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Best Buy Kills Off Future Shop
Lirodon writes: Future Shop, a Canadian electronics chain that was bought by Best Buy in 2001, but continued to operate in parallel with the newly-opened Canadian locations of the U.S. retailer, is no more. Today, the company abruptly announced the closure of the Future Shop chain, and the permanent closure of 66 of its remaining 131 locations. The remaining 65 Future Shop locations (specifically, those that weren't within driving, or even walking distance of a Best Buy to begin with) will be converted to Best Buy stores over the next few days.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
"stealing business?"
Really?
I want to buy certain items locally - like the Roccat Ryos MK Pro with blue switches, the ROG Swift monitor, and stuff like that. Best Buy doesn't stock them and I've got Amazon Prime, so why would I order from Worst Buy and wait 3-5 days for an item when I can get it next day for $3.99 shipping? (as far as why Best Buy doesn't stock the ROG Swift when they are among a very small handful of authorized retailers for that model, I have no idea.) I could drive 70 miles to Micro Center down in MA, but then I'd also have to pay sales tax. So, when I buy that monitor, I'm going to get it from Amazon.
Amazon sells MANY things brick-and-mortars don't any more. Want to find a good precision screwdriver set? I can't find a good set at Sears any more, nor Home Depot, nor Lowes, or smaller hardware stores, nor at Best Buy, or even harbor Freight. Sooo, where do I turn? Amazon.
Ass Kickin' ghost pepper hot sauce - I cannot find it anywhere local. So, where do I order that from? Amazon. Amazon stocks darn near everything you can imagine.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Big retail chains are doomed. They can't compete on price with online stores, and they can't compete on service with local stores who don't have to send most of their profits to the stock market. This has little or nothing to do with Harper, unless you believe a more left-wing government would have nationalized Future Shop to keep it open.
The real surprise is why it took so long? 14 years is a heck of a long time to be running large redundant stores. From the parking lot of my local Future Shop, you could literally see the Best Buy store, and neither store was ever busy enough to really justify having two so close together, and I've heard that some were so close as to share a parking lot. It might be different if there were significant differences in the product lines they carried, but as it is it never really made much sense.
Log in or piss off.
Yeah sorry, Future Shop practices were questionable before Best Buy bought them out. Once they did 99% of the stuff they carried were identical with maybe one or two things differing between them in each apartment. Surprised this didn't happen before.
One of my early jobs was working in a Business Depot and we heard and (I personally) experienced some of the crap they were pulling. An example was I had the floor model of a computer for sale and had a customer come in. He seemed interested and was going to but it but had to go move money. I promised I would hold it for him, about half hour later some guy shows up interested and really wanted to buy it (like pressuring to sell it). Told him no, other guy comes back and buys it. While later I was in Future Shop and lo and behold who do I see working there but the guy who came in after. Figure he was trying to buy it so that the guy would come back and buy his model and then return it. Not sure but this was before Best Buy bought them out.
Anyone remember Futile Shop?
It wasn't too hard to know they were the same business - plenty of stock at future shop had best buy shipping labels on them.
Every once in a while, future shop would drop the price on something, so you could go to best buy and get it at that price minus a few percent by bringing the ad.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Apparently yes, even the original poster seems very sad to see them disappear as the end of his summary let us think:
"Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this."
I suspect he is an employee of Past Shop. I really don't see what Past Shop has to do with news for nerds. Any nerd is going at Past Shop for a fix? I am not aware of any. This is a last resort solution when you need a gizmo widely available and you need it NOW.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Actually no. I just hate it when U.S. companies have to barge into Canada and throw perfectly good brands in the Recycle Bin like that. Our country is too Americanized. But I too am shocked that they allowed this redundancy to last so long, plus how abrupt it was.
To be fair I bought a TV a few weeks back from FutureShop because I wanted to compare picture quality myself. In the end, not only was FutureShop cheaper than the local retailers, it was $50 cheaper than Amazon.
Can you list said stores that offered different products? Because the ones in my neck of the woods in London and Kitchener all had the same stuff in them. In some cases, those stores were right next door to each other or less than 500m away. They had amazing amount of redundancy.
Om, nomnomnom...
It was a great place to shop if you needed an extended warranty.
It was never a great place to shop, it was a pain trying to get them to honour said warranties, and Best Buy stores were infinitely more friendly/useful due to the non-commission status of employees.
