Well, it's about time. They shut down ALL but 1 in Michigan this year. Though I stopped shopping at CrapUSA about 2 years ago, can't say I'm sorry to see them go. But then again, they were not in my back yard so no love lost. Some are saying (mostly bloggers) that Wal-Mart is the reason they went down in flames. Thats like saying 7Eleven is putting Kroger out on the street. Just can't compete with those cheap big glups.
I wouldn't blame Walmart this time. Best Buy, Circuit City, and Dell might bear some of the responsibilty though. The last time I went into a CompUSA the store was very poorly arranged, finding help was near impossible and the prices were no longer competitive.
That was about 3 years ago and I haven't been back.
The CompUSA in my town (Vacaville, CA) closed last april after only having been opened for about a year and a half.
For one thing, the young sales and service staff always seemed aloof and resentful of the presence of we customers (how dare you set foot in our divine realm?). They were also extremely arrogant. Not only did they not know where anything was, they hadn't a real clue about what they were selling.
Here, I found that I could get a better deal on high tech gear at the office supply houses such as Staples, Office Max and Office Depot - all whose staff were friendlier and a hell of a lot more knowegable than that of CompUSA.
CompUSA was owned in part by the world's richest man, Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, who, as the majority share holder, was obviously more interested in the bottom line than in providing a quality product and service.
Your both right. It's the likes of CC (which I stay away from as much as possible), BB, and like mark said, Office D, Staples, Office Max and even stand alone stores like micro center (here in troy mich). Just too many places online like www.dealspl.us (thats right, no .com) amazon.com, buy.com, etc.. who sale cheap and free shipping. You get about as much hassle if there's a problem as you would if you had to box everything back up and truck it back to a local store. I just went over our cost for xmas this year. Mind ya, I have a 16 going on 17 year old son, 13 (14 in 3 weeks) girl and 11 year old boy. Looks like the damage is 3k. That doesn't include the 550.00 for the laptop but that's a bday present. About 80% of that was spent ONLINE and not local. Funny thing, sometimes you can buy something, say from lands end online, but return it to the local sears/lands end store. You can even order from the catalog at the store and get free shipping. We have a xmas account so by the sime the dust settles after all the bills come in, we pay everything off at once.
I was going to start a thread about how people shopped this xmas (local or online) and how much went to each but figured it was too early.
CompUSA might have seen its day in the sun during the early years of the PC when building your own computer (home brew) was the thing to do. But the era of kit building is long over with.
Anyone remember Heathkit? About 35 years ago, they offered one of the first home computer kits. But the i/o devices consisted of a simple 10 keypad and a series of small lights. input was through the keypad in octal and output was through the lites in binary. No real practical uses such as word processing or spredsheets but is was kind of fun just the same.
Anyway, I think that one of the reasons that CompUSA went the way of the dinosaur is that the home computer has been an accepted part of our lives for well over 25 years now and is no longer very unique - jut like the typewriter became just another office tool a hundred or so years ago. If you look at the last 5 years of PC Magazine back issues, you'll see that they went from almost exclusively PC content to reporting on a diversity of high-tech stuff. As such, CompUSA had to either diversify or go extinct. The rest is history.
Kit building a PC is not quite over -- though "assembling" is probably a more accurate descriptor. But assembling is really just about all that the big companies (like Dell) do anyway. I've "built" my last four PCs, and was able to save money and delay obsolescence by using some used components from the previous machine (and upgrading peripherals during the life of any machine, as needed). At least I think I save money (and get the features I want) by doing this. I sometimes wonder, though, if it might just be better buying a Dell or Gateway for abour $400 -- but then I'd miss the "fun" of doing it myself.
HeathKit? For a while (back in the day) they had a kit for building one's own television set. I thought about doing it a few times, but never pursued it.
Well, it's offical. Just read where they ARE going out of buisness and not doing online orders. Guess they are looking at selling the stores and "keeping?" the name intact. The NAME isn't what sells me. Just TOO many online cubby holes to get stuff. Why am I going to pay them 300 bucks for a middle of the road video card if I can get the same thing online from, say newegg for less then half (and free shipping ). The cards are made in the same place, same boxing.. Just don't have to deal with rebates or stuff.
). The cards are made in the same place, same boxing.. Just don't have to deal with rebates or stuff.
