Inside, it was close to pandemonium. The manager would not let me take pictures inside the store. Consumers swarming everywhere: every one of them with at least a few breathless questions and scant employees to provide answers. And consumers seemingly snapping up anything that wasn’t nailed down. I’ve never seen so many HP wide-screen monitors in one checkout line.
One male employee in the section I was browsing, spent most of the time I was there about 15 minutes pleading ignorance and searching for a manager who never apparently materialized.
A female employee I talked to outside she was on break said no one knew it would happen–until it happened.
What was ironic and sad was that I had been to this same Circuit City a few weeks before and an employee had boasted that this store would not close in the wake of the limited nationwide store closings Circuit City had announced in November and would be around for a long time.
Bricks and mortar, can’t compete with online.
Down with DIVX
Glad I didn’t buy an extended warranty.
I went to a Circuit City yesterday with every intention of getting a 50+ inch plasma. They were only 10% off and when I told the Manager I would buy it right then for 25% off he wouldn’t do it. All the TVs were only 10% off.
They don’t even know how to go out of business well.
#3. Try their returns and refurbishes storeroom manager, or wait for the liquidator’s sale. Find the name of the liquidator, send them an impromptu tender note that you want X for $y and that you don’t want to attend auction, and wait for a reply.
31. Try getting your stuff fixed online, moron. Bring back full service computer shops!!!
Consumer whores all.
I was there, I saw the long line that wasn’t moving caused by the circuit city crappy POS setup, saw that it was only 10% off, and said to myself… Im not standing in that line for 10%. Went down to Best Buy. The prices were ~still~ better at best buy, and there were more people at best buy, and I didn’t wait in line because the Best Buy POS works.
Here in CA Fry’s has consistently better prices and a wider selection.
Oh that reminds me. The wii mote light saber attachments dont work. One of them broke by the end of the second round of jedi deathmath. Cracked and the wii mote kept sliding out of it.
Oh and my 7 year old kept wanting to hit me with the light saber rather than watch the screen. Grandma was cracking up laughing.
Oh and wii games are rubbish, and I am still confused by the consoles success…
So how is this any different than any other day in the past at Circuit City.
Sounds more like a hype story to stoke sales than an actual report.
I’ve purchased two items at CC in the past year. In both cases, the items were only at a few stores (brick and online), and CC happened to have the same price versus online retailers after shipping.
When that’s the best thing you can say about a store, no wonder it failed.
#5, Thom,
The best reason yet for bricks and mortar.
# 5 Thom said, “Try getting your stuff fixed online, moron.”
Like when I was on business in Manhattan & my Dell laptop’s motherboard crapped out. Dell picked it up that evening from my hotel room and brought it back by noon the next day repaired?
#10,
More on what you said… When I walked in, there was this big crowd of people standing right there in the front door because of the way they check people out. Once I pushed my way through the crowd, the store was empty… or nearly so.
If a line is moving, I don’t mind standing in it. But by my reconing, on top of having a slow checkout, they only had two registers open…
It goes right back to the reasons that I never shopped at circuit city in the first place… They made it a pain in the ass to buy stuff there.
I used to have an irrational amount of hate for Best Buy. It came from back when they had rebates on every single item in the store, including the soda pop(that was when i quit shopping there when I grabbed a soda and got a rebate application on the receipt). I stopped shopping there for a bunch of years because of that.
However Best Buy has refactored as a store. You go there, buy your stuff, and leave. They only hassle you a little bit for the buyer reward thing… Which I hassle the checkout person right back.
“Whats your name?”
“George Bush”
“Whats your address”
“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”
…
I don’t think the economy had anything to do with CC going out of business. I think hassling the customers with a slow and painful checkout drove them out of business.
If a couple of years ago, when they fired their best sales staff in a cost cutting move
(thats when I quit shopping at circuit city) they had swallowed their pride and abadoned their data mining practices they could still be in business today.
I know my company just had our best trade show ever. I think the reason is, our main competitor is data mining. Not only do they want to datamine their vendors, they have put all sorts of restrictions in places to make the vendors datamine their customers.
I had some point when I started this post, but I think 2009 may be the year that data mining starts to harm businesses who use it in a consumer revolt.
Oh I also want to point out… Circuit city used IBM + linux on their checkout, while Best Buy uses windows;)
Actually, unless Circuit City got a new checkout system in the last year and a half, their system is proprietary…based around DOS 2.0.
Hello idiots (those described in the story)!
The liquidator is going to take everything back to MSRP and THEN take 10% off, you are getting shit for deals right now and when the deals get good it’s a battle of morons to get anything worth something….let the dregs fight over the scraps of the dying company…I’ll keep shopping at newegg.
#15,
You are off by about 5 years;)
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=29100172
So I guess that begs the question. Circuit City management was idiotic. Circuit City management choose Linux. Does that mean idiots choose linux?;) This anecdote says yes!
#12. So you enjoy being part of the problem? Do you understand anything about local economy? Enjoy you coming depression, fool.
PLEASE, please, please remember the liquidators that purchased CC’s stock are well know for inflating prices to MSRP and ABOVE before reducing by a percentage. The effect is people believe they are getting a deal when they are likely paying more than at any other brick and mortar or online store. This is OUR version of a NIgerian scam.
About two years ago, Circuit City laid off around 3400 lower level employees because they felt they earned too much. They then offered to rehire them at lower wages. In 2003, they laid off a bunch of the top salepeople, again because they felt their compensation (up to $54k including sales commission) for their individual sales figures (some sold $1M).
Never heard of upper management taking a pay cut.
Also helps explain why I’ve felt like I knew as much about the products I was looking at as the sales “associates”.
What amazes me is how many people buy the electronic crap du jour at Sam’s Club or those god awful Home Shopping Networks.
Bah. Regular prices at Amazon are WAY better. I went to the CC down the street. No wonder they are going out of business. Their hovering salespeople always annoyed me. Good riddance!
CC, best buy…same shit, same smell.
Anyone shopping at these places for electronics should never be allowed to own any of it.
Shop at a local specialty shop – better staff, more knowledge, prices might be a bit higher but hell it’s worth it knowing you’re not supporting crappy companies like best buy who continually prove they don’t give a shit about you.
Online stores are great, but…………
I remember Tower Records on a Saturday, browsing through new releases, it was like a club.
And the Virgin Mega store in Times Square was like a Vegas Casino, with a movie theater and restaurant…ah the old days.
Agreed. CC should have followed Hillary Clinton’s advice and not had all those layoffs.
Smash Bros rules!
Circuit City found out too late that all they had to do was discount their stuff, oh the irony.