Circuit City Closes Its Doors For Good 587
bsharma is amongst the hordes of people wanting us to share the news that long beleaguered retailer Circuit City has finally decided to close for good, asking for court approval to close the remaining 567 US stores. "Whalin said management mistakes over the past few years combined with the recession brought down Circuit City. 'This company made massive mistakes,' he said, citing a decision to get rid of sales people and other mismanagement. What's more, given the credit market freeze, Whalin added that no manufacturer wants to sell to any retailer who doesn't have money to pay for the merchandise. At the same time, Whalin said there's still a very slim chance that one or more firms that have expressed an interest in buying Circuit City could still buy it out of bankruptcy over the next few days."
Re:With Circuit City and CompUSA all but gone... (Score:5, Informative)
...what's to stop Best Buy from inflating their already-borderline-ridiculous prices even further?
Target, Wallmart, Sam's Club, local retailers, amazon, newegg, froogle, etc...
remember not to fall for "liquidation sales" (Score:2, Informative)
If you've not seen the behind-the-scenes newstories on liquidations, essentially they raise prices to list and then slowly lower them back to the discount prices. So it's always a ripoff.
Re:More than mismanagement (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I bought some memory there a while back, through their in-store pickup option. I paid for it online, drove to the store, and had to wait 30 MINUTES for them to figure out how to process my order. Without exception, every time I went in to a Circuit City, I left disgusted and vowing to avoid shopping there again.
Incidentally, now that CC is closed, that mantle is being passed on to Fry's. The reps never know anything, assuming you can actually get one to help you, and they never have to part I'm looking for. It's either not stocked anymore, or they're always sold out of it. Sure it's fun to go in there and drool at the TVs, but I'm sticking to Newegg from now on.
Re:What about "The Source" in Canada? (Score:5, Informative)
The article mentions that they'll continue to operate.
compare and contrast with the apple stores (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I have had experience with the old school way of doing things, Beast Buy, Comp Useless, and Circuit Shitty. The advantage they had over the smaller shops is a huge selection and usually steep discounts on big ticket items. The drawback was usually that you got raped on the peripherals and accessories ($20 printer cables you could buy for $2 anyone?) and their staff was usually pig ignorant and useless. Not only that but you also had to deal with scumfuck corporate tactics on returns, were treated like a thief every time you left the stores with mandatory bag searches, etc. Ultimately I both hated these stores but knew they were the only option when I needed something today and couldn't wait for a delivery. The other problem with buying online, especially electronics, is that returns become a nightmare. If I'm buying a big ticket product, I need a place I can return it to if it's broken and I don't want to eat S&H along with 15% restocking fees.
The newer model seems to be represented by the reborn Comp Useless (purchased and owned by Tiger Direct) and the Apple Stores. In the Comp store by me, they're shucked the generalist crap and are tightly focused on computers and electronics. They carry a full range of parts and you can pick out anything you need to build your computer. The tech desks are at the front of the store and there's no walls, it's just you and them. If the people on the sales floor don't have a clue, you can go up and ask a tech and get an answer. I don't know what they're paid but they don't seem as unqualified as the Geek Squad. So far, I've not yet been disappointed but am still keeping a wary eye on them.
The nice part about the Apple store is how they're heavily staffed with people to answer questions and all the toys are out there for you to play with. The traditional big box stores leave you to find your product on your own. As a geek I can muddle along but I have no idea how Joe NotGeek can find what he needs. Apple also schedules classes, has the genius bar (yes, it is a stupid name) open for people to ask whatever questions they need, and tries to demystify computing as much as possible. I won't say they're entirely successful but they are a huge improvement over what you get at the traditional box stores which is nothing.
What it really comes down to is that some business models can be run along the lines of McDonald's and some simply can't. In the restaurant field there will be people who pay $100 for a fine steak and those who will be satisfied with a crappy burger spanked together by surly wage slaves. McDonald's has been enormously successful and will remain so, even as there's a market segment for higher quality fast food stand-in's like Panera's and Quizno's.
The big box stores were the McDonaldizing of electronics and big ticket consumer products. The funny thing is that I thought they would remain as successful as McDonald's and for the same reason. Oddly enough, it looks like the cost-cutting I took for making them profitable did away with whatever vestige of quality that kept people shopping there. It will be interesting to see if there's more of a trend towards competing on service and knowledgeable staffing. Hell, even McDonald's is trying to take a stab at entering the real food market with Chipolte.
