The internet is going to do them all in.
I love shopping for electronics at home. I can sit in the warm comfort of my den and compare deals and item specs with the click of a mouse. No sitting in traffic, no having to search for what you're looking for, no putting up with nonexistent sales associates when you need one or annoying blabbermouths who won't stop talking when you don't need one and no queuing for 10 minutes to check out at the one open register.
Times change.
I bought my 42” LCD HDTV from them last year for $1299. Regular price for that model was $1999 at the time. I thought that was a pretty good deal and I’m enjoying the tv tonight.
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.
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.
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.