Curious. There is a shopping centre not far from me (Marche Central–Central Market, although it is on the outskirts) that has both a Best Buy and a Future Shop, not far from each other.
Here’s a nice graphic that kinda spells it all out.
Go here —> http://consumerist.com and do a search on Circuit City. The company has been on a slippery slope for a while.
Thank you for fighting my ignorance…I didn’t know that. But hell, if CC is in such dire straits, Borders should have been outta biz like five years ago.
True…but there’s Barnes & Noble. I didn’t realize Borders had bought Waldenbooks.
I thought one of their tricks was in quasi-exclusive brand affiliations. E.g. bestbuy.com says they don’t carry Onkyo products, but CC does. They wouldn’t compete directly as much when it’s apples to oranges.
Anecdotaly I agree with this entire message. The running joke used to be that you would go to CC to learn about the product from the sales people, then go to Best Buy to get it for a cheaper price.
The last time I was in a Circuit City (which was a couple of months ago) I was indeed struck by how disorganized the store seemed.
This is really interesting. Can more knowledgeable people comment on the $1 million retention bonus followed nine months later by the CEO’s resignation? One would think a retention bonus would prevent exactly that, but I’m very ignorant about this level of business.
I’ve never set foot in a CC since they fired all the hourly help. And I never will again. But they gave the CEO a big bonus. Screw 'em.
I live a few blocks from Dick’s original store that begat the Best Buy chain. (It’s now an outlet for partial & overstock paint.)
But when Best Buy did that change in 1989, the announced goal was to eliminate the incentive for sales people to do high-pressure selling, because of the removal of commissions. (Though I’m sure they were aware that it would reduce salaries for some employees.)
Actually, the one nearest to me is in prime location. Well, it was until Best Buy opened up almost opposite; now that CC is being closed.
Me too.
I bought my first DVD player in 2000 there, for about $200. It was a great machine and at the time, a good deal. The staff lead me away from a cheaper brand(Oritron) by knowing that it didn’t play dual layer discs(which were knew then). They were informed and useful.
I was in there eight months ago to pick up a new DVD player that could play DIVX files, and was struck by how clueless the staff was. They didn’t know what an Avi file or DIVX was. They pointed me to the DVD players, but they didn’t know anything about the features. It didn’t seem to matter to them.
Same store, eight years apart. Huge difference.
I know where I’m going for black friday now. This will be the first dollar CC gets from me in about six years. Suck on that, liquidator city!
Just South East of the Vancouver BC airport, in Richmond there is a Future Shop and a Best Buy in the same shopping center only about 4 stores apart.
The kicker is, while they often carry the same stuff, it is sometimes at 2 different price points.
last time I was there, I wanted a blue tooth mouse. One of the stores had it at $64, the other at $34.
Wasn’t a tough shopping decision that night.
“Retention bonus” is just a buzz term. It doesn’t really mean that at all. Many companies just love to pay out huge bonuses to execs regardless of performance. Oh well.
Up thread Wal-Mart = CC is mentioned. Actually, Wal-Mart’s increasing market share in consumer electronics is one of the big things that’s been hurting CC. More a competitor than an analogue.
If they can keep you going in to both stores to view merchandise and sales, they win.
I got deliberately fucked over by a CC salesman, and proved it to the Manager, who was mucho pissed. Never bought from them again - and that was maybe 3 or so years ago.
BestBuy folks are excellent. If I ever buy a 52" HDTV…
Dream on, BarnOwl.
I think the time of the brick and mortar electronics store might be gone. Many people aren’t buying CDs as much. With cheaper and easy Internet shopping (especially Amazon.com with free shipping, or NewEgg for the more technical items) I can’t really think of a reason to go into Circuit City. The only reason I could think of is if I was buying a HDTV and wanted to compare picture quality in person. But even then I probably wouldn’t buy there.
I have nothing against CC, I’d rather shop there than Best Buy.
This was also the place in '98 or so that tried to bend people over with the whole DivX thing. No the file format, but the disc format.
-Joe
I’m not sure if this is still the case, but back in “The Dark Time” of my life, I used to work for Circuit Slaver…err…City as a “Sales Consultant” (salesdroid), it was back in the early 90’s back when CC sold Apple’s “Performa” line of stripped-down, detuned Macs (the 600CD was a 68030 based Mac IIvx without the math co-processor)
the two things I HATED about that job, three things actually, were;
1; we were “strongly encouraged” to sell CC’s “ESP” extended warranty on ANY product that qualified, yes, even that $20 Emerson non-auto-reverse, no-rewind-button “walkman” knockoff, and the warranty itself was around $12…, if you didn’t hit your “goals” for ESP percentage, you got chewed out by management
2; CC paid it’s salesdroids a “Subsidized Commision”, you were guaranteed a base pay rate, lets say $300/week, even if you didn’t sell a thing, the more you sold, the better your commision, obviously, but here’s where things got insidious, lets say one week, you had a great week, and were paid $500, week #2 was a crappy week, and you sold $200, CC would subsidize you $100 to get you to your minimum, week 3, you sold $300, and week 4 you sold $600, CC would then deduct the $100 they “loaned” you in Week 2
Obviously, you couldn’t stay on subsidy without risking your job security
3; at the time, CC had a stupid dress code, all male “associates” had to wear business clothes (jacket and tie), and my hatred of these insidious devices of torture are well known here, i mean, we were only selling cheap consumer electronics for Og’s sake, not performing high-end business negotiations…
CC dropped the stupid dress code shortly after I quit, but I’m not sure if they’re still on subsidized commision, and they still practically shove the ESP down your throat, at least at my local CC (which is not closing, BTW)
Comparing picture quality in a store doesn’t give you a real impression how it will look in your home.
They split a single signal to multiple TVs, so you aren’t seeing as good of a picture. Plus, the lighting in the store and the settings of the TV are radically different conditions than you will have at home.
In my opinion, I think reading Popular Science’s reviews on HD TVs, then scoping out Consumer Reports to find out which TV their tests show give the best viewing performance. They will test the TVs in real-world settings (dark room, proper viewing distance, multiple types of media streamed to only one device, etc.).
Oh yes, I’m well aware of that. But my logic is if you can find a good picture in the store on the potentially crappy signal, you have a good candidate.