Sad news indeed. Especially (of course) for those poor souls losing their jobs.
But it's not really surprising though, CC has been struggling against Best Buy for years. With Christmas '08 sales as dismal as they were, their time just ran out.
And frankly, after CC upper management decided to save a little money by
firing all of their reasonably-intelligent, knowledgable workers and replace them with minimum-wage, don't-know-don't-care employees , perhaps they had it coming. The CC nearest to me has been in steady decline since that happened, with unhelpful and unmotivated employees, a dilapidated store (moldy ceiling tiles, threadbare carpet, etc), and prices & models out-of-line with the BB that's a block away (too expensive, outdated product, etc). Of course, that's just my local store - I'm sure that other CC stores were (far) better. But the writing's been on the wall, as they say.
Still, I'm sorry to see it go. Competition is a good thing and now Best Buy basically has the retail-store electronics market to themselves.
