CompUSA has been finally killed off. All stores will be shut.

[DS1]

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9831235-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Forget Black Friday. For the best deals on gadgets and PCs this holiday season, look no further than your neighborhood CompUSA.

The embattled electronics retail chain was dealt its final blow Friday when it was sold to Specialty Equity, an affiliate of private equity firm Gordon Brothers Group. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the immediate result is that Specialty Equity will close all 103 CompUSA stores in the United States, according to a press release issued late Friday.

Gordon Brothers will "initiate an orderly wind-down" of each of the stores, the company says. That's great news for consumers looking for bargains. CompUSA will remain open through the holiday shopping season, presumably with "Everything Must Go!"-style signs.

It was clear all was not well at the retailer when in March it closed half of its stores due to pressure from bigger chains like Best Buy and Circuit City.

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I have to say, it was just a matter of time. Their prices were crap, and their selection was crap. I went into a CompUSA just a few weeks ago to buy a Northbridge fan for a Socket 939 processor, and it totally sucked. I was going to buy a new CPU at the same time, and even looked over the un-manned counter so longingly at various processors but all the salespeople ignored me. I was willing to pay their markup for a processor, but nobody would sell me one. So I left, with my new Northbridge fan, which didn't fit anyway.

Newegg for the final win.

[gmoney]

1. They never had their "loss leaders" in stock...

unless you were beating down the door at 7am on Saturday... it was good having a semi-serious computer store in town, as they did have a lot of stuff Best Buy didn't, but they kept getting into stuff like DVDs and cell phones and crap, and it seemed very few employees knew anything.

Why would someone buy a company just to shut all the stores? Still seems asinine to me.

Still, that's going to be a few thousand people losing their jobs...

[Robeson]

3. They bought them, because it builds the "assests" up in their company...

...and then, they'll spin off those assets, or just use that "purchase" to increase the stock value in their company. Hey, it's the American way!

Meanwhile, thousands of people who contributed to our economy, and paid taxes, are on the streets.

[DS1]

4. It's a thousand people losing their jobs of selling things they don't understand.

Yes, that sucks. Before they closed the one where I lived, I got one of their salesman convinced that the IDE drive he was selling me would fit my SATA connection.

I lead ~him~ to believe that the first S in SATA meant Super ATA, like ATA but twice as fast.

I'm all about keeping jobs, but I'm more about not flat out lying to customers in order to make a sale. Furthermore, don't hire dipshits on the lowest possible dollar. Hire some real nerds, have them stock you inventory with the best value for dollar equipment, and then sell it to your walk in customers like me with a reasonable mark-up. I'll happily pay it.

CompUSA has been deserving to die for a long time. It has no sympathy from me.

[gmoney]

5. And you want to turn them loose on the unsuspecting public?

They might wind up in positions of actual responsibility!

[Angleae]

2. They shut down here (seattle-area) last summer.

Not that I miss them, they had already changed from computers to the gadget-of-the-month store.

[Deja Q]

6. My moment was last year.

Mind you, CompUSA's products were often overpriced.

Excellent selection that appealed to geeks like me (even higher end prosumer equipment), but the prices - they were out of touch with other local vendors. And if you noticed, even BB is selling more DIY hardware these days too.

And I am not driving down to Iowa to get a cool clearance item.

And, yeah, newegg for the final win. But I like going to a local store if I need something right away. I don't want to have a stockpile...

[HamstersFromHell]

15. Not overpriced, but...

They just charged retail. However, no one pays retail.

What they did that really bugged me was advertising an item on sale when it was really retail with a mail in rebate.

I still to this day believe they were the first of the big box chains to do such bald faced lying in advertising.

They also didn't stock a lot of common small parts...last time I was in one they didn't even have a basic IDE cable, but they had plenty of $24.95 Belkin gold plated phone cords. :wtf:

[billyskank]

7. They sound like PC World.

The place where people who know nothing about computers go to buy computers.

Which wouldn't be so bad, after all people who know nothing about cars still drive them, but the PC World staff know nothing about computers either, and that cannot be forgiven.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Good - I used to frequent the CompUSA in Columbus Circle,

but I always knew precisely what I was looking for, and sometimes they had pretty good sales going on.

But sonofabitch, they had the dumbest fucking clowns working there.

I felt sorry for anyone in there buying shit who didn't know computers, because the crap spewing from the mouths of the salespeople was almost criminally ignorant and false.

One would think that stores would hire knowledgable people, but then, the stores don't want to pay for knowledge - they want people who will work for $6 or $7 and maybe a commission, because the customers just want the cheapest possible price on their imported shit they don't understand.

God forbid that we in America, though we love to demand excellent and quality, ever open our wallets far enough to fucking pay for it.

Jackasses.

[supernova]

10. Circuit Shitty

recent wanted to replace all their older knowledgeable sales staff with lower payed newbies who don't know anything about electronics.

When did being informed become a liability? :crazy:

[Breeze54]

12. When NAFTA passed

:grr:

And when outsourcing became the cool thing to do. :sarcasm:

[supernova]

9. We have two TigerDirect stores

I go in and never want to leave. :crazy:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

11. The one near my home closed a while ago

It was ALWAYS an inferior second to the first-place Fry's Electronics.

Yes, Fry's customer service sucks. The two stores near me (Sunnyvale and Campbell) differ primarily by the fact that the Sunnyvale Store is consistently well-stocked and organized, while the Campbell store is "pretty well stocked" and very unorganized.

But CompUSA always sat below Fry's on every level. Their software selection was terrible. You could get things like Epson Inket paper, or a spindle of blank CDs or DVDs, but anything other than "office supplies" was a real roll of the dice.

I look at the demise of CompUSA in the same way I look at the demise of Tower Records: They MUST have seen this train coming from far down the track and their decision was to sit on the tracks and wait for it.

[Aristus]

13. Good riddance.

Their service sucked.

[Tektonik]

14. They hadn't closed yet? Damn

If I ever need anything computer related I get it from newegg, tigerdirect or go to Fry's electronics.