@nut 'the nut' bastard: Meanwhile, the CEO of circuit city sits in a bunker screaming at the top of his lungs "WING ATTACK PLAN R! THEY'RE AFTER OUR PRECIOUS FLUIDS!"

lpranal

@SpeneyG: Ask Radio Shack... they've somehow managed to stay in business without carrying anythnig worthwhile.

EricAlder

@vinnyr: Maybe he didn't like the Best Buy polo shirt you were wearing when you asked him about the monitor.

lankysob

@Jrsy is Stupendous Man!:

"He puts the 'O' in Jack-O-Lantern"

How can you be sure? Maybe he pulls out...

That's not all he puts in it!

Seriously though he told me he had a laser-carved shamoononon pumpkin for later ; )

nut 'the nut' bastard

I work REAAAAL close to the Union Square Circuit City and have a CC credit card. If they go under, I'm going to go crazy go nuts on their stock. Fire sales FTW!

noamjamski

@SpeneyG: Best Buy has a different business model. Unlike Circuit City, Best Buy actually owns all the products on their shelves. They buy it directly from the manufacturers, receive the shipment, and then sell it at retail. Circut City receives product shipments and pays for the products at a later date. This gives them the ability to return unsold merchandise to the manufacturer, but results in problems like this when their future is uncertain.

kinickie

I have seen to local Electroic/Appliance store's in my area go belly up becuase of Best Buy...they both had a fair amount of store's. It's kinda sad.

schpeen

@nut 'the nut' bastard: He puts the 'O (face)' in Jack-O-Lantern...

Jrsy is Stupendous Man!

circuit city is doing bad because their employees are ass holes. One time an employ told me to quote, "go fuck yourself" When I asked if he had anymore of the monitor I wanted in the back room. Circuit city employees were only helpful when im spending a shit load of money, $5000 panasonic plasma, the dude new everything about it, and helped me carry it into my car and even throw in a free monster hdmi cable, but when I went to get a sony hd camera last year, They acted like I wasnt there, so I left, and went to best buy and bought the camera.

vinnyr

Flashbacks of when I worked as a manager for Software Etc. right before they entered Chapter 7.

OMG! Ponies!

@lankysob: edit: since I don't personally know anyone who works at any of these fine establishments.

lankysob

As long as Newegg doesn't go under, I am unaffected.

lankysob

I can imagine the CC rep coming to Sony HQ with his hair all messed and his shirt still half pulled out after being tossed on a coach flight to wherever begging and saying "C'mon man, we're good for it!"

Kaiser-Machead's Cookie-Powered LEGO Machine

"Mark 'The Great Pumpkinizer' Wilson"

if a pumpkinizer is anything like a womanizer... "Jack-o-Lantern" suddenly became a much more apt description

nut 'the nut' bastard

@nut 'the nut' bastard:

no, they said "Dibs!"

jdbaile3

Is there something fundamentally flawed with the business model of an electronics store? CompUSA, The Wiz, and even Incredible Universe before that. Best Buy is doing well, but are they slated for the same fate as well?

SpeneyG

Damn; thats really the only thing you can say about this.

utube2007

wow. all across the country, dozens of truck drivers simultaneously said:

"Did not copy, say again, over."

nut 'the nut' bastard

Thats a massive blow to not only there hardware dept but also there gaming dept there gonna have to save there ass come Black Friday or else this is only the beginning

brutaluser

That might be true went to there sit and saw you would get the 10 dollar gift card but saw nothing on the 1600 microsoft points@jdbaile3:

jackburtonHERO

On the plus side, I heard if you bought Gears of War 2 from Circuit City, you got a Microsoft Points card worth like $20.

Of course, no one said they were non-redeemed!

jdbaile3

@EricAlder: Yeah, but they're only hanging on by their short and curlies. They don't even own any of the Radioshack stores anymore. The store managers were given the option to buy them as franchises at the cost of taking over the leases, the rest closed their doors.

alexmetal

@alexmetal: "At this point of" = "At this point I'm"

alexmetal

@lpranal: I disagree. At this point of pretty sure he's accepted that he was hired on at millions a year to go down with the ship and is probably banging a Playboy Bunny on loan from The Heff' in some penthouse suite in Malibu.

alexmetal

@nut 'the nut' bastard: Hey, I resemble that remark!!

