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Geeks.com Online Shop Has Closed

Posted by Soulskill on from the fare-thee-well dept.

Duggeek writes "After 17 years, one of the best kept secrets in shopping, Geeks.com, has shuttered its online doors. Myself, I have a small book of sales orders from years past. According to the latest announcement, that stack will not be growing any larger. Quoting: 'Our vision has always been to provide the geeky tech consumer an alternative avenue to purchase quality refurbished and new techy products and gadgets. That vision was the cornerstone of our slogan "Best Deals Every Nanosecond." Unfortunately after a lot of difficult consideration the owners of Geeks.com feel we are unable to come through on this vision any longer. There are many why's... The e-commerce landscape, as well as the consumer electronics market, has changed dramatically with intense competition and a 1000lb gorilla (do we really need to say who) competitor that can lose millions of dollars to buy customers and suck up inventory. They can lose money with impunity, supported by the stock market. We cannot.' The landing page of their website now goes directly to this announcement; the storefront is switched off. They maintain a Facebook page where a combination of remorse and surprise is rapidly growing. The letter also asserts that they will fulfill all business obligations to online customers during their transition to both a solitary, brick-and-mortar presence in California and a wholesale division, Evertek. Personally, just about every keyboard in my closet was purchased from them, and another box full of USB devices as well. Five of my PC builds exist because of them. Feel free to share your own memories of the former Computer Geeks Discount Outlet."

12 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. You should have told me it existed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Damn, I never heard of it before, it never showed up in my searches for parts.

    Hint, you can't have a successful business if you don't tell people about it!

    Word of mouth only works for drug dealers.

    1. Re:You should have told me it existed! by Seumas · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep. Never heard of it. *shrug*

      Then again, I've only been online for 24 years.

    2. Re:You should have told me it existed! by Rizimar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The focus of Geeks.com was largely on refurbished equipment, but when your customers have options like Amazon, Overstock, and Newegg, it is hard to compete. I've been following them for a couple of years, always getting notices of their latest deals in my inbox, and it seemed like they had a lot of the same sorts of products on sale: 1TB internal hard drives, 23" monitors, and always a ton of the same Dell desktop computers that had features that might would have been acceptable in an office environment a couple of years ago (limited RAM and hard drive space, sometimes with a basic Windows install). They recently started offering a lot of first-generation iPads for a couple hundred dollars each as well.

      Part of the problem is that customers new to Geeks will quickly lose interest if they bought one of those items because the inventory never really changed, and the deals were always around the same price points. In a market where newer items often sport better features and tend to get cheaper over time for the amount of power and functionality you get, there's less incentive to turn to a refurbished marketplace, especially for such a limited selection of hardware.

    3. Re:You should have told me it existed! by sconeu · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly. This sounds like a place that I would have used... IF I HAD KNOWN ABOUT IT.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    4. Re:You should have told me it existed! by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I used to shop at computergeeks.com, which was then geeks.com and quite frankly the service was abysmal. Early on it wasn't so bad, but about the time I stopped shopping there they stopped bothering to even fill out the specifications on the things they were selling. The last order I made with them was to use a credit I had from returning the previous thing. The Bluetooth head set didn't work right, and I found out that it was incompatible, but they didn't bother to fill in the specs. I didn't even bother to return it as it would have cost me more to return it, just to get another store credit.

      It used to be a decent shop, but this was a self inflicted wound, I'm just surprised they lasted as long as they did, considering how crappy the service had gotten.

  2. They used to be "Comp Geeks" by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bought my DEC Alpha Multias from them... Same machine Malda started Slashdot on. I had two...

    Also got a couple of nice Seimens-made web-terminals, which I converted to low-noise firewalls with Astaro.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  3. "one of the Best kept secrets in shopping"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well there's your problem right there...

  4. The funny thing about this... by Red_Chaos1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...is that it all comes from one warehouse location there in Oceanside. I worked for them for a short time as a temp. It was a less than fond experience, but that's beside the point. All merchandise for the 3 arms of the company come from the same stock. I forget what the 3rd company name they sold under was, but the items you bought under geeks.com was the same stuff you bought "wholesale" under evertek.com. I can only guess at why they feel the need to end the online arm of geeks.com if the store part will remain open, and the other arms (if the third still operates) use the same pool of stock. I will say this, they sold a lot of things that I wouldn't bother going to Newegg for because it would cost more.

    1. Re:The funny thing about this... by RudyHartmann · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are 3 companies. Genica, Evertek, and Geeks. They're 2 blocks away from me in Temecula, California. Only the brick and mortar retail store is in Oceanside now. If you're a business, you can still buy from Evertek. I think they just bailed out of the online retail business. They have a pretty huge warehouse right here in Temecula. I just got the email notice, so I'm not sure what the rest of all this means yet. I'll find out more Monday though.

      --
      Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
  5. You can complain about the megcorps but.... by DigitalReverend · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They didn't become mega corps by being " best kept secrets in shopping". There's been a lot of this on /. where some little known entity is shutting down their website or closing their doors. I think too many people actually believe in the field of dreams, but I am sorry, just because you build it, they aren't necessarily going to come, unless you tell them about it.

    --
    I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
  6. Re:1000 lb gorilla by ranton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As everyone knows they were talking about Amazon, but I assume your question was about the "lose money with impunity supported by the stock market" comment. Amazon is not a very profitable company. In fact Amazon it often takes losses quarters on end. I don't have the time to search for the actual figures, but I am pretty sure they have been operating at a loss since 3rd quarter 2012.

    Wall Street still keeps their stock price up because of rising revenues so Amazon can borrow money with impunity to make up for these losses. This allows them to keep dropping prices even when they are losing money. A small company cannot do this. It isn't hard to raise revenues when you don't have to care about profitability or cash flow when setting your prices. This is why Geek.com was complaining that Wall Street allows large companies to succeed with business models which would put SMBs out of business.

    I am not commenting on whether this is a good thing, but it is undeniable that it is happening.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
  7. Domain name for sale? by gd2shoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I suspect one of the real points to this article is to let interested buyers know that the domain name may be for sale soon (to pump up the price). I'm sure that is one asset that has greatly appreciated over the years.

    --
    I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.