I kind of liked Futureshop. They usually had what I wanted and the service wasn't too bad. Kind of fun wandering around when you're bored too.
A great band (The Sycamores of Halifax), which broke up years ago, even wrote a song about having nothing to do and going to Futureshop. Since The Sycamores are basically forgotten by the internet, here's the song, 'Future Shop Monday':
http://picosong.com/V2r8/
http://picosong.com/download/V2r8/
This reminds me of the piece of shit rust bucket I used to drive. I had a bumper sticker that read "Yes. I'm Compensating."
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Almost a million dollars (CDN) for any decent-sized house that isn't a dump.
You must have only looked in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Anything upwards of about $600,000 in the London area gets you an absolute mansion.
As an example: 4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms, a huge lot, inground pool, 2 car garage, tons of landscaping, fountains, etc, for $715,000.
http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?PropertyId=15394802
If that place qualifies as either a dump, or too small, then you have no right to bitch about the price of property, because you must pretty much be a 1%er.
Take a look at the $700,000 - $800,000 range:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=700000&PriceMax=800000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1
There are plenty of huge houses, 3 car garages, etc, in there.
If you want to look at the more realistic for most people range of $300,000 to $400,000:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=300000&PriceMax=425000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1
You'll still find plenty of very nice houses in there, too.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Really? Nothing that's distinctly Canadian? Did you see the closing ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics? My wife and I watched both the Canadian and American coverage. The announcer on the Canadian coverage was happily chatting away about the festivities, whereas the American announcer was pretty much speechless, because what he was seeing was so not American.
We're a hell of a lot friendlier and more polite than Americans, in general. Not that there aren't exceptions; there certainly are. But on the whole, it's true. I've traveled a fair amount through Canada, various parts of the US, and some in Europe. I've never felt uncomfortable or out of place, except in the US. Now, that was mostly in the north east, as when I went through Tennessee, people were almost as friendly as Canadians. Americans just seem to be more blunt and "in your face" than pretty much anybody else I've encountered in my travels.
Besides: we have Red Green.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
We tried Annexing countless times. Literally. I can't count the times. Once during the Revolution, once during the War of 1812, another time in the 1830s when our Marshall in Detroit "accidentally" let Canadian rebels "borrow" the entire contents of the arsenal, numerous times in the late 1860s when the Fenians tried to conquer Canada...
They've always been quite adamant that they are quite happy to be her Majesty's Unamerican subjects.
And you're highly exaggerating our originality. The US System is precisely identical to the British system of 1789 except for three things: 1) instead of one document containing everything the Brits had multiple documents, 2) the King selected by much different means (descent from Electress Sophia vs. selection by the states), and 3) we had two levels of government (state and Federal). Other then that the whole thing is warmed-ovwer British mush combined with good-old American boastful bullshitting.
The best buy employees around my neck of the woods are complete and total idiots. Especially the Geek Squad rocket scientists or whatever they are supposed to be. It's a chore to even enter the store it seems. I've had both (the blue shirts and black shirts) try to tell me crap I knew from the start simply wasn't true. I think the funniest story was when I was purchasing some CDs for my burner and was trying to make sure I was getting the brand on sale. One of the employees saw me and tried to suggest I purchase the CDs labeled as Music because they were better qualify and would read faster. He said that was why they were more expensive than data cds (evidently making crap up is more productive than knowing about the media tax on Music labeled media).
It's quite common to deal with macho men in Fort Mac who work in the oil sands for days on end with heavy machinery, yet who have penises that are most appropriately measured in millimetres.
If size is an issue in that region, why don't you look somewhere else for your fill of penises?
lucm, indeed.
I generally stopped shopping at FS due to the commission-based sales vultures, but I did buy a stove and fridge there almost 3 years ago (needed new ones, and they had a good sale going on). Huge amount of pressure to get extended warranties, of course. I started asking about it, having had previous (negative) experience trying to actually use a warranty.
Basically, the extended warranty was 3 / 5 / 8 years depending on what you paid. If something breaks, you call them, they come out and repair or replace at their discretion. If something were to break say, 6 months after your purchase, and they came out and decided that replacing it was the most economical option, you get a new fridge. Great! Here's the catch: your Future Shop warranty is now terminated. That's right.. the remaining 7.5 years are null and void. I think you get the 1 year parts-only manufacturer warranty (which I'm convinced FS negotiates to be deliberately crappy to make their plan look better.
