jjcool

Very interesting. I seem to find the opposite to be true. That parking at teh one by Best Buy is horrendous. Plus, I think they have a better selection of DVD's in the route 7 one.

lovgun7

to answer OPs original question ...

as of this morning .... yes ...lol

NitroJMS

The average staffing model towards the end was something like this:

1 Tech (PCs/Cameras) Associate
1 Firedog Technician
1/2 Customer Service Associates to run the front end register and service desk
1/2 Entertainment Associates for TVs and Audio
1 Roadshop Associate
1/2 Merchandising Associates
1/2 Managers/Supervisors

You may get lucky and have had an extra tech associate or someone for music/gaming, but most of the time you weren't so blessed by corporate. It was never easy to run a building of that size on 4-5 associates at times, as you'd often never have that many right at opening or closing. You'd often build up on staff throughout the day, but then breaks would be going on so again you'd only have 4-5 people around to help customers in between having to do projects/trainings/etc.

If anyone has CC questions, lemme know. I was a 6.5 year associate who worked almost everywhere at the store level. I left in June and would be happy to answer any questions that anyone may have.

Alan Smithee

Did you work there when DIVX was out? That was what made me want that company to die- Dick Sharp, CEO of Circuit City at the time, wanted DIVX to take over the entire home video market and make the pay-per-use model the standard.

The last big item I bought there was a TV, which got fried in a power outage- stopped working altogether. It was under 'extended warranty' so they fixed it, but when they brought it back the picture was worse than it was before including a lot of magnetization causing color distortion. When I called to complain, without even looking at it they said it was "within manufacturer's specs" and refused to do anything more.

Oh- anyone know how I can get an employee shirt? Preferably one with the older logo on it.

DJariya

It's sad to see all these people lose their jobs. I used to shop at Circuit City alot. I bought 2 TV's there, alot of DVD's, CD's and a stereo receiver as well, but someone ran this chain into the ground.

I just have to say that the DVD section sucked. The bargain DVD's that went for $3.99-5.99 were always poorly organized. The bins were horrible and everytime I visited the store to check them out, it always seemed like a tornado hit that section. The new release section at my local CC was poorly organized and really unattractive to look at.

It always seemed like a chore to ask a CSA to check if a DVD was in stock and BTW, the system for doing so sucked. I never understood why stock information on the DVD's wasn't available to look at on the computers. Everytime I asked, they reluctantly walked to the counter and busted open a huge book with pages of printouts.

videoguy

I was surprised to find out this morning that the website was completely taken down. You'd think it'd be a lot easier to start selling stuff off cheaper on the web!

boc4ever

Agreed, but I come from the school of thought that either you give your job 100% or you move on to a new job. Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I have worked some jobs with clueless management, and the reality is management is what it is. You're not going to change them, and it isn't right to take it out on the customers.

islandclaws

I hope the order I just placed yesterday has no problems going through. Meh. I don't really care either way, but it would be nice if it did.

reubs82

Checked out the one here in Mobile, AL today, and only some items were marked at 10% off. There was obviously a ton of stuff there, and I'll check back there once a week. I don't need anything in particular, but a decent monitor and another HDD would certainly be nice.

NitroJMS

I wasn't there when Divx launched since I started in fall of 2001. I knew alot of people who were there though during that period since alot of people back then actually made a career with the company. A decent salesman used to be able to pull in $30,000-50,000 easily. Divx was always a challenge for them to sell to my understanding, although I actually got a good deal on one in high school thanks to one of my friends working there. I actually thought Divx was ahead of its time, since its not entirely dissimilar to other new forms of rentals like Flexplay and Redbox.

Warranty could be awkward. I worked as a CSA at various times, and TV repairs were either extremely easy or painfully difficult to deal with. It was a plus to the customers to have warranties backed by a third party, but sometimes you wouldn't get the best repairmen doing the work.

I have a bunch of the grey style and red style uniforms if you are interested in one.

Jay G.

Being $100 more per player will do that.

It is completely dissimilar to Redbox, which uses the standard rental model but applied to a vending machine.

Divx is similar to Flexplay, but Flexplay is dying a slow, agonizing death. The product's been out since 2003 and has never caught on.

Alan Smithee

DIVX was marketed as an easy way to "rent" movies (though $4.49 for a rental, even 10 years ago, was pretty steep) but the part the studios liked about it was that they could get people to pay EVERY time they played a disc. Some titles could be converted to unlimited play (only on one machine mind you) but that could be revoked at will, and as far as I know now has since the main computer the players had to call for authorization has been shut down. When the shutdown was announced you could get a refund on "Silver" discs as they called them but you had to request it. Since Disney likes to take things out of print and recall stuff if they find any hidden obscenities in it (like the legendary Best of Roger Rabbit laserdisc) DIVX would have worked perfectly for them- they could disable playback of any titles whenever they wanted. Some of the more paranoid folks didn't like the fact that the system tracked what movies you watched and at what times- while I don't think that would have been the end of the world, I'd rather not have to worry about that. This was one of the worst ideas to actually make it onto the market, and the public deserves credit for rejecting it despite the many other stupid things that have succeeded.

