Circuit City In Trouble

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illuminati

Audiophyte
I'm with you on CC. I worked there for 5 years from 96-01 and they continually did more and more to drive business away. ALl they do is chase Best Buy's tail.
 
D

ddubb

Audiophyte
The biggest fault I see in every single big box electronics stores is the waste of idle time. Go into these stores during the slowest possible times and you'd hope to see the staff poring over AVS forum, manuals, etc. Learning about the products AND the customers. You'd think they'd be hooking up one of their better TVs to XBox live, the internet, VOIP, webcam, etc. If I worked at one of those places I'd be like a kid in a candy store doing all kinds of crazy setups. Just to show the customer, "Say hi to this 60" display of this hot Norwegian chick that is my partner in this interactive live action internet video game."

Or hook up a Viiv machine and show photo slideshows or surf Pandora Internet Radio. Find trippy visualizations that are better than the standard freebies with any media player. Have a split screen with a browser window on one half and a sporting event on the other half. Vista Aero with multiple windows showing work, email, a pvr show and live tv.

Video podcasts, ntdtv, live webcam image of the Blessed Sacrament, some slammin' widgets, etc. Hook up a TV to a video iPod or portable hard drive with some mpegs. Have a pip image streamed live from a nearby video cam and tell him he can monitor his kid napping in the crib down the hall.

I walk in and out of these stores, my mind reeling with all the possibilities and I ask myself, would these sorry bastards actually have us believe that they're trying to sell us anything? Go when no one else is in the store and see these mopes lounging around, maybe pecking away at their myspace site on a laptop. Ok probably not but they sure don't look busy. And its a miracle if there's one set displaying true Bluray in all its glory.

I watched the BB in-house loop on a Sony XBR. A grinny employee stood in front of a bright yellow background, promising that Best Buy would hold you by the hand, taking you through the paces to get fully set up with everything you need to make the most of true HD image and content. A window opens up with an TV image, as he explains, "Here's the traditional television picture quality we're all accustomed to...." then on the other side, another window with the same image opens up, "And this," he smoothly asserts, "is high definition!"

I'm sure I don't have to tell you, the two images were identical. The best picture I saw was on a 50" Wega. Nothing against the Wega, but I'm sure that any of the plasmas in the store shoulda/coulda looked better.

Look guys, sorry about the rant. I'm a techno noob, practically a luddite. But I'm middle aged, been around and I know a bit about business and life. I can go into any electronics big box fully prepared to spend a few grand and these guys aren't willing to lift a finger to convince me that I should. I work nights and shop during the slowest periods of the day. The sales staff may sometimes look mildly busy. But more often than not they just lounge around and talk about their girlfriends.

Once I went in intending to spend $150-$200 on an mp3 player and waited for 10 minutes to be waited on while two idiots had a fake slap fight that turned into a real wrestling match. No joke. Two red polo shirts acting like it was down time in gym class.

CC can say whatever they want about razor thin margins or internet competition. A few years ago I bought a CRT rear projection behemoth, on the word of the sales guy that it would work as a computer display. I parked it at a friend's house (he had custom built a mighty fine computer for me) but he couldn't get the text to look right. After a few calls and visits to CC they were making all kinds of recommendations on what settings I should do on both the set and on the computer. After a week I returned it. The manager was visibly upset yet polite. The original salesman was convinced he could make it work, and launched into a mission to get 'er done.

Long story short, 2-3 hours later, nearly every employee from every department had gotten into one of the multiple huddles around the store trying to make it happen. Originally they were focused on the model I had just returned, but pretty soon it involved multiple pc's and laptops on several different TVs. Nobody could get it to work, the text was always blurry.

Finally, the one guy who had been busy with all the customers abandoned by the others who were Tom Sawyered into the CRT-TV-pc-display exercise in futility, he came over to see what all the fuss was about. He thought for a few seconds, then went to one of the public-access internet stations. Literally 3 mins later he handed me a print out of a CC FAQ about CRT TVs that explained that due to the low refresh rate of the television it won't be able to display text from a pc. I walked over to the manager who had grudgingly processed my return, handed him the paper and walked out.

That was 4-5 years ago and not much has changed. Their problems run deep. The sales reps are not supplying a service to the corporation that is worth very much. Maybe more training and higher expectations would be better. No way can they mimic Home Depot, though. Big box electronics stores don't have a hiring pool of people that start the job virtually fully trained and there's little controversy or dispute about the best grout to use or how to install vinyl flooring.

Home Depot customers are 90% knowledgable already and just need that little boost of tips and confidence to get over the hump. The crafts they deal with don't change very quickly over time, terminology, standards, practices and tools don't completely go obsolete in a few months time. There's only a small expertise gap between sales rep and customer. There's an expectation that there's one (or two) clearly objective right way to do something. Its easy to get a Home Depot customer to walk out with a warm fuzzy feeling that he made the right purchase.

Honest-to-god true story, overheard at a BB. A pair of parents were extremely reluctant to spend $400 on an iPod for their kid, but the sales guy was getting them there. Through the conversation the parents learned that the thing wouldn't work without first purchasing a computer... yeah, over there, the low to mid range ones will run at least $500-$600...

Aw geez well screw that. $200 is too high for a glorified walkman, let alone $400, but definitely not a f*ing grand! I kid you not, the comment as they walked away: "He's getting a $20 cd walkman." BB just paid the employee 30 mins of labor to basically piss off a customer.