I thought I was feeling a little uncomfortable today...

shamoononon has a hebetudinous dog

Yep... guess that's it for Short Circuit City.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@RaptureJack: Yeah I agree...I remember when Comp USA was doing that liqidation sale. I got in my car and ran down there and the deals where not good at all.

schpeen

@vinnyr: thats the problem when you have sales people who work on commission.

taftsearlobe33

@reactionsok: I've never experienced a liquidation sale before a couple of weeks ago. The local Linens-N-Things was going out of business and the company doing the liquidation bought all the merch and sold it for a max of 30% of and that was only for damaged stuff.

RaptureJack

@Eric 'Something Really Scary' Alder: true but radio shack has completely changed. I remember the days when you went to Radio shack for resistors and transistors now you go there to buy a new cell phone.

taftsearlobe33

@noamjamski:

if sony wont extend credit to CC, what makes you think CC will continue to extend credit to YOU?

nut 'the nut' bastard

@reactionsok: There were certain things I got a good deal on at CompUSA's fire sale.

midwestkel

@noamjamski: lol...that's if they still have working credit machines.

Kaiser 'The Undead Cookie Brought to Life With Lightning and the Souls of Insane Cannibalistic Orphans' Machead

do they really have good sales when going under?

im always disappointed

just like when CompUSA went down - everything was just 15%-20% for a while - nothing drastic

reactionsok

@nutbastard: spoOoOoky edition: You know just before I read that I very wisely put my coffee down instead of taking a sip. My monitor thanked me..

Jrsy is Stupendous Man!

@alexmetal: As a side note, I just realized you meant stock as in merchandise, not stock as in NYSE; thereby nullifying my joke.

alexmetal

@taftsearlobe33: Radioshack is a true@noamjamski: CC fire sales consist of marking everything up 30% and then having a storewide 25% off sale. Unfortunately there is no upside to the consumer.

Project_J187

@reactionsok: The one by me had a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display for 60% off. Wish I would have had $700.

alexmetal

@noamjamski: Make sure you buy on margin so you can really fuck yourself. ;)

alexmetal

@vinnyr: That's funny because I get the same treatment at Best Buy.

alexmetal

Knowing the trade credit world form the inside a little bit, they don't simply turn the shipment around out of fear of non-payment. Circuit's clearly already defaulted on payment terms and the shipment's being held until they bring their payments current. Very serious.

TurboFool

@nut 'the nut' bastard: Naw, it just means that he is into pumpkin shaped women. Nice and round with lines accross them.

Mr.SithNinja

BBY FTW!

Whirl

@RaptureJack: Huh, I didn't find anything killer at Linens n things but I got a couple of things I was happy with the price I paid. Set of shelves at almost 60% off and an iPod Shower dock for 30% off.

Supposedly the CC sales are going to be different because there is supposed to be a fair bit of liquidating going on before they actually go under. Part of the plan is the closing of stores and moving product in the remaining stores at greatly reduced prices to get some cash again. Some analysts have said its going to part of their black friday strategy and is either going to require other retailers to take big hits as well or put CC in a place where they might be able to turn things around. Thats all maybes though.

tande04

@taftsearlobe33: Circuit City employees don't work on commission.

KStrike155

electronics retailers are doomed this is the age of online consumers. people are able to research their goods and do then don't even hassle themselves by letting some kid making minimum wage try and sell them extended warranties or attachments. I figured this would be a slow regression but the economy crashing is going to be like a great purge

senekerc

Maybe now they know what it feels like to be dicked over as a client.

FritzLaurel

@RaptureJack: The Linens-N-Things liquidation is being handled by the same corporation that bought up CompUSA's stock to liquidate. They do a shit job of it, immediate markups on lots of stuff before applying the discounts, and lousy discounts at that. It eventually ramped up to 50% off at CompUSA, but by then everything was junk.

ludwigk

@alexmetal: Circuit City's stock price has been under $3 for ~5 months now, so I don't think you can short it any more. Of course, I don't have a margin account from my broker anyways, so I'm not shorting anything atm.

ludwigk

@KStrike155: Correction...... they don't work on commission ANYMORE. They did for years up until about 2 years ago I think it was.

robinandtami

@KStrike155: Although they don't get commission, their 'rank' is based on how much they sell. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure this must be the case.)

This is big business's way to make people work harder, with the incentive being 'you get to keep your job.'

djohnson60618

@OMG! Ponies!: Ditto that. Montgomery Wards 1999. I got one hell of a severance package though. Didn't have to even think about looking for another job for a while.

robinandtami

i Laughed so hard when i saw this, lol
at first i thought it was another bunch of bad news regarding the battery recall cluster---k
...dayum...funny ...but also sad for circuit city..

dalus87

@ludwigk:

I got 60% off an HTC X7501 (which I sold on e-bay), and 40% off of a Bose Sound Dock and an USB tri-band HSDPA modem from the CompUSA fire sale. It seemed like they stayed open for another month though selling nothing but their shelves, toilet seats, and working light bulbs.

