Service Merchandise Closing Doors

The Associated Press ^ | Friday, January 4, 2002; 3:38 PM | By John Gerome

[ABC123]

After working there for 23 years, I knew it was time to go.

[Lady Jag]

It confounded me that Service Merchandise got rid of its electronics section a couple years ago because whenever I'd been in one of their stores that's where all the customers were. It seemed to me they closed the wrong department. Then when I went there this Christmas, the store was virtually devoid of shoppers. Once again it appears a retailer has done it to itself. Jewelry sales would never have saved them and the other departments were common department store stuff that had little or no draw.

[ken5050]

K-mart is next, then Amazon, and Lucent...

[Azzurri]

I worked there for five years during the late 80s, early 90s while attending high school and college. I knew it was only a matter of time before they went out of business after I left. ;-)

[AmishDude]

I always liked the weird way they made you pick up your stuff, with the clipboards and such.

[js1138]

I always liked the weird way they made you pick up your stuff...

I always hated the weird way they made you pick up your stuff. That kind of store has vanished.

[Joe Bonforte]

One factor in their demise was the terrible way they treated vendors. I was in on negotiations with them on providing products or services three separate times over ten years, and every time it appeared that SM was not satisfied with the deal unless the vendor was losing money. It got so that no respectable company in Nashville would do business with them.

[anymouse]

Service Merchandise has been on life support for years. Looks like the creditors finally got tired of holding out hope for recovery and pulled the plug.

Always thought it was a strange name, for they hardly provided service (find it in the catalog yourself, fill out a form, stand in line and wait for them to find the item in the storeroom seemed to be their extent of service).

[dead]

I am happy to see that weirdo store go! What was with filing out slips and all of that?

Next on my wish list is Radio Shack - everything they sell is crap, and they need your name and address to sell you a AAA battery.

[GingisK]

...for they hardly provided service...

Well, they sure drove me away with thier "service"! I'm delighted! Last time I was stupid enough to shop there, I predicted to one of the managers that they wouldn't last another year. They didn't. Nuyk nuyk nuyk.

[JoeMomma]

I agree. Every time I went there, they had a decent electronics department, and most of the people in the store were there. Whoever decided to close SM's electronics department was a complete bonehead.

Oh well, time to get ready for the clearance sales!

[RightOnline]

"...every time it appeared that SM was not satisfied with the deal unless the vendor was losing money. It got so that no respectable company in Nashville would do business with them."

I know the type. My guess would be that you could have added "...no respectable company in Nashville or anywhere else, for that matter, would do business with them."

Companies that expect vendors / partners to lose money in order to do business with them are invariably going to come up on the losing end eventually. It's a competitive world out there, and smart companies craft deals that are true win-win arrangements. You screw your "partners", you run out of "partners" REAL quick.

[JoeMomma]

"Next on my wish list is Radio Shack - everything they sell is crap, and they need your name and address to sell you a AAA battery."

That's why you should give them a bogus address like I do.

[JoeMomma]

Well, they sure drove me away with thier "service"!

Actually, I really never had a problem with their stores near where I lived in Jacksonville, Chicago, and now in Memphis. I've actually had quite good experiences there.

Once I was ordering a pretty nice (for SM) bookshelf that was a clearance item, The only one available in Memphis was a floor model that had scratches everywhere on it.

Of course, it was priced about $100, while it's regular price was about $200-250, I believe.

I called around, and Paducah's store had a perfect model of the shelf. However, they had a policy that they didn't ship clearance merchandise between stores, but the Paducah manager went ahead and put it on a truck to Memphis, and they didn't even charge me a shipping charge for it. They charged me $100 and I had a bookshelf better than the scratched-up floor model they had.

I'd done Christmas shopping with them every Christmas since, and have always had good experiences with them every time.

[Malcolm]

Yeah, Joe, same here; I give them my former address, and never get a "flier" from them. And to the other above poster, you're correct sir; they only sell poor quality products.....

[JoeMomma]

"Companies that expect vendors / partners to lose money in order to do business with them are invariably going to come up on the losing end eventually. It's a competitive world out there, and smart companies craft deals that are true win-win arrangements. You screw your "partners", you run out of "partners" REAL quick."

So many companies and business professionals do not realize the importance of good vendor relations, because often they are as important as your customers in being successful in business.

[SamAdams76]

I disagree with you on Amazon.com going out of business. They haven't turned a profit yet due mainly to the reinvestment of revenues into infrastructure. They were about to turn one last year but the dot.com implosion set them back a bit. I think they might surprise everybody and show a profit sometime this coming fiscal year. Unlike most dot.coms, this is no house of cards. They are selling real products and offer real services. For example, I won't buy a book or a CD anymore unless I check the reviews on Amazon.com first. Then I usually buy it through them.

On the con side, Amazon.com was definitely overvalued on the stock market. And they expanded into other areas too recklessly. Everybody knows them for books and music. When they started selling garden rakes and other gardening tools, what the hell were they thinking? I go to Home Depot for that stuff. Who's going to pay to have a step ladder shipped to their house?

If Amazon.com is unable to turn a profit, look for them to get snapped up somebody like Wal-Mart. They are definitely not going away however.

As for Service Merchandise, it never did have that "status symbol" name brand that is so important for jewelry. If you buy your girlfriend an engagement ring or watch there, you certainly aren't going to tell her where you bought it from. Might as well tell her you got it from a gumball machine at the penny arcade. It just has no "class appeal." As for electronics and consumer appliances, Circuit City and Wal-Mart destroyed them. I'm sure that's why those sections started disappearing.

[dead]

Of course, but it's just as much a waste of my time to give them a phoney address as a real one.

[Dog Gone]

From a retail standpoint, it was terrible service. Fill out a slip, often without being able to even examine the product, and then pay for it. THEN wait about 20 minutes for it to come down a conveyor belt, only half the time it NEVER came.

Good riddance to a sorry company, IMHO.

[SamAdams76]

Next on my wish list is Radio Shack - everything they sell is crap, and they need your name and address to sell you a AAA battery.

Bigtime! What a crappy and horrible place. The employees are right off the street and are totally clueless about the overpriced goods that they carry. I only go there a few times when I need something simple like a phone jack or audio cables. Even then, I always seem to get an employee on his first day, and he's got to punch in a zillion things on the register to ring up the one item. When it comes time for the inevitable address information, I just feed him completely fictitious addresses like 6969 Skyline Drive and try not to laugh as he dutifully takes it down.