One other factor that might also come into play is America's acceptance of cheaply manufactured disposable junk. In good times, people were content to buy a big screen that might be dead in five years because it could always be chucked for the next great thing. People didn't want reliability and durability in their cars because they were trading up every three years. When income is no longer quite so disposable, will people be willing to pay more for quality with the understanding that it costs less in the long-term?
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
From what I remember, in the late 1980s/early 1990s...
From what I remember, in the late 1980s/early 1990s we didn't have Circuit City or Best Buy here in Chicago. The electronics stores around here were called Highland, Silo, and Omni. They all went out of business during the recession of the early 1990s. [wikipedia.org] It seems like history has repeated itself once again. Lesson learned, don't hold stock in electronics retailers during a recession.
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:1, Informative)
I don't know if you know a whole lot about the industry or not. But the reason these companies, BBY, CCYT, and CompUSA were/are so hard set on selling you their service/repair plans is because they aren't making much money at all on the products people buy. You go into any BM electronics shop and buy a laptop, or desktop, that is advertised in a flyer or discounted, the company may make a whole $5-$50 on the said product. The margins really are ever declining and the only way to get the consumer what they want, at the price they want is to push the sales people to sell attachments, and warranty's with positive margin dollars. Walmart will continue to do well in the electronics field because they can sell volume, at low margin, and make up for the low margin sales in apparel, and other misc departments.
Re:sucks for the employees (Score:5, Informative)
I think there was a factory in Argentina where the union kept the shop going after the owners went bust.
Actually, there were close to 200 of them. You can learn quite a lot about it here [thetake.org], and in a couple of months, you should be able to buy my translation of The Silent Change, which is mentioned there.
Re:I'm sure everyone is wondering also... (Score:3, Informative)
I needed an external USB hard drive. I had a $20 Circuit City gift card that I knew was approaching worthlessness. I saw their "Going Out Of Business -- Everything Must Go" signs, so I wandered in.
They had stacks of USB hard drives. The cheapest 500 GB one was ~$160. *After* their going out of business discounts, it was $120 + tax. I don't claim to have the pulse of prices down, but that seemed a bit steep. Walked down the block to the Best Buy. Same USB drive there was $90. Bought it, gave the gift card away.
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at Circuit City from 2000 to 2003, and this was not the case for us.
I cannot speak for CC nationwide, as I was in a store in the northeast, but we had a "price match plus" policy. If you found a lower price from a brick and mortar store, and you or we could verify it, we matched the price and beat it by 10% of the difference. Perhaps this was not the case before or after I was there, or in different regions.
To the best of my knowledge, prices were also identical to the competition. Every weekend a small group of us would comb through every newspaper they brought in, and would familiarize ourselves with what the competition was advertising in their flyers. We were usually the ones to announce to customers that a certain item was on a price match sale, and managers were supportive in helping us get them that lower price. We would call or go online to verify a better price if needed. Only very rarely did a customer find a lower price elsewhere and bring it to our attention.
Now, I also think this was the "best" time for customers with CC. They had come out of a DivX salesman era, which stained the companies opinions in many peoples minds. The company started to revise its checkout system, and brighten up stores, as well as introduced a completely new layout for the new stores. But it was still playing catchup to the other guys. The same poor management was running the show. Any progress here was lost with the changes to the payment structure which lost a lot of good will with loyal employees, which were later outright laid off. Then they were just slow with keeping up with the competition with Firedog, and never had the kind of HDTV showcasing that Best Buy was able to foster.
The rise of Best Buy and Walmart did the company in, with superior selection, store layout, and even colors. Seriously, Blue and White or Blue and Yellow, just flat out beat Red and Black. Our stores were dark, dated, they felt old, the store was like the weird used car salesman of electronics. While the "we don't have checkout counters" idea was an interesting experiment, it was a failed one that the company never truly fixed. A poorly run company can survive in the absence of great competition, and I think CC was floundering for the past decade. Semi-competent (at least more competent than Circuit City) competition and a recession is all it took.
Re:With Circuit City and CompUSA all but gone... (Score:3, Informative)
I had the same kind of experience. A couple of years ago, I was jumping through hoops to get Circuit City to match Fry's on a 40" Sony LCD, and, ultimately, they wouldn't do it.
I called a local shop told them what I was looking for and how much I was willing to pay for it. They agreed right away (I probably should have gone lower). Then later, they swapped it for another unit after I let the unattainable perfectionism at AVS Forum lead me to believe that my unit was faulty.
I'll definitely be visiting the next time I'm looking for a TV.