Ham_Sandwich

@nut 'the nut' bastard: Chase issues Circuit City's store credit cards, not Circuit City themselves.

So if Circuit City goes belly-up, you'll still be making payments on that 50" plasma, much to your chagrin.

MFfan310

I work at a Ccity in the tech department (computers & cameras). We get tons of shit if we don't attach warranties or firedog to computers, apparently there isn't much of a margin on that stuff.
And honestly, if I can't sell the warranty or firedog to a customer, I will walk them.. tell them we're out of stock, send them to the other circuit city in town (haha) or tell them to check out bestbuy.
It's shitty, but it's the environment that ccity has bred.

chags

this is to vinnyr i dont believe that story one bit. cc customer service is bad but the only way someone will tell you to go fuck your self is if you were acting like a DICK and if you were then he was just in saying go fuck your self.

charger08

@chags:

I used to do the same thing. It got to a point where I just didn't care about selling anymore so I requested a move to warehouse. Thank god I got out of that shitty job.

Silenthillnight

@brutaluser: I think at this point, Black Friday will not save them. If anything, it'll cushion the blow and help reduce the huge losses when they close.

DMC-Man

They must have read the ads from the contest.
All they need now is to get evicted.

but they COULD go to those gold-into-cash places

juandotcom

A similar thing happened a few months ago to a clothing department store chain called Mervyn's here in the Bay Area (with sweatshirts instead of PlayStations). Then they filed for re-org. Then they announced that they are done and liquidating. It was all very quick. Unfortunately, they also just finished construction on the new Newark, CA Mervyn's. The local Circuit City is also brand new. This blight will be shiny, at least. And they don't even turn into Asian grocery stores like they used to.

Come to think of it, the nearby Linens N Things is/was also very new. I rarely shopped at any of these stores, but what will happen to all of these high-value large buildings?

KernelG

They should so give up and let Tiger Direct buy and rebrand them.

Fuzi Lojak

@ludwigk: I disagree. I got an undamaged wine refrigerator there for $45 and it is working just fine right now.

livinzlife

@kinickie: I've been looking all over the internet and cannot find anywhere that says that Best Buy owns all of its inventory that it sells which leads me to believe that Best Buy doesn't own all of its inventory. If Best Buy owned all of its inventory, they wouldn't have brand specific sales such as "18 months no interest on all Sony TVs" or "$20 dollar gift card with purchase of Super Smash Brothers Brawl" If they owned all that gear that they put on sale, they would lose money. Companies like Best Buy get a kick back or credit from the manufacturer when they put items on sale that are already in their inventory. I know for a fact that Newegg owns its inventory and thats why they're able to offer prices below manufactures suggested retail price ALL THE TIME without having to put on any sales promos.

I did find somewhere that says Best Buy is in debt to the tune of $2.6 billion dollars which isn't good news for investors. Unlike companies like Microsoft and Apple which are in zero debt and have $50 billion and $25 billion in the bank respectively, Best Buy has to keep borrowing money to sustain itself. With the economy the way it is, I expect Best Buy's stock to drop as well if that $2.6 billion dollar debt is real.

Petrol42

Last Winter CC fired all of the top Sales folks because they were too expensive (These would have been the folks who were polite and helpful) and gave the execs huge bonuses - who knew the store would go to hell?

twoHats

I am pity for them. I was just there this afternoon where I witnessed a sales clerk telling his bait to buy a $40 USB cable to go with a $80 printer. The bait eventually was convinced to buy a $150 printer.

tobedetermined

@SpeneyG:

Considering that if you shop online, you get way better prices AND you don't have to deal with the mentally challenged sales people that work in these places..

I'm surprised there are so many still open.

timak

Also only partly true. The CC distribution center in Bethlehem has huge un-safe sinkholes in it's loading dock areas. All other CC centers recieved their Sony shipments on time.

AlinaElipticate

@robinandtami: It was way longer than 2 years ago: it was back in 03, 5 years ago.

KStrike155

@djohnson60618: That's true. (I used to work at CC). We didn't have a rank system, but it was basically "if you want to keep your job, you need to sell". I worked for Firedog. What a crock of shit that was. I ended up just walking out one day.

KStrike155