The economics of this are just too much in their favour: if there's a (minor) problem, it's actually in their interest to replace it (terminating the remainder of the warranty), then fix the old one and re-sell it (hopefully at least as refurbished model -- but I wouldn't be surprised to find these as "floor models" or "open-box").
Speak before you think
First of all, this is the norm among industrialized economies. Perhaps Norway is different. I haven't checked since the fracking boom.
Second, the thriving middle class was a fairly short lived affair, centered around three decades from 1950–1980. Most affluent societies have now returned to pre-1930s levels of economic inequality. Historically, an affluent middle class is the exception and not the norm.
I had a college roommate whose brawny younger brother dropped out of high school with few skills and somehow got a job with the CAW at a starting wage north of $70,000 per year, back in the early 1980s. He soon had a wife and children, a driveway filled with expensive motor toys, and cash-flow problems.
He was almost certainly employed at a factory making automotive products that discerning consumers—those of us lacking misty-eyed Big Three loyalty—did not wish to purchase.
Meanwhile, high school drop-outs trying to scrape by on non-union wages weren't necessarily doing much better than those same people today, a major difference being that the majority of those fantasy union jobs have now gone away.
Someone needs to get in a time travel booth to go back to the early 1970s to inform the CAW management group that no matter what course of action they chose, their business model (high union wages for semi-skilled labour) could not survive selling shit product. Marketing the hell out shit product was a short-term solution at best (Future Shop—ultimately—not excepted).
As much as the Reagan and Thatcher plutocrats initiated a self-serving destruction of the middle class, the middle class itself was hardly blameless.
Now it's time for the plutocrats to determine whether they can recognize how they are painting themselves into a non-viable corner before they encounter a messy corrective force of their own seeding.
Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming
They're minimum wage employees for the most part, what do you expect? At least when they say something stupid you know it's out of ignorance. Future Shop (pre-and post bestbuy) they would lie to your face just to try get you to buy something you didn't need.
I expect either a level of competency in looking the answers up or level of humility and just saying "I don't know" when they do not know. But I'm not sure where the difference is in lieing to your face to sell something and ignorantly lieing just to up sell something.
Here is another great example of an experience I had with Best Buy. I was looking for a specific US robotics hardware modem and their website said they had one in stock. This was for an old linux box that served as a fax server using hylafax and was a direct replacement for existing hardware (spec'd because of local availability). After three people suggesting I use a win modem and looking completely blank like a deer staring into headlights when I explained the difference between a hardware modem and winmodem and told them I needed raw serial communications, they got someone from the geeksquad to assist. After giving him a model number and explaining why I needed that specific model, he told me not only was there nothing like that which they carried, but that modems use the PCI bus and would be incapable of serial communication. He said I would need to order one from a vendor specific channel. I called a coworker and asked him if he could find another locally on line so I could pick on up. Turns out best buy was the only one he could find so my coworker ordered it online for in store pick up. I went to the counter right next to where we were and said I was there to pick up an order for XXXX. They said it was still being pulled but would be there in about 5 minutes. 5 minutes passed and I walked out the door with what I originally came in to get an hour ago only to be accosted by some idiot at the door wanting to match my receipt to the product in the bag.
I've got lots of stories about best buy. I prefer to purchase local when possible but have such a hatred for their idiocy that I will buy online if I don't need something right now and cannot find it at one of the other stores that dabble in electronics. How others put up with it is beyond me.
Most middle-class Canadians have been, or are being, forced down to a Wal-Mart level of existence.
That'll be why our street is full of new trucks and SUVs. They need them to drive to Wal-Mart, I guess.
Yes, and you will note, they are not purchases, but two family incomes paying a lease.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Of course! I frequently go to Best Buy to shop for things.
Then I buy them online from a retailer that charges at least 30% less (usually Amazon) and doesn't grill me for a half hour when I have to return something their employees broke tossing boxes around.
You blame the union members and the unions.
You blame them when the decision to sell shit products and ignore quality issues was an upper management problem, and remains to an upper management problem to this day.
Because if that responsibility doesn't lie with upper management, then why do they get paid fucking rockstar salaries? What do they do all day, financial masturbation?
--
BMO