This is sad but not surprising to me. The place has been a disaster for the past several months.
A few weeks ago I went to Fry’s looking for some regular computer power cables. They didn’t have any in stock. Walking around the place is depressing. Entire sections of shelves are often empty and covered in dust. The signs above the shelves are always wrong. Looking for HDMI cables? They’re under the sign that says Universal Remotes, of course!
They can’t maintain their inventory. Half the shelf space is occupied by obsolete garbage. I went there last week looking for a small Ethernet switch. A basic, commodity item that would be found in any business or home office. They didn’t have any. ETHERNET SWITCHES! They were out of stock and not expected any more for weeks. You know what they did have? A mile of shelves full of bulk Cat3 telco cable. Now, I know there are one or two people out there with a need for bulk twisted pair - but that much? And you don’t have a fuckin Ethernet switch?
I ended up going to Best Buy, which I hate because they treat their employees like garbage. But I’ll say this for them: I walked ten steps to the clearly-signed Networking section, immediately saw a display with a range of Ethernet switches from your basic bare-bones 8-port to fully managed 48-port rackable with PoE. I selected the one I wanted, paid for it, and was out the door in five minutes.
I noticed the decline in stock at the Brokaw Rd, San Jose location over the past year or so. The lack of electronics parts will be the biggest loss, for me. The last time I went there I needed some very basic parts (like a DC barrel plug connector) and they didn’t have any. I used to go there all the time, and more often than not I’d walk away with 10x what I intended to buy, but now there’s not much reason to go there in the first place.
These were fun. We just called them computer shows. I built many computers this way in the 90s.
About 10 weeks ago I walked into the Fry’s in Plano, TX and was shocked. Aisle after aisle of empty racks, virtually no components at all and not much of anything in any department. I checked their website last week and discovered that the Chicago-South store was gone, as well.
According to the locator, the nearest Radio Shack anything to me is part of a heating/air conditioning contractor - a type of business not known for getting a lot of walk-in traffic.:dubious: In any case, it’s about 50 miles from my house, so I don’t want to go there and check it out.
That’s how I built them in the 80s. I worked awhile at HSC (a small Bay Area parts chain); the employee discount was nice. But computer shows at fairgrounds, school gyms, etc, with new stuff, unknown stuff, and military and SiliValley surplus that smelled funny - those supplied many a project. Hmmm, an olive-drab truck with numbers taped over is unloaded by guys in insignia-less fatigues. Surplus? Maybe.
Tech-heads unsatisfied with such takings headed to a gate at Lawrence Livermore Labs for Saturday surplus sales. Getcha red-hot megawatt lasers now! System controllers, such a deal! Or buy rocket boosters etc at certain Air National Guard sites.
Oh right, Fry’s. I hit their Sacramento store long ago. I’ll look again next year.
Still kicking myself for not stopping at the one in Morton, Washington. Didn’t need anything and we had a flight to catch, so we didn’t take the time. Probably doesn’t look quite the same as the traditional store, though.
Never had a Fry’s near us, but we visited one in San Jose (I think that’s where it was). Wow. Could have gotten lost in there.
Yeah, this was on the news tonight. They had a big problem some years ago when one of their top executives ripped them off. I haven’t been to the Fremont store in ages because while they had components, sure, most of their merchandise was low end crap, and not even cheap. I read that they had trouble paying suppliers so they had trouble getting merch. So them going bust was not a big surprise.
Until I read this thread I never realized the astonishingly shitty sales staff was a chain-wide feature. I thought it was just my local branch (Manhattan Beach - Polynesian tiki theme). And it’s been that way a long long time - my first bad encounter occurred when I was shopping for a VCR. Guy came over to me and asked if I needed help. I started to tell him the three features I was looking for, and he cut me off after the first one saying “They don’t sell them with that anymore”.
I pointed at the VCR in front of me. “Uh, this one right here has it. I want to know if any also have…”
He looked at the features tag on the shelf, saw I was right, glared at me, then turned his back on me and walked off, never to return.
I walked out too. I think I eventually bought it at Circuit City.
I was at that store a couple years back. Was in the Bay for work and needed a pair of bluetooth headphones and a iPhone charger because I forgot to pack mine. I can absolutely confirm that all they had was overpriced sht. Even the Apple branded stuff was marked way up and the BT earbuds were Chinese garbage.
We liked the Fry’s in Phoenix, but when it became easier to shop for parts online, we gave up driving an hour to get the brush off from surly employees.
It is sad to see so many employees losing their jobs at any time, but now is even worse.
Seriously? Wow, that guy must’ve been the Employee of the Month. A Fry’s employee actually approaching a customer is a rare event, indeed.
I grew up in the Bay Area, so I was a Fry’s customer from the beginning. Even as far back as the '80s, there were two pearls of wisdom I could drop about Fry’s:
Don’t bother asking employees for help, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Don’t ever take your computer there for repairs, because the employees don’t know what they’re doing.
Despite that, I spent many, many hours as a teenager and young adult roaming the Fremont store (the original one, that is, at Mission & Warm Springs), and later the San Jose store. It was an awesome place. I moved to Portland in 2005; there’s a Fry’s here, but I’ve only been there maybe ten times. And not at all in the past five or six years. There’s just no reason to go there anymore, when anything they sell can be easily found online.
I will miss them, particularly since the closest one (Brokaw Rd. in San Jose) is a <5 min drive. The surly and unhelpful employees were always part of the charm.
Given what I saw the last few times I went, though, I couldn’t see how they could recover. The store had no stuff. People don’t come back to your store when they visit and there’s nothing to buy. I gave them more shots than most, just because it’s such a quick visit for me, but the last few electronic items I bought, I didn’t even consider going there. The last item I bought (actually just helped a friend buy) was a power supply. They had a total of three models of computer PSUs on the shelf. As it happened, one of them was basically acceptable for the purpose, but a few years ago there would have been dozens of models to pick from.
I’ll miss their components the most. I was once repairing a small circuit board, found that one of the ICs had burned out–an H-bridge driver, IIRC. I could order it from Mouser or Digikey, and pay $1 plus $20 in S/H, and get it in a week. I could order it from China via eBay for $1 plus $2 S/H and get it in 6 weeks. Or–as it turned out–I could find an equivalent replacement part at Fry’s for $2. I’ve gone there many times to pick up barrel connectors, power resistors, various 74xxx series ICs, etc. And almost always walked out with a few knick-knacks as well, whether a phone charger or mini screwdriver kit or whatever.
At least Amazon is picking up the slack a tiny bit. They have one-day delivery with Prime shipping on a fair number of components. Still not as convenient as getting something now, and nothing cheaper than maybe $6, but better than the usual alternatives.
I’m not surprised they went out of business. I briefly worked at one of the stores in
the late 1990s and saw first hand how they treated their customers and employees.
I recall overhearing one frustrated customer say to his friend that one day the internet
was going to put Fry’s out of business.
A couple weeks before Christmas 2019 I visited the store where I used to work just
for the heck of it. It was on a Saturday and I was shocked when I pulled into the
parking lot and found it was only about 1/4 full. On a typical weekend when I working
there the lot would be at least 3/4 full. Inside shelfs were nearly half empty and only
a few of the registers were open.
Not at all surprised they went out of business. If you treat your customers and
employees poorly you’re not going to stay in business for long.