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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
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!
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.