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Circuit City's last day: March 8
Yahoo!Tech ^ | 3/6/09 | Ben Patterson

Posted on 03/07/2009 11:33:31 PM PST by L.A.Justice

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Have any of you visited Circuit City lately? Sunday is the last chance.
1 posted on 03/07/2009 11:33:31 PM PST by L.A.Justice
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To: L.A.Justice

Its an interesting end. But I was in a Circuit City around six years ago with my dad...he wanted some major appliance. And the talk from the sales guy was totally slanted. My dad wanted “XYZ”, which he’d done the research and knew precisely what it would do. The guy wasted twenty minutes talking down about this product and trying to get him toward another which was $300 more. I kept quiet the whole time...letting my 75-year old dad do most of the talk. At the end of the twenty minutes...I turned to the sales guy and said “get the paperwork ready...we are buying and leaving”...and he showed a fair amount of hostility. After that...I made up my mind never to return to the place. Once someone does their research and knows what they want...you’re wasting time to talk up something else.


2 posted on 03/07/2009 11:39:45 PM PST by pepsionice
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To: L.A.Justice

I visited the Burlington, MA, store in the middle of January. It was already sufficiently picked over that I left empty handed after a few minutes. (I was hoping for a deal on a flat screen monitor).


3 posted on 03/07/2009 11:40:19 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: L.A.Justice

No thanks. I’m only buying food and fuel. Let them give the foreign junk to charity.


4 posted on 03/07/2009 11:40:56 PM PST by familyop (As painful as the global laxative might be, maybe our "one world" needs a good cleaning.)
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To: L.A.Justice

I was at one yesterday and this article is correct about there not being big markdowns on the electronics and computers.


5 posted on 03/07/2009 11:41:29 PM PST by ansel12 (Romney (guns)"instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people")
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To: L.A.Justice

I went most of the “deals” were crap. I found better everyday prices at Costco and Amazon than the liquidation prices at CC.


6 posted on 03/08/2009 12:06:04 AM PST by Tempest (There's a storm coming...)
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To: L.A.Justice

Unless they have guns and ammo, what’s the purpose?


7 posted on 03/08/2009 12:26:36 AM PST by chuckles
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To: Tempest
I went most of the “deals” were crap. I found better everyday prices at Costco and Amazon than the liquidation prices at CC.

Agreed. Only weak-minded shoppers fall for the "80% off" signs.

8 posted on 03/08/2009 1:30:12 AM PST by Erik Latranyi (Too many conservatives urge retreat when the war of politics doesn't go their way.)
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To: L.A.Justice

I’m sorry people are losing their jobs. But they ripped me off 2 out of 2 encounters, and swore I’d never consider being a customer for a 3rd time.
Based on an advertisement went to see them about a monitor.
The price advertised however was based on a $75 ‘rebate’ they failed to mention. A bit steamed, but having traveled a distance and needing the monitor, I bought the item. once home I discovered the rebate directions were the most arduous I could have imagined. It involved 2 copies of the receipt, cutting out 3 different parts of the box, paste this to that, stable this but not that, etc etc. But, hey, I wanted my $75 bucks back. So I sent it in exactly as requested to the letter of their law. Supposedly, you could then track the rebate process ‘on line’. We’ll for the first few weeks the web site would say it was processing the rebate. Then suddenly the web site was no longer accessible. I waited a while, but it never came back on line. So I went to the store and got up to the manager and he never apologizing, just said that ‘rebates’ were a different department and couldnt help me in the least. No new phone number, no next person I could talk to nothing. Well needless to say, the site never re-materialized and I neveer got the rebate.
Fast forward another 2 years or so, and being the careful add searcher I was, I found another computer item advertised well below other retailers. Getting there once again, I found the price included, you guess it, a ‘rebate’. So actually this time I was a little more curious than I was cautious. The rebate was $50. Again, the directions were insanely complicated, but again I was determined to do it exactly.
And, blow me over with a feather, the exact same thing happened on their website. Go figure. I went back to the store (this time a different manager) and got the same no-help response. Even after telling him it was the second time and now totalled $125. (plus the tax on the extra $$)
So that was that. NOt my department, cant help you.
Fool me twice.....uh.....see ya. Hope you melt.

I can only imagine this happened perhaps tens of thousands of times. I also wonder if it was some evil plot somewhere high up in the organization. It seems the perfect ruse.
Steal money $50 at a time in some invisible detached dark corner of the organization. Dont give the managers any info or ability to rectify so monies really cant be retreived. Certainly those behind this scheme had to know that such a policy over time would erode any chance of sustainability. They must have collected a huge amount of (taxes already paid) free money to perhaps a small amount of the people involved in the scheme.

I cant help but wonder if this ruse will be someday revealed or pursued with a class action suit.
Plus, the employees should be pretty pissed, cuz this could be very well a large part of the reason their company failed and their now unemployed.

