I don't really understand how Microcenter does it, but they often have equal or better prices than Amazon, and in any case, they'll price-match. Also, there's no worry about whatever I buy turning out to be counterfeit.
The one slightly odd thing about the Microcenter experience is how all of the salespeople have little stickers to take credit for when they help a customer find something. Are they on commission? Is this Microcenter's way of identifying the most useful floor staff? They're never pushy about it, but it does stand out in stark contrast to pretty much every other retail shop I can think of.
The stock was better than Microcrocenter or Central Computers (when they were relevant), and their sandwiches weren’t held bad. But the floor staff and that stupid thing where they have people at the exits pretend to check receipts on the purchase side. On the return side it was just awful. Today in age their return policies are just bad. On some items they have restocking fees.
they hired unknowledgeable floor staff
The receipt-check theft-deterrence theater is annoying. I never wait for it.
Today in age their return policies are just bad.
More than once there has been a line of a half dozen people at the pink sharpie exit, and I've just walked on by, much to the amazement of the people waiting in line.
Note: I'm talking about Fry's, not Costco. I'm told Costco is different because it's a membership club and you have to agree to their terms and conditions to shop there. (I'm also told that even Costco can't demand to see your receipt, but they can cancel your membership if you don't show it.)
How does Costco figure out which membership to cancel? Surely they don't detain you if you refuse to show your receipt.
Current nearby Frys plays dirty. Has a severely physically disabled guy checking receipts.
Yea. Total guilt trip for not letting him mark receipt.
Anecdotally speaking, I had a high rate of those items not working and had to return them myself. So while all the parts were typically there and the devices powered on, the product often times didn't work. I finally concluded that they likely didn't differentiate returns that were caused by the customer changing their mind vs. customers claiming the stuff didn't work... or that the only check they made for "not working" product was a simple power on type test; given the quality of staff and costs of doing any thing more probably made it difficult to do better (maybe they didn't have good vendor return terms, good vendor allowances, etc. ... who knows) Again, my experience, but I felt like I was playing for slot machine odds when I bought those products... your mileage may have varied.
I stopped shopping there years ago because the quality of the experience and that I didn't trust the open box product and wasn't sure I could reliably get unopened product... the trip to the store just wasn't worth the aggravation. I think that must have been before the restock fees as I don't recall ever having that issue myself (those the returns process was not exactly fun). I did like the store theming, particularly in the Southern CA stores (which is where I shopped them the most).
full price
I find central computers is often staffed with people that are less than personable.
I was in Fry's recently and they seemed to do the same thing. After asking for some help they asked me to print a "quote," which meant printing out a receipt at a kiosk on the sales floor with their name. They pulled it up when I checked out. I kind of understood what they were doing, but the process seemed a bit awkward--especially when my question was more along the lines of, "Do you have more stock in the back? When you do you think you'll have more?"
Compare that with an experience searching for CA glue accelerant (a pretty standard item I had seen at Fry's before) had me driving to three separate stores, finding nothing, and locating a model shop nearby just before close, a several hour ordeal.
It is not hard to compete with Amazon. Having reliable stock I can go out and grab today has huge value. I don't want to delay my project by a few days (or because weekends, a whole week) waiting for Amazon shipping and having to spend the additional effort trying to make sure I don't buy cheap knockoffs (or wondering if what I got was a cheap knockoff)
I think Fry's in the bay area are suffering from high labor and real estate costs.
They're always changing though: they had a console video game section for a while, now thats hobby computers (rasbery pi and co). They had a camera section, but thats gone. Computer books, gone. So they seem to be paying attention and a few years back they finaly went to a one line checkout (still takes too long, but its better).
This wildly depends (for that store, at least)--if you need something very mainstream you'll find it but they don't have a lot of things that I'd consider pretty obvious for a tech store. Their computer cases, for example, are mostly X-TREME in nature and they have few-if-any HTPC cases at any given time, and definitely nothing that can rack.
On the other hand, what I do really like about them is that they sometimes, for high-demand items, don't actually update the online stock numbers. I was able to walk into the store to pick up some RAM and walk out with a 3900X because they were saving them for in-store customers.
Cases that aren't designed to appeal to 12 year old boys are hard to come by, period. Manufacturers have decided that everything needs to have sexy angry facades and RGB lights - this has a lot more to do with product people at the manufacturers and less to do with the actual market. Ditto motherboards, especially.
It would be nice to not have to wait for Amazon to get something for a project, is all.
The Micro Center also used to have this awesome display of old logos (such as the rainbow Apple logo, Compaq, Packard-Bell, old Microsoft logo, etc) from various hardware and software companies that wrapped around the front and sides of the building in all its 90s glory. Sadly, I found it missing as of earlier this year. I wish I took a picture of it while it was still up. Did the Cambridge store have a similar "logo ribbon"?
Just going there takes me back to the proper “computer stores” that ceased to exist after the 90s. Actual PC parts and not full of appliances and movies/music
frankly a boring looking store
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3574429,-71.1149978,3a,75y,1...
Given how long they have been in the bay area they should already be owning most of their real estate.
In the end the cost for the person to pick up and deliver an item on demand like that goes somewhere and that in particular is something that doesn't scale away. The margin improvement from having a warehouse instead of a box store won't make up for that last mile delivery charge, especially when the box store can do the same kind of delivery and benefit from impulse or high margin items from in person shoppers.
Amazon is like wading through sewage to find what you want, and rarely if ever do you find something you weren't already explicitly looking for.
https://images.frys.com/art/deals/tralfaz/Free_Local_Deliver...
Once B&M stores offer same day delivery its going to be hard to be an online store.
I happened upon another isle with 100m cables, by the ethernet cables, but a bit of searching saw they were not there.
Lets check out the computer area, I see tonnes of options, search through them all, can't find it. break down and ask a guy, after much confusion he hauls be back to the raspi section. i told him I've already looked there.
I walk back and see the tv/video section, of course, lots of high-end cables but no extender cable. Ask a guy, do you even have these? He shrugs, asked me if I looked through the computer section, I said yes, and I already looked in components. He started arguing with me that they didn't have ANY HDMI-anything there. "Why would you think they were there?!?!"
Finally as I'm walking away, I spot some random sub-section of the tv isle. And around 8 cables there, I look over, there's one that's 5m long, weighs what seems to be 10lbs and cost $30. And I got my 10k steps in.
I asked when I walked in and they said "yes, look in aisle Foo". No luck, so I asked there. "Oh, you should check aisle Bar".
Nothing there either, but the person in that aisle helpfully directed me to aisle Fizz. No luck there, but the person said "you might try aisle Buzz."
And there was yet one more aisle after that.
Yes, they had five different aisles with various selections of USB cables, many of them overlapping but a few different ones in each location.
In the end, I had no luck finding what I needed - and I'd really hoped to get it on the spot to use for a project that evening.
So I walked out a bit disappointed and spent two minutes on Amazon, ordered the exact cable I needed, and had it the next day.
But the exercise of walking around the store was worth it!
When I moved here I was really surprised that I couldn’t find a store with the selection and prices of Micro Center in SV of all places.
I think what changed is the speed of shipping. Retail only adds value if there's a more convenient local warehouse, or you trust the salesman.
That said, I am not sure we can put the blame only on Amazon. I was in Microcenter the day after, and it was stupid busy - took 30 minutes to check out and was packed to gills. They crammed all of the good stuff of Frys into a much smaller space - mostly focused around PC electronics.