Circuit City to liquidate remaining US stores

AP ^ | January 16, 2009 | Vinee Tong

[cva66snipe]

Good Riddance. Poor corporate management beginning a few years after they opened. I bought microwaves, a washer and dryer, and a refrigerator there during their earlier times.

Then changes began. No more appliance sales. Knowledgeable sales clerks were let go. This along with partnerships with banks handling the CC store credit cards who ticked off many of their long time card holders did not help matters either.

I liked them the first few years. I bought two computers there. My second was my last from them though. Rebait {intentional misspelled} issues where the clerk lied about how much and also lied about such things as number of available slots for RAM ETC along with their new credit card agents policies they had switched over to finally did it for me.

[Melas]

CompUSA already closed all of their stores, no?

[Yossarian]

I just got back from my local Circuit City. Everything was the exact same price as last night!

Worst.

Liquidation.

Sale.

Ever.

[Moby Grape]

Circuit City first closed several hunderd stores before giving up the ghost entirely.

The first week or so of the liquidation prices at the local store were a joke...they only dropped to prices to real bargains after two or three weeks.

[wbill]

Do you count the ones [and/or parts for] in the attic ....yup.

that were scrounged from people who didn't want them any more ....good, good.

and somebody wanted to hang onto them “just in case”?... GREAT! excellent

[you just never know when Pentium 2s might make a comeback] BAAAAZZZZZZZZ..... You had me and lost me. Sorry, the correct answer here was "Commodore 64s", although "5 1/4-inch Floppies" would be an acceptable alternative. Thanks for playing.

LOL! I too, have a tub filled with parts in the attic for "just in case" scenarios. I'll clean it out with the next house move.....maybe. Unless there's some stuff in there that might get used. :-)

[Salamander]

Rats.

I guess I’ll throw out the Coke-soaked Compaq Armada laptop with the 1G HD, then.

The CD ROM tray dangles off the front by its ribbon when I eject it, any way....:)

[The ex took the Commodore 64 and the 5.25 floppies so I couldn’t very well list them, could I?]...;D

I still have MOBOs with ISA slots, laying around.

[I really need to clean the attic]

[wbill]

You had a GB drive in your laptop? Why bother....How would you ever use up that much space?

[Salamander]

LOL!

*That* one was scrounged from a lady who works in our local mom & pop grocery store.

Her kids spilled Coke on the keyboard and it mysteriously stopped working.
[!]

So, I scarfed it up.
[no, I have *no* idea why...maybe just because ‘it was there’]

Tragically, I have arrived at that horrible turning point in my life where nothing less than a terabyte will do.

I’m still annoyed that I can’t find more than 640G for my Qosmio and that no one has a 1G pci-e vid card for laptops like I bought for my desktop.

[OMG....suddenly, I understand that male “thing” for souping up old cars]...;-D

[wbill]

Eh, I'm at the point now where I hardly use a PC at home anymore. I look at them all day, not a whole lot of interest there in the evening.

I manage somewhere around 300TB for my company. Always astonishes my Dad, who grew up in the IBM Mainframe world of the 70s....just a few years removed from punchcards.

[Salamander]

Everyday I tell myself I’m sick of ‘em...then some new technology or software shows up and that’s that.

[Al Pacino: “I keep tryin’ to get out but they keep pullin’ me back in!”]

If I HAD to work them, then I’d probably feel as you do.

Back in the 70s, I went to Norristown PA with my boyfriend’s family to visit his sister.
She worked for a data company and the “computer” took up the whole room and there were boxes of punch cards *everywhere* with lots of people diligently rifling through them.
I had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

[that memory always makes me think of the old movie “Colossus: The Forbin Project”]....;D

[SamAdams76]

No mystery on why Circuit City failed (and why Best Buy will eventually). Nobody likes the experience of jockeying for a parking space in front of these big-box monstrosities only to be confronted with a store full of clueless teenagers (masquerading as sales associates) and a labyrinth of confusing products stacked to the ceiling. Even if you decide to buy something (other than a cable or DVD), it is a major hassle trying to get the attention of one of these teenagers so they can check to see if it is in stock. Then you have to wait 10-15 minutes while somebody gets it out of the back and meanwhile you have to wait at the checkout watching the cashier file her nails and gossip with the cashier in the next register. After all this fuss, you finally get your product but before they let you leave, there is a person at the door that checks the product against the receipt.

Now on that subject, let me relay an experience I had last summer buying a TV set for my mother down in Alabama. We went through the exact process mentioned above. We decided what TV we wanted and it took 10 minutes to flag some kid down to ensure it was in stock. So he gives me some kind of receipt and tells me to wait by the checkout and eventually somebody will bring the TV set over to me. So we sit at the checkout for about 10 minutes while the guy who checks for receipts at the door stared at us in boredom. The guy watches as the clerk from the back wheels the TV set to the checkout stand and watches as I pay the cashier for the TV. Then as I go to leave the store, he asks for my receipt and then proceeds to make a very careful inspection of it and makes a big show of walking around the TV set once or twice. Then he finally tells us we can leave!

But that's not the worst thing about Circuit City and all those other big-box electronic stores. These are the only places these days where you can find pre-recorded music on CDs because all the record shops have closed down. And they do have thousands upon thousands of music CDs. But wouldn't you know that they don't have a single CD that I would ever want to listen to! Nothing but Britney Spears and the Greatest Hits of Air Supply and American Idol this and that and about two thousand varieties of the atrocious "Now That's What I Call Music..." series which is basically the K-Tel of the 21st Century.

Is it no wonder that I go to Amazon or iTunes to get all my music now. The only thing keeping me from buying all my electronics online (such as NewEgg or Amazon) is the shipping charges for the larger items but now a lot of these online retailers are waiving shipping charges (or building them into the product price which is still cheaper than what you would pay in the store).

So I think BestBuy will be shuttering themselves within the next couple years.

[Zack Attack]

Stopped by there this morning. There was only a 10% discount storewide. Big whoop. I’ve can download a coupon from their website for that any day of the year.