Don't get too excited (Score:3, Informative)
Liquidation sales usually suck. The Liquidator starts by marking up all items to full List price (or beyond), and then giving you a "sale" price off of that new inflated price (which nobody ever paid, and was never charged.)
By the time the "discounts" get down to a level that can significantly beat, say, a retailer that isn't going out of business, the store has been picked clean by the uninformed masses that buy stuff, and only when they get home realize they got a lousy deal. (All Sales Final)
OTOH, if you run a retail store, you can often get great deals on the shelving units. (When they say "everything must go" they aren't kidding. Everything not bolted down (and even some that is) goes out the door.
SirWired
I've had it with the credit freeze (Score:2, Informative)
Problem is, there is no credit freeze [bizjournals.com].
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:2, Informative)
Radioshack and (if you're on the West coast) Frys still sell niche components, but from the looks of it Radioshack has been in a painfully long losing battle with oblivion since the early nineties.
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
According to their website [74.125.47.132] (google cache link while it works), they did the standard 110% of the difference that many stores do these days. I know I've priced matched a few items over the years and I think I always got the difference. 10% of the difference usually only amounted to a buck or two but it was still less.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Informative)
Parent was referring to DIVX [wikipedia.org] not DivX [wikipedia.org].
Re:With Circuit City and CompUSA all but gone... (Score:2, Informative)
Apple's first big loss to Microsoft was thinking people would pay more for mac quality but the market said Windows wasn't great but good enough. It'll be interesting to see how it goes in the future. The iPods are ridiculously overpriced as mp3 players but those bastards sell like hotcakes. I guess the bit of genius there was equating this to fashion. People will be ruthlessly efficient when it comes to making practical purchases but when it comes to buying impractical things like handbags, shoes, and designer goods, logic and reason go out the fucking window.
Hardly. For 99% of people, iPods are FAR easier to use than any competing product. They sync with a program that manages the music - just plug it in and your music is on the thing. Plenty of geeks like the drag-and-drop folder approach, but they're in a tiny minority - with commodity products, most people just want the damn thing to work without frustration. The iPods do that. OS X now does that, and Apple's gains in market share reflect that (of course, their marketing sure hasn't hurt).
Apple doesn't sell to people on specs, they sell to them on the experience. And when they can tell the guy who just had his drive die and lost a ton of data that there's a no-thinking-involved backup app bundled for free with the computer, it's an easy sale.
Yes (disclaimer!), I'm something of an Apple fanboy, but not the Digg-type that feels the need to convert people. I'm as much interested in their products due to their business practices and sales approaches as I am because their products fulfill my needs with minimal headache. I think MS will make something of a comeback with Windows 7 and Linux continues to improve as well.
Honestly, I find it remarkable that you can lambast Apple for "overpricing" their hardware when you did such a great job explaining how great customer service gets and keeps customers. When I find another company that gives me a 2-week estimate for a repair and gets the serviced product back to me in less than 48 hours (sent back to the house via priority overnight) at no cost to me, I'll start giving them my business, even if their stuff is more expensive than Apple's.
Re:What about "The Source" in Canada? (Score:3, Informative)
According to Circuit City's new homepage [circuitcity.com], CC's Canadian operations "will continue" and "are not affected by the liquidation of Circuit City's U.S. operations."
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
A month ago I was shopping at BB and surprise, surprise, I found a tube of thermal grease. Overpriced, of course, but they had a number of small computer repair/construction items.
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
and not have to go into a Wal-Mart?
Which is the biggest factor really. Wal-Mart has dirty stores, over-worked part time employees who could give a shit about the customer (despite all of Wal-Mart's motivational training bull crap), and their parking lots are becoming centers of criminal activity. The documentary, Wal-Mart: High Cost of Low Price [walmartmovie.com], documents rapes, murders, robberies, and other violent crimes occurring in Wal-Mart parking lots, caught on cameras that were set up not to make customers safe in the parking lots, but rather to spy on union organizing activities in and around the store.
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Extended Warranty (Score:3, Informative)
Are Circuit City's extended warranties affected by the liquidation?
* No. Circuit City Advantage Protection Plans (extended warranties) have been backed by third-party independent companies for more than 15 years and as a result, are not impacted by Circuit City's closing.
* Currently, all Circuit City Advantage Protection Plans are fully backed by the Assurant Solutions companies. Assurant Solutions operates as Federal Warranty Service Corporation, Sureway, Inc., and United Service Protection, Inc. Assurant Solutions is part of Assurant, Inc. (NYSE: AIZ), and its extended service contacts are backed by an Assurant insurance subsidiary rated A "Excellent" by A.M. Best Co.
