Say goodbye to Fry's.

[Elizara]

CNN here.

This saddens me; now it's even HARDER for me to get parts to build pcs with (I might have to use Newegg more tho Newegg has never screwed me on parts, I'd planned on using Fry's some next round once my personal/health issues resolve since I'll be able to donate plasma for spending money then. Now I can't.) We have a Microcenter but I'm not sure if they do mail order...and considering, I need that mail order, darnit.

But man, this is sudden and brings the physical electronics stores down another one (Circuit City's gone, now this..)

[synistar]

Microcenter does ship. But the downsides are 1) You can't take advantage of promotional bundles, buying refurbished items, or purchasing discontinued items as those are in-store only. 2) Large items like cases or monitors are shipped individually so you will incur extra costs there if you have a full PC build.

[Elizara]

That's good to know syn; It's right now, transpo issues (I can't go anywhere downtown without a ride) and covid issues (Atlanta had way more covid cases than my little town). If it's a full pc build I really don't want to have to carry that on the bus lol; and if my pie in the sky plan works, that'd be a issue. (The plan is get a scooter and some mace, and a really ugly bike chain to keep thieves away just so I can get to the bus stop in peace.)

[Melena]

I posted this in the celebrity death thread, but it can go here as well. As someone who worked there, this company was so fucking ass backwards in it's thinking and operations that it's a miracle it lasted longer than other retailers like Comp USA, Circuit City, Good Guys, etc.

Oh god the horror stories I could share from working there.

My favorites being that they honestly felt online shopping was a fad that would die out, which is why they never really invested in an e-commerce site. Someone on reddit put it best, they were the Sears of Electronics. Big footprint (at least on the west coast), great selection, everything under one roof and they felt they were too big to fail, and never adjusted with the times till it was too late.

Among the other many things I saw or was a part of. A former exec being jailed and convicted of extensive fraud and embezzlement totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fuel his Vegas excursions and most likely benders.

A credit card we were threatened with firing if we didn't push and sign enough people up, that for the first 3+ years had literally zero perks and a 26% interest rate, and being told we should say establishing credit is a big enough perk to sign up for.

Clocking people out at 11:59pm on Black Friday, clocking them back in at 12:01am to avoid overtime/double time pay for employees who were forced to work

A quite literal home brew POS system that constantly crashed and couldn't handle the scale and volume as the company grew because they refused to pay for an established one.

A refusal to have any sort of internet access or broadband for the service department, telling us to update virus definitions on our actual pirated anti virus software on our own time because they thought we'd dick around on the internet all day instead of working. To go along with that, we used to be partnered with Earthlink. When they gave up their kiosk, they forgot to disable their DSL, so the service department bought a cheap wireless router, hooked it up to the broadband and hid it in the top stock from the aisle across from us as that's where the booth was so we could actually get the utilities and downloads we needed at work. Was great for a year till corporate found out and was walking around the entire store with a wifi detector, trying to find our router.

[Elizara]

That's terrible. Shame they were basically the last old compy store standing, with that old fashioned thinking. I mean, I REMEMBER the last Comp USA in GA, I remember Circuit City and the one in D'ville closing. I remember Radio Shack for goodness sakes (Radio Shack could of done a lot better if they focused on computers, I think. Not cell phones.)

Now the only two left standing in our area is Best Buy (the easy to get to one) and Microcenter. Otherwise I'm down to Newegg sadly and Amazon. All because I have to bum rides and there's a limit on that...Not to mention there's very few mom and pop shops around too.

[Melena]

Some of my store specific stories would make your eyes roll. I still laugh that me, one of my co-workers and one of my sups when I was in sale had to have code words for smoking as the ASM was a huge anti smoker as he quit. We had two locations we'd go out to have a cigarette at, dubbed Mexico and Modesto. Mexico because there was a chain link fence at the back of the field and was nothing but bushes, and Modesto (which is a local small town most known for it's horrible crack problem) because behind it was just freeway and power lines, much like if you drove through that town.

[Mayareira]

My favorites being that they honestly felt online shopping was a fad that would die out, which is why they never really invested in an e-commerce site. Someone on reddit put it best, they were the Sears of Electronics. Big footprint (at least on the west coast), great selection, everything under one roof and they felt they were too big to fail, and never adjusted with the times till it was too late.
A credit card we were threatened with firing if we didn't push and sign enough people up, that for the first 3+ years had literally zero perks and a 26% interest rate, and being told we should say establishing credit is a big enough perk to sign up for.

The result of resisting change and lack of organizational adaptation. Seriously, focus on pushing credit cards while competition are expoloring drone delivery options?

Retail that reacted fast enough and switched to a hybrid model (ie Best Buy) are going to be stronger than before as the market consolidates.

[Elizara]

Mel; I bet you could burn my ears. Geesh.

And yeah; push a credit card when competition wants to use drones to deliver? Geez loize. It's a shame, even tho this also cuts where I can get pc parts to a pretty narrow rind now; I got a choice between Newegg (which I wouldn't buy software from), Amazon, Best Buy (crapshoot) and Microcenter. Oh and Monoprice for all my cord related needs.

As it is we were planning on going to Fry's when we had to replace the printer; I guess I'll have to see if Microcenter has a bunch of printers now since I want to make sure when we get a new printer for the house we get a color laser since the Epson we got screws us on ink, yucks. Won't be until the printer breaks, though.

[Melena]

Think it was somewhere around 2011 they finally started offering free 0% financing on purchases over X dollars. The funny thing is, they actually bought and created a bank for the sole purpose of managing the card. Nothing but horror stories though of people paying their cards and not getting the payments to post, causing late fees out the ass and such.

But yeah, while Fry's is officially dead now, it was sometime late 2018, early 2019 they were already dead. LG and other vendors actually started showing up at stores, pulling stock of their products due to lack of payment from Fry's. They tried switching to a consignment method with Vendors, but you could imagine how well that went over.

"Hey, yeah I know we had trouble paying you in the past for product. How about you ship it to us for free, and we will totally pay you after we sell it."

[6souls]

[Elizara]

Yeah. I heard about that but this..was kinda sudden, and the way they closed smacks of bad management from the beginning sadly. I'm just sad to see it go and sad that once I can work up the money for a rebuild, I'll prolly have to go with my old standbys EVEN if I can finally get downtown by myself.

[Melena]

Yeah. I heard about that but this..was kinda sudden, and the way they closed smacks of bad management from the beginning sadly. I'm just sad to see it go and sad that once I can work up the money for a rebuild, I'll prolly have to go with my old standbys EVEN if I can finally get downtown by myself.

Here's an entertaining read of one of the many, many fuckups that helped bankrupt the company.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ng-65-million/

[Elizara]

Geez. This really shows bad management all over.