- LinkedIn adds fancy API and people love it.
- Spammers in high gear trying to improve their mailing lists.
- Bill Gates made a few bad predictions recently.
- CompUSA folding. Maybe I’ll do a lament column over this.
- Yahoo reprising FinanceVision with something called TechTicker. Yahoo never spends enough money on these content plays because they do not actually understand the world of content. It’s fun to ridicule though.
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My friend works at CompUSA and they still haven’t officially given them a date for closing. Aren’t they legally bound to give 60 days notice? I wouldn’t know.
Need links to the stories..
Yahoo SUCKS, they buy up other sites, to USE there idea and then DONT keep them up..And generally FIRE those that were involved with the concept/idea.
#1, they need to give 2 WEEKS notice. depends on STATE.
This past summer, I moved to Dallas. Unfortunately, my computer broke in transit. Driving around looking for a repair shop, I found a CompUSA. Sadly, it was out of business. It was then that I noticed their world headquarters right across the street. At that moment, I knew they were toast. Once a company closes shop in its own home town, how much longer can it last?
I was surprised to find all the CompUSA stores in MN have closed as well.
Might as well just do it – too late now to turn it around.
Shame – I like being able to buy PC hardware in a store rather then on line.
Cheers
I knew their days were numbered once they started selling HDTVs and trying to compete with Best Buy and Circuit City. There’s only so much diversification you can do before it becomes counter-productive. They should’ve stuck to their main selling product which was computers and service. Oh well.
What I saw on Friday, is that they will be open through the holidays. The company that bought them wants to close them as soon as possible, though a few may “survive” through re-reorganization, but its doubtful. In my area they are the ONLY true computer store that has a REAL Apple section. It survived the first round of closings in 99, but I don’t think it will this time.
About five years ago, a CompUSA opened a couple of blocks away from where I worked. I was thrilled, because there wasn’t anything else within a 30 min drive. The first time I went in (2 or 3 days after it opened) I was browsing around and noticed that although the shelves were stocked, not a single item had a price… no stickers, no bin tags, nothing. I asked and was told just to take anything I was interested in to the register and they would tell me the price. They said they’d have the bin tags (prices) on the shelves within a few days. Naturally, I left. 2 weeks later, I return. Still no bin tags. I asked the manager what was up, and he (rudely) told me that they had higher priorities, and would get around to it when they could. Naturally, I left. A few weeks later, I gave it another shot. No bin tags.
A few weeks after THAT, as I was driving by, I noticed that the parking lot was empty and the windows were covered with paper. Mind you, this was a BRAND NEW BUILDING, and they closed after something like 3 months.
Pitiful.
A friend of mine worked for them a few years ago as manager of the repair department.
He left after a few months.
He said it was the most disorganized company he had ever worked for and that it was going to go under if they kept mis-managing it the way they were.
My friend was right.
Idiots cannot successfully compete in the marketplace.
Comp USA is the only “real” computer store in my neck of the woods too. They can’t compete with Worst Buy on system prices (on notebooks, I don’t look at prices on boxes as I roll my own), but for components they are the only real game around.
By and large, CompUSA stopped existing at the time they made the announcement they were closing (last Friday). Included in that announcement was the fact that they’d already sold their name and all their inventory, in place, to a liquidation company. The CompUSA store you see closing down the street no longer belongs to the parent CompUSA chain. The liquidators do this for a living (oxymoron) and they always run the sale the same way: Raise the prices on everything in the store to full list price (even things that NEVER sold for full list price before), then titrate the prices down, SLLLOOOOWWWLYYYY. Usually they start at 10% off for the majority of the store. A few high margin classes of items will be marked down more, so that they can advertise 10-30% off (or whatever). They’re hire the ad-board guys to walk around outside advertising the going out of business sale. And they’ll run ads in the local papers talking about the “once in a lifetime” deals you can get.
All of which would be comical except for the fact that there are, in fact, a whole lot of suckers out there who will race out the door toward the nearest CompUSA as soon as they hear of the sale. And these suckers will breathlessly bring armfuls of merchandise that has freshly been marked down 10% from stratospheric retail to the counter–clueless to the fact that last week, before the going out of business sale, and before the liquidator took over, that same merchandise was available for 20-25% off retail everyday!
about friggin’ time!
AMF CompUSA – take Best Buy with you!
They had a culture of crooked practices, and even had to sign a “consent decree” to stop them.
Even then, it didn’t stop them from stuffing defective returns (even different models) into boxes, shrink wrapping them and selling them as new. This happened to me, and I had to call the CEO’s office to get a refund.
GOOD RIDDANCE – crooked bestids.
Hey John that was me. I lost my dog, and i want to get a new one. Send 50K to my Nigerian account. I went to COMPUSA today and they LAUGHED at me when i asked for SCSI cables, i laughed too but couldent find ANY good deals, i think #10 KwadGuy knowz whats up… whats ur blog man? . I felt much better going down the road to a Ma and Pa computer and radio store but paid $40 for the cables thats how much i paid for the controller to.
Too bad. They were still the best source for a lot of both software and hardware items that Best Buy just doesn’t carry.
I remember when they started in the early 80’s as “SoftWarehouse” in a warehouse district in the Dallas, TX suburb of Addison.