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.
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).
No thanks. I’m only buying food and fuel. Let them give the foreign junk to charity.
I was at one yesterday and this article is correct about there not being big markdowns on the electronics and computers.
I went most of the “deals” were crap. I found better everyday prices at Costco and Amazon than the liquidation prices at CC.
Unless they have guns and ammo, what’s the purpose?
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?
I have not been in a Circuit City in at least fifteen years. I just never need to shop there.
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.
Went yesterday. The little inventory they had was not good deals at all. Of course the “liquidation” monickers were suckering in plenty though.
Sure all the construction and green jobs Øbama is handing out will get them all re-employed again, tax cuts never work /s
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
I get all of my electronics and computer stuff at TigerDirect.com. Very low prices with fast shipping. I bought a new Gateway AMD Quad-Processor computer with a new 22-inch monitor. Both for $600 bucks.
I stopped going to CC when I switch gamepad brands. They were the only guys that sold Saitek and I always hated when it was time for a new one because CC was such an unpleasant store to shop in. Then I found Logitech’s gamepads at Target, felt just as nice as the Saitek, a little cheaper, and they’re at Target.
By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 29, 2007;
Page D01
Circuit City fired 3,400 employees in stores across the country yesterday, saying they were making too much money and would be replaced by new hires willing to work for less. The company said the dismissals had nothing to do with performance but were part of a larger effort to improve the bottom line. The firings represent about 9 percent of the company's in-store workforce of 40,000.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802185.html