Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler R.I.P. Circuit City...

Wow - this is huge, and stunning. Circuit City, which filed bankruptcy two months ago, cannot find a buyer or any other way out of bankruptcy, so they are liquidating (closing) all 567 US stores.

30,000 people added to the ranks of the unemployed.

Article, via Huffington Post

From the article: "It was unclear what would happen to the company's 765 retail stores and dealer outlets in Canada."

I suspect they are gone also...

Our Circut City (The Source) seems quite a bit different than the American CC when comparing websites. US CC seemed to offer a lot more audio equipment than ours. Nevertheless, I guess they're looking for buyers (that's a lot of stores btw).

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ceiling tiles, threadbare carpet, etc), and prices & models out-of-line with the BB that's a block away (too expensive, outdated product, etc).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.

I'm curious what happens to the damn CC extended warranty I purchased for my RPTV, which I expect will need repairs based on recent history. BS, BS, BS, BS...

Is the warranty by a third party or by Circuit City themselves? If it's by CC, and they're completely liquidating the corporation, you may be SOL.

However, if any part of the company survives (like an online presence, perhaps) then you may still be ok. Hard to say. Have you checked their website? I suspect that question will be near the top of the "We're closing" FAQ's. I guarantee that you are not alone in voicing that concern.

Here in Canada, they proved to be a poor replacement for RadioShack. They never offered much more and they were lacking that "I know I can find a cheap adapter for XUZ to zyK, IN STOCK, at RadioShack". I am really sorry for the people losing their jobs, but I can't say I am sad that this particular chain is going out. Hopefully someone will fill in for them and the losses will be mitigated.

No CC's around this part of the country, still a bad deal..

Yeah, competition is important in any industry, sometimes I wonder if more co's will start doing the factory direct thing (like Axiom), cutting out the middlemen. BB bought out FutureShop here a number of years ago, virtually the same as BB, so they've got most of Canada's market as well although they get some competition from smaller chains who have less overhead.

The Source by Circuit City here in Canada filed for chapter 11 a few weeks ago. They are a client of ours and sent us a letter saying they would not be able to pay their bills.

I wonder if Radio Shak will come to the rescue here in Canada.

pn