Circuit City is Forked

[Fish]

I went to Circuit City yesterday to look at prices on DDR memory. 512 MB of DDR memory for $40. 256 MB of DDR memory for $80.

It’s clear the place is now being run by monkeys in Accounting.

[LSLGuy]

I can only hope that after they’re closed someone goes around & bulldozes every one of their buildings to destroy the distinctive logo look… If I never see any further evidence of their existence for the rest of my life I’ll almost be satisfied.
Why yes, I don’t like them. I don’t wish the rank & file employees any ill, but as an organization they deserve to have their earth thoroughly salted. Good riddance.

[Khadaji]

There is a CC next to our Borders. When I went to Borders today the line for CC (at opening) was the length of the building and nearly-but-not-quite in front of the Borders doors. (One moron had to stand in the middle of the drive to take a picture.)

[Dragwyr]

I can confirm that there were no bargains to be had today at the CC in Portage, MI. The discounts they were offering were 10% off anything not on sale, 20% off DVD movies and video games, and 30% off cables.

On top of all that, the employees there didn’t know what stuff qualified for the 10% discount and stuff they had marked wasn’t even scanning the correct price. I had two different sales people tell me about the price on a computer system. One told me it qualified for the discount, the other told me it did not. Also, I tried buying a $20 headset and expected it to scan up at $18. It scanned at $20, so I just handed it to the sales person and left.

[C3]

I stopped in today because my camera broke last week. I bought a Canon Powershot that I’ve found priced at about $110. It was on sale for $80 (which is what the price came up as), then the salesperson keyed in an additional 10% off. Not what I would have imagined as “liquidation pricing”, but I feel like a got a decent deal, nevertheless. That place was packed, though. It was like Black Friday out there. I wouldn’t have set foot in there if I hadn’t had something I was specifically looking for.

[Shai_tan]

@Cluricaun

Fuckers, I bought a TV there (I started a thread about this in GQ) and bought the service plan. I’m trying to call them to see if they’re going to honor this or if someone else is for the next 5 years and I keep getting hung up on. Seems that the call center has the same news access as we do.

Service Plans are insured by a third party. Its required by law for this reason. You can check to see who will be covering it, but it shouldn’t really be that big of a deal. You can already buy the same coverage from a third party anyway…

• Shai’tan
  Former Circuit City employee

[Cluricaun]

@Fish

I went to Circuit City yesterday to look at prices on DDR memory. 512 MB of DDR memory for $40. 256 MB of DDR memory for $80.

It’s clear the place is now being run by monkeys in Accounting.

I had the same experiance at Best Buy two weeks ago and they’re not even in trouble. My best friend bought me a new digital camera for Christmas, which is totally awesome, but with the resolutions these days the onboard memory is enough to hold maybe six pictures. I needed to get a memory card and BB is across the street from my house so I popped in to take a look. 2GB Memory Stick Duo cards were $30 but the 4gb ones were $22. When the kid working the department slid up to me to ask if I had any questions I asked him why the pricing made no sense. According to him the pricing on memory is just stupid and fluctuates all the time based on what is available and also what’s on sale. Apparently BB doesn’t mark sale items on memory in any noticable way besides changing the price. So $22 later I can take almost 1400 pics without running out of space. Sweet.

[atomicbadgerrace]

@Martini_Enfield

And I said “Why not? What’s your boss going to do, fire you? A week from now, you’ll be at your new job and I’ll be on a plane out of the country. The company’s gone belly-up and you and your mates will have already gotten all the good shit that you wanted anyway. Everyone’s happy.”

And this guy looks at me for a second, says “Fuck it, you’re right.”, and rang the sale up, using various “Shop Soiled/Damaged/Goodwill/Clearance Special” codes to drop the prices.

Exactly. If CC staff are still the ones actually working in the stores, I imagine this is going to be the scenario quite often. “What are they gonna do, fire you?” is likely to get you a hefty discount from a pissed off employee.

[Turek]

I had the same experience. I went into CC yesterday looking for a TV I’ve had my eye on. Even with their crappy 10% off, it was still $200 more than Best Buy.

[Frank]

According to the Post-Dispatch, the liquidators haven’t even shown up in the St. Louis area, and might not till Monday.

Business as usual.

[LSLGuy]

Frank, yesterday I happened to drive past the CC at Mid Rivers Mall. The parking lot was 100% full. The rest of the mall & surrounding big boxes was busy, but not like that.

