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Circuit City files for bankruptcy

What goes around does come around. Circuit City and the Good Guy's, Best Buy, etc. and US are responsible for the quality of store they were.

In the 'Good old Day's" of HiFi, the 70's and ealry 80's in my book, there were stores like Pacific Stereo, Sun Stereo, plus about a zillion mom and pop type stores selling Yamaha, APT, Hafler, SAE, Sequerra, Tandberg.... ....the stuff we like. Then Good Guys and Circuit City came into the picture. Pacific Stereo and most of the rest folded. It seemed that the only criteria became selection and price.. There was no crafting of systems, there was only packaging. "yeah, if you want it good, slap on some of these Monster Cables". Price became the decider. And "we", the royal "we" bought in. In-house service became a thing of the past. A customer service based model was too expensive to continue. Many high-end companies folded or got funding from Harmon International. ...and struggle.

I do feel sorry for the peon level employee, for sure, but these huge sellers were never that healthy for audio enthusiasts as a whole.
 
I use to dig CC. Even got my L5's there back when some of their product was pretty solid. So much competition out there.
 
To quote Berta from Two and a Half Men, "Damn!"

"Damn!" I had January in the pool!

I said my piece about CC in this thread: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106485&highlight=Circuit+City&page=9

marantz1156 said:
When Circuit City laid off all their high seniority (high pay) employees and then offered them their old job back at 1/2 the wage they were making before i said i would never again buy from them.
what goes around, comes around. sad thing is, the execs will get golden parachutes for the companies demise, but employees will just lose their jobs.
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I never forgave them either and I held to my word. They lost me as a long time repeat customer when they took those actions. It's obvious that you and I are not the only ones Marantz1156! They did it to themselves. Fools! :thumbsdn:

I do feel badly for the employees though.
 
Been there once when I bought my first digital camera. Still I kind of thought they would go under since the parking lot was mostly empty compared with Best Buy.
 
It was an inside hatchet job. Sadly. I worked for CC for a few years. It was blatantly obvious to us that the company was being purposely taken down from the inside. The CEO (who got MORE money being fired at the end than had he resigned, AND CC HAS to find him a new job with equal or greater pay) was hired from, you guessed it, Best Buy. He is currently sitting on his Yacht waiting for the next job to get even richer (He got MILLIONS) and company to run into the ground.

What did YOU think would happen hiring a CEO from your only competition? At that time, the roles were reversed. BB was an upstart compared to CC. Things change with the right man at the helm, don't they.

Sad, but they did it to themselves.
 
Other than the sad loss of more jobs, there isn't much to miss. Over the past few years, especially since the decision to hire employees that would be paid less, the chain has fallen apart. It isn't just the equipment, either. At least one of my local ones used to carry a fair number of import CDs and now has little selection other than the most popular music.
 
Jon_Logan said:
In the 'Good old Day's" of HiFi, the 70's and early 80's in my book, there were stores like Pacific Stereo, Sun Stereo, plus about a zillion mom and pop type stores selling Yamaha, APT, Hafler, SAE, Sequerra, Tandberg.... ....the stuff we like. Then Good Guys and Circuit City came into the picture. Pacific Stereo and most of the rest folded.
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Good riddance to Circuit City. Maybe Best Buy will follow.

I think the "Big" store concept was an abomination, something created by financial forces on Wall Street. For the past 15 years, too much money has been chasing too few opportunities. Someone who took an existing business model "Big" got tons of capital and support from the market: Hardware. Pets. Electronics. Name it. The little, independents cannot keep up. Tank the market and dry up the pool of investment money, let's see how these guys perform.

I hate what happened to electronics. Back in 70's and 80's Canton OH, there were a good number of stores with a myriad of products. All the stuff we admire now. All long gone. Maybe they come back?
 
A lot of the mdse that CC handled can just as well be purchased online. Music--in both CD and file download form--online. Video equipment--online. Etc...

With gas vascillating between $2:xx and $4.xx a gallon who wants to drive to the store...?

All the record store chains are suffering as well.

But this is what happens when fuel costs are allowed to go as high as they have recently.

Probably the only major item that can keep Best Buy alive is the large screen sales.
 
Jon_Logan said:
What goes around does come around. Circuit City and the Good Guy's, Best Buy, etc. and US are responsible for the quality of store they were.