Since Circuit City owned the majority of DIVX, all their salespeople were required to push it on customers. Since this was about a year after DVD had come onto the market and many people were getting their first players, it added to their confusion. Just look at old Usenet postings on alt.video.dvd for some hilarious stories of what some people were told by store employees. A common line was that popular movies like Star Wars and Titanic would only be released on DIVX. (There were a few movies that did come out only on DIVX, not released on DVD until months or years later.) A few other stores such as The Good Guys (also now gone) carried it too- I heard that store sent a memo out saying they would fire any employees who said anything negative about DIVX.

The CEO of Circuit City at the time, Dick Sharp (he may have actually gone by the name Richard, but calling him Dick is so much more fun) at one time spoke publicly about his delusions of DIVX taking over the home video market. When he was asked by someone what effect this would have on those who'd already bought regular DVD players and now might not have anything to play on them, his response was "Early adopters do take some risk, it's regrettable." In other words, screw 'em- make them buy another player that works with our system.

speedy1961

I'd love one of the red ones.

I don't remember the grey styled one however.

al_bundy

no bank in their right mind will authorize those credit transactions

bigfoot0968

Thank goodness you got out before all of this.... hopefully you have a much better home of employment.

Were you there when you could get 100% of the extended warranty purchase? It was good for associates... but never understood the model.

CaptainMarvel

I just wanted to comment on this. Circuit City was a shitty store well before they had the employee layoffs you mentioned. At least in every one I visited, they've been terrible since the late 1990's.

UAIOE

I think the employee layoffs certainly made the one here drop in quality.

Around '98-2000 there were more employees around and you could actually ask them questions and get actual answers.

The last five years at the store here was nothing but a sparsely staffed ghost town and most employees seemed rather apathetic to even the simplest questions.

K&AJones

Well I dropped by mid yesterday to see what was up with the close out. I knew not to expect much when I noticed far more walking out "EMPTY HANDED" than with something.

It was basically 10% off for 80% of the store and the rest was 20% with a few items at 30%. The DVD racks had hardly been touched especially the BD. There were more people in the store than I've ever seen and yet nothing was going out the door. Even with the Close Out Prices (yea..right) I can find more in BB and walking out with more on any given Sunday.


Kenny J

chanster

Hillarious article in the Chicago Tribune/ LA Times:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...0,497931.story

These liquidators are complete scum:

Umm, yeah. Circuit City probably has the MSRP in their "system" which is what they are using. I love the idiots in the article who go back to the stores over and over again in the same day. Totally ridiculous.

Jay G.

No, they're using the "Everyday Low Price," like they said, i.e. non-sale price. So for some items, 10% off isn't as good as the usual sale prices on them.

I didn't see that mentioned; I only read this:
This article ran Tuesday, so probably was researched Monday. So the guy went back 3 times over the course of 4 days, because he implies that employees had suggested the prices would drop in subsequent days. He didn't go back multiple times in the same day.

chanster

Jay - He says they are basing their discount off of the everyday low price, but says they are not raising prices.

You can base the price off the everyday low price, but actually discount it off the MSRP. So lets say the MSRP for something is $10. They give you 20% off that . Thats 8. Lets say that the everyday low price is $8.5. So yes, you may get a discount off an allegedly everyday low price. Doesn't mean they are using the old everyday low price to discount off. If they took 20% off 8.5, you would have a lower number, say 6.8.

Thats exactly what happened with CompUSA. Old prices were taken off, and replaced with percentage off the MSRP or even higher than MSRP, as they often reverted to older higher MSRPs.

Jay G.

They're not doing that though. I went to the store on Monday, and the discounts are off the everyday low price. In fact, a lot of items still had the original price tags next to them, and only 1 large sign in the section giving notice of the discount off that price.

They're not raising the base price, but 10% off the base price isn't as good as some deals Circuit City has had in circulars in the past for certain items, nor likely as good as the prices in Best Buy's current circular.

My Other Self

I'm surprised people are shocked at the low percentages off and the high prices to begin with. This surely isn't the only Going-Out-of-Business sale that has ever done this.

Media Play, Hills (when Ames bought them had liquidation sales), Ames, Gold Circle.. and I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of others. All of those did the same thing.

It's a general liquidation process. Most money they can get to pay off the creditors.

If you go in to CC this soon, when they plan to stay open until March, well then that's just foolish. I don't start hitting these places until everything is at least 50% off. Sure there's probably crap left, but you have a better chance finding a deal then than you would right now.

DVD.guy

Anyone know what will happen with the service plans? I have an HDTV and Blu-ray player from them. With the TV there is a number to call but with the player you are told just to bring it in.

Wildcard

Holy smokes, that's the name I was thinking of. I remember my family bought one of those players from CC, and the moment I realized you had to hook up a phone line and pay every time you wanted to watch a movie, I told my mom this thing was NOT worth the hassle.

We returned the player the next day, and my family never set foot inside a Circuit City for years after that.