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The end of CompUSA?


blue2blue

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Maybe they'll survive a shrinkage to less than half their former store count over the next few months... more likely they wont.

 

But it will be tempting to draw lessons from the decline and apparently imminent fall of the once ubiquitous CompUSA.

 

 

I was in one of their stores today (not the one about a mile from my house -- or the one 1.7 miles away from that one or the other one about 7 miles south but rather a somewhat forlorn CompUSA in an otherwise bustling shopping center in Anaheim.)

 

And it was kind of sad... although a few of the employees had a gallows jauntiness that was sort of refreshing.

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I can't remember the last time I bought something at CompUSA. It might be a decade or more.

 

Then again, the nearest stores to me are 25 minutes away in either a southwest or southeast direction; and in both cases, there's a Fry's Electronics on the way about 5 minutes closer. I also have an Apple store within walking distance of my home.

 

Those options (and of course the Internet) leave me with little reason to go out of my way to CompUSA. But the people who will lose their jobs have my sympathy, and I'll miss the chain a little out of nostalgia -- I used to shop there more frequently in the '90s.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

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I was in one of their stores today (not the one about a mile from my house -- or the one 1.7 miles away from that one or the other one about 7 miles south but rather a somewhat forlorn CompUSA in an otherwise bustling shopping center in Anaheim.)


And it
was
kind of sad... although a few of the employees had a gallows jauntiness that was sort of refreshing.

 

Hmmm, I live in Hollywood and the closest CompUSA to me is in Burbank...

 

 

BTW, is this a SoCal thread??? :)

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I actually got a good deal at CompUSA last November on a closeout 17" Core Duo iMac. Computer (NIB) + $89 Canon multifunction printer + 3 yrs. Apple Care bundled for $100 less than the most recent price of the computer itself.

 

Yeah, shocked me, too.

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I worked at CUSA when they first came to this area. And at first it was a great store. We were not on commission. We helped people; we talked to them with no heavy pressure. The chain grew on that, along with its low prices.

 

Then the management decided they were a sales organization. Started ratcheting up the pressure on employees; the change was of course noticed by customers who began going elsewhere. Employees also started going elsewhere since there were plenty of jobs available.

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It was at one time a good organization. My nephew worked in their tech department and found himself in a cushy Apple gig 2 years later... due to the training he received there.

 

The store itself was at times a lifesaver. "{censored}! I need an IDE drive in 15 minutes!" CompUSA would be the place. But... other than those situations, I'd buy online. I'm sure that's the reason for their woes.

 

If they could take a tip from Blockbuster's move against Netflix and go heavily internet mail order but use their stores as a bonus, they might have something unique and helpful.

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Retailers tend to define themselves by the threat down the block. That threat is marked by crucial and shared identifying characteristics. At Best Buy, the threat is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is everywhere and they sell stuff from China. At compusa, the threat was Best Buy. Tech stuff in big box formats with guys in colored shirts.

 

Specialist buyers could do better with the web or Fry's. Buyers who need to talk to somebody would probably pass 2 Best Buys just to get to compusa. One of the compusa locations in the Chicago area was pretty much forced to move when Fry's opened arouind the corner. Best Buy and Circuit City real estate departments seemed to follow compusa pretty closely. That illustrates another point. People who work in retail management often come from their competitors - they know their weaknesses, they want to demolish them.

 

I find myself trying to remember what compusa was called before they were compusa. ???

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i dont even have one,or ANY computer stores here.... best buy is the only place i can get that immediate HD i need but still pay a premium for it, compared to say.... newegg. which is where i have to do the main of my computer shopping needs now. but if i need 3.5>5.25 drive brackets [that USED to come with HD's] now im SOL. or a fan header, or SATA header. i wish i had a parts store here, but dont. oh well. i havent been in a compUSA in about 8 years since i lived outside DC.

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Around here, once they'd swallowed the competition they slacked off. Every store I went to was reeeeally badly organized, and simple things like putting a friggin PRICE somewhere was too much for them to be bothered with.

 

They used to be a decent computer store. Branching into the electronics space - HDTV's, DVR's, clock radios, etc, was stupid. It made THEM compete in other business' core space and eat retail floor and inventory space to do it.

 

But for me, one visit to a computer show years ago made me realize how overpriced they (and online retailers) are.