In the 'Good old Day's" of HiFi, the 70's and ealry 80's in my book, there were stores like Pacific Stereo, Sun Stereo, plus about a zillion mom and pop type stores selling Yamaha, APT, Hafler, SAE, Sequerra, Tandberg.... ....the stuff we like. Then Good Guys and Circuit City came into the picture. Pacific Stereo and most of the rest folded. It seemed that the only criteria became selection and price.. There was no crafting of systems, there was only packaging. "yeah, if you want it good, slap on some of these Monster Cables". Price became the decider. And "we", the royal "we" bought in. In-house service became a thing of the past. A customer service based model was too expensive to continue. Many high-end companies folded or got funding from Harmon International. ...and struggle.
Click to expand...

That pretty much sums it up. The consumer majority has pushed retailers into the current sales strategies, not the other way around. The lowest price is the gold standard now and the latest feature sets, and to compete retailers are forced to play this game. With gorillas like Walmart around, we can only expect more of the same as the price pressures they can apply is pretty crazy. Best Buy and Fry's are small potatoes in comparison. Quality is not valued, good design is far down on the list, reliability is out the window too, and service??? Not at the prices that consumers expect. Price drives the electronics business now.

Let's face it, we are the minority, the few who want good quality service and products and are willing to pay for it. Catering to the minority is a recipe for failure. Mom and pop audio shops serve a niche and that's how any marketplace would react. The demand does not call for more. Just because a store does not fits your needs, does not mean its evil.

As a Best Buy employee I can say that BB walks a thin line of trying to provide services that other retailers do not, but remain competitive with other retailers. If you walked into a CC store 5 years ago, I bet it would look almost the same as it does today, where Best Buy has continued to evolve and try to improve its business plan to better serve our customers and there individual needs. Then again, no company can please everybody.

CC has been on death watch for about 5 years, so this should be no surprise. maybe they should get a bail out like everybody else now days. Its so en vogue to prop up poorly run businesses ;) Its like this years trendy thing to do.

dew.
 
I'd hate to see them go myself. Their service and product is better than what Wal-mart has to offer. This also means I have a wider veriety to chose from instead of just Wal-Mart. You had to know this was going to happen. Hell they have come close to filing a couple times in the past few years. Now they are in really tough times.
 
Well, anything's better than wal-mart IMO

But I literally cannot step foot in the local CC and be helped, for reasons I may not mention here.

Bottom Line, this does suck when our economy is struggling as it is. But from an audio enthusiast's perspective, BYE BYE.
 
Tinman;2238630 I do so miss the great stores of the 70's and early 80's. All long dead and buried. :tears:[/QUOTE said:
I do too. I made friends with some of the salespeople who I bought from and we just talk about audio equipment. All of them were very knowledgeable and very cool. It's a shame that Wal Mart, Circuit City and Best Buy changed all that.
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Circuit city had the best return policy ever, if you bought the extended warranty you could return what you bought at any time and recieve a full refund in store and get back the money you paid for the extended warranty...I used to play this game with car stereo equipment when I was younger. Upgrade to the newest most chrome laden crap every year basically for free. It was cool until I realized the quality of the merchandise and moved on to USA made soundstream amps...but thats an entirely different story.

BPC for sure.
 
I thought Ultimate Electronics would go down before Circuit City. Too bad. Less competition amongst retailers is never a good thing for the end consumer..:no:

Also, sad for all those people that will now be out of work.
 
Is our Circuit city the same as the one in Canada? I thought the Canadian version was branched off of Radio Shack.
 
Never a good thing to see a corporation go down and all those employed loose thier jobs. I personally haven`t liked Circuit City since they changed into a junk store and stopped selling decent quality and appliances. Originally they were ok to deal with and carried some decent stuff, but in the last 10yrs or so you go into one and no one wants to help you and they all stand around and BS. You can never get any customer service and you have to hunt some one down and even then most of the time they don`t know squat or have to call a manager to get an answer! At the store by me there is only one guy that`s somewhat intelligent and he`s the only one I ever deal with. At least he knows most of the answers and is willing to help, of course he`s the asst.manager. I won`t miss them much at all I just hate to see more folks out of work!
 
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