Anyone else?


9 posted on 03/08/2009 1:30:37 AM PST by schwingdoc
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To: L.A.Justice

I have not been in a Circuit City in at least fifteen years. I just never need to shop there.


10 posted on 03/08/2009 1:31:29 AM PST by napscoordinator
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To: schwingdoc
I did not shop at Circuit City very often, but I bought a laptop there several years ago that had a rebate included in the discounted price. As I remember, I did receive the rebate, but I am sure that what happened to you also happened to many others. There are also customers that forget to send it in or will just not take the time to do so when they realize how complicated it is.

Here in Jacksonville, NC, our store was always busy due to the presence of the military so we were shocked when we learned that it was closing. It was busy even after Best Buy built a store right across the street. I have a student who works in the computer department at Best Buy and he says that they have been swamped ever since Circuit City began its liquidation sale, so the bargains on the computers must not have been too good.
11 posted on 03/08/2009 3:54:35 AM PDT by srmorton (Chose life!)
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To: schwingdoc

Based on my personal experience, here is my theory about these types of rebates/scams. Their purpose is to be able to advertise the lower price, thus bringing in customers who wouldn’t otherwise buy. As you said, they make the rebate process so arduous, most people either blow it off or fail to do it right and get rejected. The company makes a lot of extra money. BUT, suppose a lot of people do apply correctly, that is a lot of money the company thought they could keep. Voila!, web-site shutdown, lips sealed and customer irked, but not over enough to go after a law suit.

My policy is .... I look at the price I pay in the store, if I am happy to pay it fine. Then if there is a rebate, I will apply. But I don’t let the rebate influence my purchase decision.


12 posted on 03/08/2009 4:44:35 AM PDT by JohnEBoy
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To: Tempest
I went most of the “deals” were crap.

Same here in Palmdale Ca. Laptops 10% off. Those were display models with keys missing. They had a whole rack of memory sticks but again nothing special on the price. They are managing to empty the store though. Until I saw the going out of business sign I had not stepped in one of their stores in 20 years.

13 posted on 03/08/2009 4:57:10 AM PDT by Nateman (It's Pres_ent Obama until we see some id!)
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To: Tempest
I went most of the “deals” were crap. I found better everyday prices at Costco and Amazon than the liquidation prices at CC.

They raised all the prices back to MSRP, then applied a 10% discount when I was there. Better deals almost anywhere...

I might check in this afternoon to see if there's anything useful left, but I doubt it.

14 posted on 03/08/2009 5:05:20 AM PDT by Amelia
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To: schwingdoc

Rebates are clearly marked in ads. Plus, was it a manufacturer’s rebate? Most likely it was since CC barely ever did their own rebates. Every mail-in rebate has ridiculous directions. They hope you screw up one of them, even minorly, so they can “disqualify” you. That’s how the game’s played, not just at CC but in every retail store in the country.


15 posted on 03/08/2009 5:10:37 AM PDT by Future Snake Eater ("Get out of the boat and walk on the water with us!”--Sen. Joe Biden)
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To: L.A.Justice

I went yesterday. I bought:

10 feet of RG6 cable, $3
12 AAA lithium batteries, $13.50
FM antenna, $.80

There was almost no audio/video equipment. They had a Klipse subwoofer for a little over a hundred.


16 posted on 03/08/2009 5:28:14 AM PDT by Varda
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To: L.A.Justice

Went yesterday. The little inventory they had was not good deals at all. Of course the “liquidation” monickers were suckering in plenty though.


17 posted on 03/08/2009 5:45:05 AM PDT by catfish1957 (Hey algore...You'll have to pry the steering wheel of my 317 HP V8 truck from my cold dead hands)
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To: L.A.Justice

Sure all the construction and green jobs Øbama is handing out will get them all re-employed again, tax cuts never work /s


18 posted on 03/08/2009 5:56:32 AM PDT by Son House (National Disasters Will Be Devastating Since Mr. Øbama's Spending Will Erode First Response Funding)
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To: Amelia
They raised all the prices back to MSRP, then applied a 10% discount when I was there. Better deals almost anywhere...

Yeah, I saw thumb drives for $54.99 that I'd bought just 10 min before in Sam's Club for $19.99.

19 posted on 03/08/2009 7:41:54 AM PDT by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: L.A.Justice

C.C. has an agreement to liquidate the higher-end products in their inventory to other retailers like Best Buy and H.H. Gregg at a pre-determined price (why risk selling it to consumers in a down market at 50% off when your competitor has already offered you a better deal?).

You WILL NOT get a deal on anything worthwhile at C.C. because of this. Only the low-end items and crap are what is left and what you could expect anything more than 10% off of


20 posted on 03/08/2009 8:23:01 AM PDT by Buckeye Battle Cry (Life is too short to go through it clenched of sphincter and void of humor - it's okay to laugh.)
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