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:rolleyes:

Around here, once they'd swallowed the competition they slacked off. Every store I went to was reeeeally badly organized, and simple things like putting a friggin PRICE somewhere was too much for them to be bothered with.


They used to be a decent computer store. Branching into the electronics space - HDTV's, DVR's, clock radios, etc, was stupid. It made THEM compete in other business' core space and eat retail floor and inventory space to do it.


But for me, one visit to a computer show years ago made me realize how overpriced they (and online retailers) are.

I had initially, late at night and dingy (as opposed to dingey) from doing a long day of Customer Support and Tutoring for my number one unpaid client, Mom (with her bitchen new laptop that I'm determined she's going to really use for more than the world's most expensive label machine), written a LONG A** post that went through the plusses and many minuses over what I called the "ballistic arc" of the stores.

 

And one of the things I went on about (and I went on about everything, lemme tellya, which is why there's a neat, tidy (for me) couple of paragraphs at the top of this thread instead of a 2400 word essay) was the fact that for most of the time that we had a single Compusa in town (I think the second store less than two miles away was... I dunno... I don't know what it was except maybe some unused time on a Good Guys lease) the PRICES posted had only coincidental geographic relationship to the product to which they applied... often forcing either a long, hands and knees sussing of tiny shelf tags with even tinier SKU numbers (I can't TELL you how many times I was surprised at check out by different prices -- almost NEVER lower) OR a trip up to the front to get the (usually) apathetic red-shirted worker (singular) working a long line of customers at the restister to scan the price...

 

Do THAT a couple times and, even when the nearest Fry's is an often nasty 20-40 minute commute down the freeway (where everything is a crapshoot but at least you can usually find a price on the shelves and some kind of weird cut out deal on something) seems sensible.

 

 

I remember one day about a year and a half or so ago when I'd been to the huge and, that day, really crowded, Fountain Valley (CA) Fry's and remembered as I was coming up the freeway that I needed something else. I drove to the local CompUSA and it was deserted. I mean, this CompUSA is one of biggest I've been in -- and there were like three customers in it and I was one of them. It was really eery.

 

 

But... all that aside... I really liked having a major computer store about a mile away. Make that two stores within three miles... make that three stores within 8 miles.

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Number one complaint with CompUSA - and best buy too - are the rebates. Laptop only 799! howeer you need to get the compusa rebate of $100 + the manufacturer rebate for $150, etc. The real price is usally 30% more, and you get taxed on the purchase price.

I like to buy from stores, I go out of my way to go to J&R down by city hall. Been real happy with them, got a nice Lacie FW 250gb hd for 149 last year, no waiting for things to arrive in the mail, works great for me. They do mail order too, so I do recommend them highly (although their prices are probably higher than newegg).

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They had customer service?

 

:D

 

Sort of. You'd wait your turn for some guy in a CompUSA shirt who was besieged by customers. He'd give you some information. It'd turn out to be completely wrong.

 

So then you'd return, waiting to talk to another guy in a CompUSA shirt who was besieged by customers. He'd give you some information. It too would turn out to be completely wrong.

 

So then you'd return, waiting to talk to another guy in a CompUSA shirt who was besieged by customers. He'd give you some information. It too would turn out to be completely wrong.

 

So then you'd return, waiting to talk to another guy in a CompUSA shirt who was besieged by customers. He'd give you some information. It too would turn out to be completely wrong.

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I worked at CUSA when they first came to this area. And at first it was a great store. We were not on commission. We helped people; we talked to them with no heavy pressure. The chain grew on that, along with its low prices.


Then the management decided they were a
sales organization
. Started ratcheting up the pressure on employees; the change was of course noticed by customers who began going elsewhere. Employees also started going elsewhere since there were plenty of jobs available.

 

 

Boy, did I ever notice that as a customer. Both the sudden increase of sales calls and the disappearance of the only competent Mac repair person they had. I quickly went somewhere else.

 

Robert

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Good riddance. Apparently they didn't pay their employees well enough for them to learn how to use the cash register. I swear everytime I went there I spent a half hour in the checkout line (even though only a couple of people were ahead of me in line) waiting for the cashier to find a supervisor so they can try get the cash register to work. I was never foolish enough to ask the "sales" people for advice.

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