Members blue2blue Posted March 16, 2007 Author Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 He's also the world's third richest man thanks to crony Capitalism. They seem to be dropping all of their metro areas, which means that they will dropping all of their expensive newspaper circular/insert markets and all of their expensive rent markets. Hmmm... I wonder if they are dropping all of their markets where Apple maintains stores? It's funny... I saw Apple Stores listed as prime competition in some magazine or newspaper business column or other [consider the source, of course what newspaper biz writers don't know about technology would fill... a newspaper]. Surely they couldn't have made that much money with their tiny Mac sections! I seldom even saw anyone in those sections, even before the Apple Stores started spreading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted March 16, 2007 Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 A quick check of a job site indicates that they are hiring business and special markets reps in those smaller markets. The retail "footprint" that never has any traffic or staff is just part of their Apple Deal. Apple is also the only vendor that will have products in nearly all of their categories, after iPhone and AppleTV launch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted March 16, 2007 Author Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 UPDATE: Yesterday, helping my mom with her new laptop -- and needing to get some data off her old harddrive (which was in a now-hosed computer) we picked up a CompUSA brand drive case with FW and USB. It cost $50 normally but was only knocked down 10% at that store. It worked, got the job done -- and it came with not just a USB cable but a FW cable, too. Since CompUSA often charges about $25 for a simple USB cable and as much as $35 or even $40 (I've seen it) for a FW cable -- I figured it wasn't a bad deal. Today, a pal called me from the nearest CUSA store and said they had some drives for cheap and I thought, well, let's check it out. Turned out the best deal was an ATA100 200 GB drive for $80 -- not a very good deal at all, these days. But the same drive case we paid $45 for yesterday was on sale at this store for $30! I figured, USB cable, FW cable, WTF? Let's do it. So I bring it home, put an old drive I wanted to try reformatting in it and let it go. The drive gets way hot and is taking FOREVER to format (which was consistent with its incredibly slow behavior before the reformat attempt, so I decided, yeah, it was hosed). I go to pull the drive out, very gently tugging on the short IDE cable where it goes into the drive's pin jack. With almost no force whatsoever -- certainly not enough to remove the pin assembly from the jack, the pin plug assembly comes to pieces, four of them. Just... like... that. I'm dumbstruck. I then EVEN MORE GENTLY try to remove the other end from the pin assembly on the tiny circuit board -- and IT falls apart, too. It was incredible. (And, keep in mind, I've owned and worked on computers since 1986. I can't tell you how many hard drives and optical drives I've R-and-R'd. I know getting IDE connectors in and out is tricky. THIS was different. It just, really, disintegrated with very little pressure.) So now I'm thinking -- man, do I even DARE trying to take my mom's old drive out of the other box? I mean it's in there and it works. But THAT box cost $45 -- and the drive is only SIX GB... making it one VERY expensive drive, per GB. Anyhow, I finally got the other end of the cable out and I guess I can use a standard IDE cable (but never be able to put the top back on again...) At least I got the FW and USB cables out of the deal. CompUSA... maybe I'm not so sad they're meeting the fate they bought and paid for with crummy products and crummy service. UPDATE, Part 2 So I call my pal to tell him about my luck and -- obviously seeing my name in his caller ID -- his greeting when he picked up was: "All sales are final." I totally busted out laughing... for at least about 30 seconds. He bought a $70 multi-voltage, multi format power supply (battery eliminator). It didn't work at all. And -- while at the Anaheim store I was at yesterday, the checkout clerk made sure to tell us before our purchase that all sales were final -- at the Long Beach (Marina Pacifica) store, no one said jack squat about all sales being final -- it just showed up on the receipt after the purchase was complete. So he's actually going to file a dispute with his credit card company. Why not? $70 for something that simply doesn't work at all? The pilot light doesn't even come on. I told him I'd supply him a sworn affidavit supporting that no one told me anything about all sales being final. Having once bought a shrinkwrapped box at CompUSA that had an RMA from the previous buyer inside it -- along with the WRONG installation disks, it wouldn't surprise me if they took a return, didn't even test it, reshrinkwrapped it, and put it back on the shelf. Funny thing is -- CompUSA was his favorite store. He says he spends about $4000 a year there. He even has a CompUSA credit card and was on their preferred customer list, getting email notices ahead of the game on specials, and so on. It seems mean to say it -- and I'm still kind of disturbed they're going out of business here -- but at this point, really, GOOD RIDDANCE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lucky #9 Posted March 16, 2007 Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 No loss... I was in one the other day that is to close, figuring I'd finally find something there worth buying for a decent price. I left empty-handed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mo6 Posted March 16, 2007 Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 They were the closest to me, only 5 miles. Then Frys opened up and even though they were 10 miles away I knew they would have a better selection and price. Then when I did go into CUSA I noticed that there were never more than 5 customers at a time in there.When I heard that they had over 100 million dollars in unsalable merchandise, I thought management is making some very bad decisions. _______________________________________________________________________ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doug osborne Posted March 16, 2007 Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 He's also the world's third richest man thanks to crony Capitalism. They seem to be dropping all of their metro areas, which means that they will dropping all of their expensive newspaper circular/insert markets and all of their expensive rent markets.Hmmm... I wonder if they are dropping all of their markets where Apple maintains stores? I can't imagine their Apple sales were a huge part of their business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted March 16, 2007 Members Share Posted March 16, 2007 I can't imagine their Apple sales were a huge part of their business. I can't find the sales broken out anywhere, but Apple has had a hard time playing nice with chain retail resellers. They can't count on BestBuy - they bounce in and out of their stores. They have been in CompUSA for a long time. Still, my speculation is more about future products than Macs. Apple has a high visibility planogram for Apple TV in their own retail stores, but where else are you going to find it at retail? I think that there is a possibility that they will be looking for more doors. Remember Apple is run by zealots. Apple changed the name of the company to mount a mind-bending assault on CE, one way or another. Although, when I was thinking about this - I was thinking that iPhone would be part of the product line. iPhone might be just in Apple retail stores and ATT/Cingular stores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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