Seems like a lot of people expeced there to be deals to be had.

[Sunspace]

@Frank

According to the Post-Dispatch, the liquidators haven’t even shown up in the St. Louis area, and might not till Monday.

Business as usual.

Frank, I notice your link mentions CC stores ‘in North America’ as opposed to just in the States.

Are there any actual Circuit City stores in Canada? There are plenty of “The Source by Circuit City” stores, which are former Radio Shack stores that lost the right to use the RS name when CC bought the RS franchisor (InterTAN) in Canada (at least I think that’s what happened). But I’m not aware of an actual CC store. Or are there some in Mexico?

[E-Sabbath]

LSLGuy: And that’s why there were no big deals. Expect some stuff in a week or so.

[Amp]

@Sunspace

Frank, I notice your link mentions CC stores ‘in North America’ as opposed to just in the States.

Are there any actual Circuit City stores in Canada? There are plenty of “The Source by Circuit City” stores, which are former Radio Shack stores that lost the right to use the RS name when CC bought the RS franchisor (InterTAN) in Canada (at least I think that’s what happened). But I’m not aware of an actual CC store. Or are there some in Mexico?

According to Circuit City’s website:

Are you also shutting down your operations in Canada?

•No, our Canadian operations will continue. They are not affected by the liquidation of Circuit City’s U.S. operations. The Canadian operations employ approximately 3,000 associates.

[Sunspace]

@Amp

According to Circuit City’s website:

…but it’s not clear whether those ‘associates’ include the ones at The Source. I suspect they do.

[Desert_Nomad]

I got a good deal on a 46" Sony LCD at Circuit City a month or two ago (from one of the initial closings). It was about 10% better than the best mail order price. You’ll have to wait a couple weeks for the prices to drop - there were advertising 40-60% when I bought and a week or two later when they were saying 70-90% they had nothing to buy.

[Frank]

@LSLGuy

Seems like a lot of people expeced there to be deals to be had.

And they should have, because according to Circuit City, liquidation began on Saturday. Except, apparently, when it didn’t.

Sunspace, as far as I can tell, Circuit City operations in Canada are continuing. At least for another week:

-InterTAN Canada Ltd. (“InterTAN”), an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC: undefined, undefined, undefined%), today confirmed that The Source by Circuit City stores across Canada remain open for business and are not included in the liquidation process announced earlier today by Circuit City in the US.

On November 10th, 2008, InterTAN sought and obtained creditor protection by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Since that time, the Company has been working with NM Rothschild & Sons Canada Limited to pursue a sale of the Canadian operations as a going concern and has been in active discussions with a number of interested bidders. InterTAN expects to receive formal proposals with respect to a going concern transaction on or before January 23rd, 2009. The Canadian sales process is separate and distinct from the sales process followed by Circuit City in the US.

[Tamex]

They must have announced the closings too late to pull the Circuit City circular from this Sunday’s paper. Guess I can’t preorder Bruce Springsteen’s new album or get a TV “installed in time for Sunday’s Big Game” with “36 months no interest”. Amazing how quickly things can change.

[mhendo]

Consumer Reports sent some folks out to a liquidated Circuit City store over the weekend, and this is what they found:

To find out whether the liquidation was producing bargains, we compared Circuit City’s prices this weekend with those charged by other retailers. We also looked the advertised prices in this week’s Circuit City circular, which, though distributed in newspapers, is not being honored by the stores. The advertised sale prices were in some cases hundreds of dollars less than what we saw at the liquidation sale on Sunday at the Circuit City store on E. 14th Street in Manhattan. And in most cases, we found much better savings at Circuit City’s competitors.

For example, at the liquidation, a 50-inch Panasonic plasma TV was discounted to $1,800, a $200 savings. That might sound like a bargain, but if you check the circular you’ll see that Circuit City had planned to cut the price this week by $500. What’s more, we found the same model online for $1,365, including free shipping.

An HP all-in-one printer, at the liquidation for $270, was scheduled to be on sale for $150. And we found it as low as $135 online. A Garmin GPS system, discounted to $225, was $160 in the circular and $141 online.

They did find a few things worth buying, but it was slim pickings, and they concluded:

As we’ve seen many times, prices often are higher than the best deals you’ll find elsewhere, at least initially. And by the time the liquidator is offering substantial savings, you may there’s find little left worth buying.