Circuit City “Sale” – or Lack Thereof…
I wrote the following exactly 2 weeks ago about a visit to my local Circuit City “Going Out of Business” sale:
LCD and Plasmas are 20% off MSRP which places them at a little better
than the price you will find them at Best Buy. I was surprised to find
that most models were still in stock. I guess people aren’t as gullible as
I thought when it comes to these sales.A good example: Samsung LCD LN52A550 was down to $1599 – same exact model
on Amazon (with free shipping): $1489.98. Best Buy: $1899.Biggest problem I noticed was the lack of product information. All the
spec sheets have been removed and replaced with a simple price sign. Since
the 720p and 1080p are mixed together, as are the LCDs and plasmas, one
has to ask a very dejected looking employee (is it really that bad to lose
a minimum wage job?) about the unit specs. That makes it much harder for
the unprepared to buy.PS3 games are 20% off which is okay I suppose, although again Amazon
offers them for less. As for the rest of the rest of the store I didn’t
see much out of stock except for a few car stereos. In fact if it wasn’t
for the signage it would be hard to guess that the store was going out of
business. The prices sure don’t reflect that fact.
Last night I stopped by to see whether anything had changed and here’s what I found.
First, I was surprised to see the entire back wall still covered with plasma and LCD TVs. It wasn’t much of a surprise when I noticed that prices hadn’t budged on the units; signs still showed 20% off msrp. I’m now eyeing the Samsung LN52A650. CC price? $2,150. This compares favorably to Best Buy $2,499 but is still way over the Amazon.com delivered to your living room price of $1,846.
Next I noticed that most of the car audio units were gone – no doubt helped out by relatively beefy discounts of 40%. Still there were some higher end Pioneers in stock. All the PS3 games were gone (no doubt sold to a wholesaler), and the shelves of PC software were still loaded beneath a sign that said 30% off.
Finally computer accessories remained well stocked – no doubt due to the fact that I didn’t see any bargains to be had, especially when compared to Staples or Newegg.
In summary it seems that firm liquidating Circuit City’s inventory isn’t in a hurry to lower prices. Given that it’s the same outfit that handled the CompUSA liquidation that got top dollar from uninformed consumers- as they have every right to do BTW - I doubt I will be buying my LN52A650 from them.
Alphecca » Circuit City’s “Sale?”:
[...] Apparently, they’ll be going out of business for a long time. [...]
13 February 2009, 7:34 am