this is SOP for their stores. 9/10 return stickered items are missing parts, many of them are faulty (not all, and occasionally you'll find swaths of items that were returned because customers often mistook what they were, good way to get a discount assuming everything is in the box!). But they'll have memory with bad sectors, cpus with bent pins (gotten both pre-LGA Intel, and all models of Athlons like that!), motherboards with missing accessories, etc. Basically anything with a sticker on it might turn out to be unusable giving you a 15-30 minute drive back to the store to replace it (although in their defense Fry's return policy is EXTREMELY flexible as long as you return it within 14 days (for most internal parts) or 30 days for everything else, assuming it's not your third time returning the item (They've had junk before that item in the batch was dead, think it was older MP3 players or something, but not a pleasant experience to have to come back 3 times to return something!)
Additionally: I had a friend working for them for 2 years who after a disagreement with their manager was told to sign a VQ rather than be fired (to avoid paying unemployment to him). Another employee I overheard after they set up electronic signins next to the sales board who had to quit and get rehired (thus losing seniority) in order to shift back from full time employment to part time due to schooling. Their employee handling is horrible, and the people who aren't constant turnovers fall into the categories of (career underachievers, mostly buerocratic, and older layoffs who can't find work anywhere else. The latter are often the nicest and most helpful people in the store, while the former make you really wish there was somewhere better to shop.) Sad, but another sign of the inexorable decline of American society (it's not even just business anymore.)
My local Radio Shack (rural Alaska) sells:
- Batteries, lots of different kinds of batteries. Actually reasonable quality batteries.
- The standard bits of Junk Electronics - cordless phones, clock radios, a scanner or two, cheap marine band radios (a local favorite).
- RC airplane stuff.
- Junk electronic games.
- Cables, actually a reasonable selection of cables. Most 'normal' people can get what they want. (No 15 pin Amphenol waterproof bulkhead mounts).
- Junk electronic games.
- TVs.
- Hot tubs.
- Tanning booth in back.
- Espresso Bar in front.
- A rather odd selection of component parts - resistors, capacitors, LEDS, some surface mount stuff, some generic transistors, a couple of coils.
So, it appears that the owner has taken the core of Radio Shack inventory and overlaid it with stuff he thinks that the locals would want or just stuff he's interested in selling. Whatever works, I suppose.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think people will pay a little more if they have a better experience
That same statement is made, instead ending with "to support a local business" or "to buy an American-made product" or "to support a good cause". But in the end it's just words, words that most often are not backed up by action.
Retailers can't compete on price with the online retailers, even with sales tax (which is a nightmare of logistical nonsense just waiting in the wings)..
The problem is though - and anyone who works in retail can tell you this - customers walk in to the store and if it isn't something they need right away (and even some times if it is) they'll say "I can buy it for less through [random fly-by-night online site that's been up less than a week]". So the retailers have to be aware of their online competition and at least put up a good fight on price.
Retailers need to stop focusing on price and margins and wonder if there is still such a thing as customer loyalty. I don't know if there is, but companies like Best Buy don't seem to give a shit about trying.
I'm moderately happy with their rewardzone program. Granted I live in a place where there is no alternative for electronics if I can't wait for them to be shipped, so they have me in somewhat of a bind.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work... but for fuck's sake, how can these companies make the SAME EXACT mistakes that their dead competitors make and expect to come out on top, or even alive for that matter?
Because they all get lead down the same street. They all face the same customers.
The real tragedy, though, is that they all promote the same kind of shit-for-brains thinking to upper management. Not only do they push the stores to select for the least knowledgeable (and hence least expensive on payroll) employees, they also strive to give their employees as little power as possible when dealing with customers.
Quite honestly, many of the employees at Best Buy couldn't give you good customer service even if they wanted to, as they simply are not allowed to do such a thing. I saw the same thing as an employee at CompUSA and now I can see it in the employees at Best Buy with myself as a customer.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
that's why you have a stash of junk in a closet (i have the pieces to 3 old machines) and lot's of computers (another 3 plus a server) so that you are never ever 100% disconnected.
I spend my days designing modern electronic devices, and I have seen other parts with plenty of defects. But...capacitors are generally crap. We as a company have decided to stop using tantalum electrolytics in our products because they fail far too often, and do so with flashy results. But ceramics while stable crack too often in the manufacturing process and still aren't always available in larger capacitance values. We're moving towards polymers for bulk use and ceramics for pretty much everything else, and have to design boards around protecting the ceramics from cracking.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
That's exactly what Dell does and I suspect others as well. Although it's not official. When a part is returned for RMA replacement, it will get trashed if the fault is obvious (bad fan, blown PSU, or clicking HDD). If its status is questionable, further soft diagnostics are ran. If they pass, the gremlin infested part with an intermittent hard failure goes back into circulation for the next poor sob.
I want to know if they track the serial number of the parts as they're cycled in and out of Dell. How many time must it come back and forth before they capture it for good and smash it with a sledge hammer?!
Honest to God. I once had a faulty RAID card get replaced three times in a PowerEdge 2950 in attempt to resolve a faulty PERC processor failure according to diags. Dell support thought the system board was killing them. Eventually everything except the chassis got replaced! Soon after a regional Dell rep for the Houston area decided to pull the whole damn server and replace it with a brand new one fully upgraded. Eventually word got out that other customers and techs were shorting out their RMAed RAID cards by not installing its cache memory battery in the proper (but critical) order.
Life is not for the lazy.
I dont have a Jaycar in my town and used to really miss it, but it's turned out to be far better to just buy stuff online, and you only have to be slightly organised.
Lately I get stuff from element14 (farnell), and with a $10 minimum credit card order you get free express courier shipping. The components are at my door within about 36 hours, even when it's just a few crappy components. The prices are good too - the other day I ran out of diodes and decided I should get a stack to avoid that situation again. 100 x IN4007's later my shopping basket was only $2 and I had to spend another half hour finding other fun stuff to bump up the total :)
I don't know, but MicroCenter seems to be able to do it. I haven't looked at their books, but on price, they compete against the Newegg's, Amazon, and everyone else on the major items that matter. You pay a slight convenience fee for some items (1-2% above to have it today), but most things it works out in your favor even with the tax.
Now they could be bleeding money left, and right ... However, I don't think so. I think they are just making slightly less money on each sale.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Same goes for Best Buy. I tried buying a laptop there for my wife; I really didn't want to, but she didn't want to wait for NewEgg to deliver, so we went to BB since it's local. Got a floor model Lenovo on sale. Took it home after refusing the extra warranty BS, started setting it up with all my regular software at the time (Firefox etc.), and it had some weird intermittent problem (I think it either reset spontaneously, or the screen blanked out, I forget exactly). Brought it back for a return, they said they'd have to charge us a restocking fee, as well as some big fee for Geek Squad to clean out the software I had installed, so they could resell it. I pointed out that it was faulty, but since they couldn't see any problem, they were going to resell it. Never mind how ridiculous it is that they want to resell a PC without wiping the HD first; you never know what I might have screwed up or planted there (keylogger, etc.). So I started removing the software myself to avoid the stupid fee, and the intermittent problem manifested itself, so the morons there actually got to see it and decided to give me a full refund.
We took the money and this time my wife let me order a laptop from NewEgg; it arrived a few days later and is still working years later. She refuses to buy anything from BB any more.