Re:With Circuit City and CompUSA all but gone... (Score:3, Informative)
That depends on the business you're dealing with. We charge $90/hour, and in general the people who you've got to wrestle payment from are the big businesses (who have recently instigated payment policies that have us waiting 6 months or more to get paid) and regular Joe Schmoes (who on the whole treat you like you're stealing their money, and do things like "I want to buy 1 hour of your service time, will that fix the problem I've vaguely described to you over the phone that could be damn near anything?"). Small companies can't afford to hire their own actual IT, and they enjoy getting paid too, so they tend to be pretty forthcoming about payment themselves. The ones that aren't don't get their computers fixed until they pay.
Re:Do you know of one that is not abusive? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Main mistake they made? (Score:3, Informative)
>>>"Sorry, what the cash register says is what goes."
Take a digital image of the pricetag on the counter. Scan the receipt. Forward by email to the State Attorney General's office and request an audit of the store. Almost every year I read in the paper that such-and-such chain was fined several million dollars by the PA Government for false pricetags on their items.
Newegg often charges far, far more. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's an example: A case fan [newegg.com] costs 99 cents. Put four of them in a "shopping cart", the price for shipping is $13.28. The price for shipping one is $3.99. The fans weigh very little. The weight to ship 4 is still under 1 pound. Does it cost $9.29 to have a minimum wage person put 3 more of them in the same box? No.
The true cost of the fans from Newegg is (13.28-3.99)/4 = $2.32, the price after $3.99 shipping and handling cost is subtracted, not the 99 cents advertised price.
Put 10 of the same fans in the cart. The cost for shipping is $21.92. Now it seems that you are actually paying MORE per fan, because the shipping cost will not be $9.50, the cost of shipping and handling if you assume you are paying $2.32 for each fan.
There are many other problems. Newegg's web site is often very slow. Newegg does not pack hard drives correctly, in my experience.
Re:Newegg often charges far, far more. (Score:3, Informative)
you need to learn more about shipping... (Score:4, Informative)
Weight in this case has nothing to do with it, newegg will be charged by UPS or fedex for the dimensions of the box for a single fan, the fans are too light.
The shipping costs are also for UPS 3-day, which is not ground, and is a more expensive service. It should also be noted that your shipping cost per unit went DOWN when you ordered more than one item.
The fact that newegg can, and does, discount your shipping and handling fee on a bulk purchase does not mean they're ripping you off, or overcharging you when you've only purchased one. There are a variety of overheads involved that need to be covered, and newegg (like every company that does mail-order) tries to balance those costs over both the heavy and light items...this is not unfair, or even unusual, it's how the system works.
If you want to complain about price gouging, complain about the retail prices of cables in the world.
There is nothing abusive about a handling fee, you're not just paying some "minimum wage person" to throw one in a box, you're paying someone to verify the order, multiple someones to get the item from the warehouse, someone to prepare the item, which is the box/prills/packaging etc... there's a number of things to be covered here, not to mention cost of prills, box, tape, and labels. Also, the assumption that someone doing jobs like this deserves to be making only minimum wage is extremely foolish, insulting, and naive.
Shipping costs at newegg are calculated PER individual unit, and the price GOES DOWN with bulk purchasing. Which is why the shipping cost doesn't stay at $3.99 per unit when you order 4 of them.
You've already covered my warehouse manager and workers overhead for going and retrieving the items, and verifying the order for the most part with the purchase of the first item. Having them grab a second, third, or 10th one while they're already there doesn't cost me as much as the initial send, therefore the handling fee per unit goes down.
Shipping does the same thing, you are charged based on the general distance the item needs to be shipped, and the cost per pound goes down as the items weight grows...until you cross one or two particular thresholds.
Newegg is attempting to reward you by passing savings on to you for your bulk purchase, not ripping you off jackass.
When you work in a shipping dept. (as I have) you'll find firstly that Newegg does nothing different from anyone else regarding their shipping, with the exception of offering it *cheaper* than petty much anyone else on the market, and there's nothing unreasonable or manipulative about the process.
You will always find what appear to be outrageous shipping and handling fees on extremely small items unless they are shipped via the post office (and even then most of the time it's not any better), this is the nature of shipping companies and what resellers have adapted themselves to. There is nothing unusual about this practice, and you're going to have a difficult time finding any online company that does things differently.