The problems for the big box electronics stores are deep and plentiful. It would be too expensive and not likely to work, for CC to try to adopt the Home Depot formula. They may as well go the opposite way, and take their cues from a different store who's model has been successful with their electronics strategy: Wal-Mart. You don't see any employee time spent on selling electronics at Wal-Mart. None. The employees there are more helpful picking out hair gel and plastic storage bins. I once saw a pallet of large boxes stacked about 3-wide and 6-7 high, parked in the center of an aisle, not really near the electronics department. Fully complete Compaq computer system complete with 17" flat panel monitor. The specs were fair if unimpressive for the $550 price tag. You just know better than to ask a sales rep anything except maybe how much the box weighs.

So CC can be bold and try it the way I suggested or go with what has worked for their competition. The Home Depot idea is a bad plan.
 
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Tarub

Tarub

Senior Audioholic
The Associated Press April 4, 2007, 11:33PM EST
3 workers sue Circuit City over layoffs

LOS ANGELES

Three Circuit City employees laid off as part of a restructuring measure announced last week have sued the electronics retailer, alleging it violated California law prohibiting age discrimination.

Daniel Weidler, Michael Yezback and Eloise Garcia, who worked at the Circuit City store in Oxnard, also alleged wrongful termination in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The lawsuit against Richmond, Va.-based Circuit City Stores Inc. seeks class action status.

The company, facing larger competitors and falling sales, said last week that it would immediately lay off 3,400 workers earning "well above the market-based salary range for their role" and replace them with lower-paid new hires.

The laid-off workers will get a severance package and a chance to reapply for their former jobs, at lower pay, after 10 weeks, the company said. It has declined to say how much those laid off were paid and how much the new workers will make.

Weidler, Yezback, and Garcia claimed they were let go because they were better paid than other workers thanks to their higher seniority at the store.

"The workers terminated were those with greater seniority and length of service -- mostly likely the older members of the work force," the lawsuit said. It cites California law, which states that "the use of salary as the basis for differentiating between employees when terminating employment may ... constitute age discrimination."

Weidler, 57, said he worked for Circuit City for 11 years; Yezback, 59, said he was with the company for 4 1/2 years; and Garcia, 66, said she was employed for 17 1/2 years.

The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and an unspecified amount in damages.

A telephone message left late Wednesday for a Circuit City spokesman was not immediately returned.

The company reported Wednesday that it lost $12.2 million in the three months ended Feb. 28, compared with a profit of $141.4 million in the same period a year earlier.


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Im not buying anything from any store that do business practice like this. Stores that are not loyal to their loyal employees.:mad:
 
D

ddubb

Audiophyte
Some things have changed fast

My last rant could use some updating. I was pleasantly surprised on a couple recent visits.

First I went to a regional big box chain called American TV. The sales staff there tends to be a bit better at knowing the products, and in a recent visit I was mildly impressed with some of what they were saying. First, as I walked in I saw one guy browsing a website that displayed/explained different model TVs, so he was reading up. The other guy I talked to talked at length and in depth about innovations expected in the next generations of TVs, so obviously he had been doing some reading. Also the layout and pq's of the TVs was a bit improved.

The bigger improvement was at Best Buy. First, one of the first things you see when you get to the TVs is an amazing demonstration of Blu Ray. Next I went to the Wega that I previously said had showed the best pq. The Wega still looked really good, even after drooling over the Blu Ray. And then, almost everything else looked better than the Wega. The BB loops looked as good as you'd expect them. Out of dozens of sets, it looked like most were tweaked to a pq that was as good or better than you'd think it could be.

I did see one 32" display that was showing the same program as others around it, except it was extremely fuzzy and grainy, I'm sure it was just a glitch like a loose connection or something.

There was a mini living room set up. I think they had a 60" Panasonic that was holding its own, but maybe had a few minor shortcomings if you looked real close at challenging scenes. Any sales staff not helping customers were actually hustling around the store, moving equipment, one guy was stringing up a massive array of speaker systems to a huge switching box.

I guess I hadn't spent a lot of time shopping since just after christmas and around the Vista release date. A lot has changed in a short time. Looks like now a couple stores are at least trying a little harder. I wonder how a CC stacks up now.
 
D

ddubb

Audiophyte
Another tweak to the Best Buy experiences. I looked at the date on a sales receipt and realized that my crappy BB experience was a few weeks after Vista, around the beginning of March.

The more recent visit was about a week ago. The difference was like night and day. I mentioned the Blu Ray set up. The show displaying was just recently mentioned on the latest HT Guys podcast .

The show is "Masters of Time: A Complex Clockwork World" and Ara and Braden (the HT Guys) raved about the picture quality of this movie. Just a few episodes ago, they were discussing what are some of their favorite shows or movies for showing off how great hi-def can be when at its best. Then on their 4/13/07 show they go nuts about this movie.

I just bring it up as more evidence that BB might be on the right track, maybe know what their doing, to show off their products at their best. Maybe this is also partly why they made Business Week magazine's "Top 50" list.

Actually the article credits Geek Squad for getting BB on the list. But I think their current TV set ups will help, too.
 
zhimbo

zhimbo

Audioholic General
Well, if Best Buy is really making some progress in improving sales and service, then CC is REALLY shooting itself in the foot.
 
stratman

stratman

Audioholic Ninja
Tweeters turn

Well first it was Circuit City firing employees left and right, now its Tweeters turn to feel some more heat, they're considering filing Chapter 11. They've only closed six of their stores, forty nine are slated. Apart from that they just reported they don't have enough money to support short term loans. Circuit City's earnings were so bad, they decided to pull report. If these two guys leave the scene its going to be bad for us, less competition means prices go up, unless Target and Wal-mart step in and start selling Denon, Yamaha, etc.;)
 
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