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."

Comments

Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[n1ywb]

Thank god we still have Radio Shack. I went in recently and found they were even selling arduinos. I've bought a bunch of components there for my electronics projects. It's not Fry's, but at least there's one 10 minutes away from my home in Nowhereville Vermont.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[Sorthum]

I've long thought that Radio Shack must be a front for the mob; there's no realistic way they could still be in business selling overpriced cell phones and inexpensive components to hobbyists...

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[twotacocombo]

Radio Shack these days is a shadow of it's former self. I went there with my dad as a kid, and remember shelves full of electrical and radio crap that I couldn't even comprehend. I went in there for the first time in ages about 3 years ago.. holy crap. It looked more like an AT&T store than the Radio Shack of old. People were lined up to pay their phone bills, and the walls were lined with cell phones and MP3 players and whatnot. Only in the back corner were any sort of electrical components, and nobody could really help me find what I was looking for. It's almost as if someone bought the Radio Shack name, and slapped it on a completely different store...

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[Pubstar]

Frys is good as long as: A) You know exactly what you want and B) You avoid the white sticker of doom. I went in, bought a Razer Lycosa keyboard from them. I kept getting phantom keystrokes from the keyboard. No problem, just update firmware? Didnt fix it. New drivers? Didn't fix it. Different computer? Didn't fix it. Okay, so the keyboard is obviously broken. After talking to someone at Razer, they told me that the keyboard was faulty and to return it instead of sending it to them for replacement. I get into Fry's, tell them its broken, and I watch them repack it, slap on a 5% discount sticker on it, and have someone go put it back on the shelf. Oh, and don't even get me started on how many DOA HDDs my dad and I bought from them that all had white stickers.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[dgatwood]

I've never seen this, and I return defective products to Fry's at least three or four times per year. If you tell them the item is defective, they put a sticker on it, but the sticker says "Return to vendor". They only stick the rebate sticker on it if you tell them you changed your mind about it. So either you weren't clear enough when you told them that it was defective, or you went to a Fry's store that is poorly run compared with my local store.

I'm dubious about returns because I worry about parts being missing, and I'm dubious about returned hard drives because I wonder if the previous customer dropped them, but for most things, the sticker of doom doesn't bother me too much. Usually it just means that I saved a couple of bucks.

That said, it may depend on the store. Which Fry's store was this?

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[n1ywb]

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.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[griffjon]

What Brick-and-mortar store can hope to compete with the internet for commodity-level components? It's not even fair to hope they would. I mean, cmon - Best Buy stocks even-further-overpriced Monster Cables as their entry-level cable. I don't fault the Shack for seeking higher rungs on the value chain. And I'm hardly a fan of either the Shack ("You have questions, we have blank stares") or Best Buy ("Best means most expensive!"). But, I do fear for the complete loss of generalist tech stores. A book is a book is a book, but when deciding between tablets or notebook PCs, or the like, actual interaction with the device answers a gazillion questions that don't seem to have answers on websites.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[Concerned Onlooker]

"After I went through isle by isle I found it between the printers and cordless phones."

Did you have to paddle very far?

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[ShanghaiBill]

you're not going to buy a refrigerator online

Why not? I bought a refrigerator online last year. It had good ratings, I read the reviews, made sure it had all the features I wanted, and then I clicked and bought it. It was delivered two days later.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[DigiShaman]

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.

Re:Thank god we still have Radio Shack

[ceoyoyo]

Meh, I went in about fifteen years ago with a friend and asked for a flux capacitor, then watched the sales guy search for one for ten minutes.

It hasn't really been Radio Shack for a long time.

I used to work for best buy

[assemblerex]

They have no concept of the competition that Amazon represents. They think in store purchases will keep them alive. They need to:
1. Fire half the staff, and only hire professional sales people (Not 30 seventeen year olds)
2. Reduce the store size by half or more.
3. Reduce prices by having less selection but enjoy the bulk purchase price point.
4. Stop high pressure pushing of accessories and service plans on people.
5. Work with vendors to have exclusive items made for them not found online (like a white or pink dyson)
Still doomed by their horrible reputation.

Re:I used to work for best buy

[wanzeo]

As someone who has spent time as an electronics sales rep, I say good riddance.

I was always as honest and informative as I could be (much more so than my coworkers), but you really can't give meaningful advice in a 10 minute sales pitch. Half of the people are coming cold to the technology, they are not going to be educated in time to make a good decision. The other half have made up their minds because of marketing, and nothing you say will convince them otherwise. And then add to that the fact that most technology purchasing is rather subjective. Just look at the heated discussions on any tech website about which products are the right choice, they go on for pages and pages. And that is between people who are already very well informed about the basic principles.

Spending a few hours reading user reviews on amazon or newegg, and being able to google unfamiliar terms, is more valuable than the most tech savy and personable sales rep. And because most sales reps are subpar, internet shopping wins by a landslide.

Re:Why should I buy stuff from Best Buy?

[Sorthum]

The sole reason to go to a BestBuy is "I need this item today." That's about it.

Microcenter?

[iamhassi]

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.

Re:Microcenter?

[iamhassi]

Need a drive in a hurry? 2tb for $130 at Microcenter, same price as Newegg. Gee, do I wanna wait a week or have the drive in my PC this afternoon? Decisions, decisions.... oh Newegg wants $7.86 shipping? Microcenter it is!

But I guess if the Forbes reporter included Microcenter that would have gone against his 5-page theory generating god knows how many banner ads. Best we just forget Microcenter exists so Forbes can make a few extra $$$ off ads. Selling out journalistic honesty to make a few bucks? You betcha!

Re:Microcenter?

[russotto]

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.

They also tend to have stuff in stock, and for many items (printers, monitors) working items you can examine. Why would you go to a store when you could order online for much less? Three good reasons
1) You want it now
2) Shipping cost overwhelms the price difference
3) You'd like to take a look at it before buying it

But most brick and mortar retailers mess up _all three_. They won't carry much and what they carry they won't keep in stock, so you have a good chance of not finding what you want. For things where shipping cost is significant (e.g. cables), they'll carry only ridiculously-priced brands so they're STILL more expensive than ordering online + shipping (even for one lousy cable). And if they have any samples out, they're often obviously broken, and usually not actually working.

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[account_deleted]

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web vs. intranet site

[wjcofkc]

Let's not forgot that this is the same place where if you go in citing a price on their website they will pull up an intranet site that is a clone of bestbuy.com with different prices to "prove" you wrong. Getting busted for that was the end of me shopping there.