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tiles, threadbare carpet, etc), and prices & models out-of-line with the BB that's a block away (too expensive, outdated product, etc).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

Regarding the extended warranties....

"I purchased an extended warranty (Circuit City Advantage Plan). Will that still be honored?
Yes, absolutely. Our Advantage Plan service is handled through dedicated service companies not affiliated with Circuit City, ensuring that there will be no disruption in your ability to get service for your covered products."

from here

That seems to be from the FAQ from when they announced that they were closing some of the stores, back in November. But I have to think that if the service company wasn't affiliated with CC then, it still isn't affiliated with CC now.

I heard they were going down in Nov.
What surprised me was that Ricardo Pliego, whose Grupo Salinas owns a chain of electronics stores in Latin America and Mexican broadcast channel TV Azteca, among other properties, bought 5.3 million shares Nov. 12 for 22 cents per share (for a total of $1.1 million), 19.8 million shares Nov. 13 for 24 cents ($4.7 million), and 5.2 million shares Nov. 14 for 26 cents ($1.3 million), according to regulatory filings.
That makes him the majority stock holder, nothing has been said on his plans though.

The CC here in Vero Beach shut it's doors several weeks ago, I believe they made the announcement sometime in November. My biggest complaint was that shopping for a CD was likened to a free for all, while our BB has their Cd's shelved in alphabetical order the CC store seemed like they just threw them onto the shelves in whatever order ... I couldn't never find a thing.

Both CC and BB music selections are horrendous.

I highly doubt it since it was RS that sold all of those stores to CC to cut their own costs. I just hope RS will find their way back up here otherwise we are left paying way too much for small electronic adapters and such from BB or FS, some of that stuff just isn't avaialble anywhere else up here, at least not right away, there is always online but you have to wait for the shipping.

Rick:
LOL... I was just saying the same thing to Joyce... I NEVER shop for discs at CC because they never seemed to be in an order that I could figure out!

HMV seems quite good for dvds/cds, i find in the last year they've gotten more competitive with BB, FS and the Walmarts of the world. It helps to know specific prices though, even within the same stores you'll find different prices on the same disc sometimes (they have diff bar coding, but otherwise the same) perhaps due to promos or something. Amazon is pretty good stateside but hardly comparable here. Dvds/cds should in fact, be considerably cheaper...they cost so little to make. Probably all the middlemen they go through....

Adrian, what is HMV?

That's shame but CC never did do well here. What is a shame is a record store that was in buissness for over 30 years went under due to the competition (Best Buy). Luckily there is a nice little store 20 miles from here that can get almost anything you would want. They also have a pretty good in stock inventory to choose from.

Our CC was less than a block away in the same mall complex and BB always blew them out of the water, over the years CC has really slowed down on their very pushy sales folks but by then I believe it was too late, BB had all of the business.

I did notice a trip or two back into our BB a pushy sales idiot noticed my Nextel phone on my clip and came right up to me and started yapping about how I needed to get rid of it and go with Verizon, I had to be rude to him to get him to shut up and quit following me around ... I hate that crap.

Check out CircuitCity.com today, they completely took down the store and replaced it with a static page of FAQ's. That was quick.

According to their website today, the Canadian stores are a separate business entity that will continue to exist. For how long, who knows.

And the new FAQ page also confirms that extended warranties are serviced by a different company, and therefore they will remain valid.

Rick,
To answer for Adrian, HMV is a chain of Canadian stores which sell cd's and dvd's etc.

HMV is a British based company which sells dvds/cds. Didn't know they weren't in the States, thought that would be a given.

Peter, thanks for checking on that for me. I did a cursory review of their page after my first post and did not find that information and had not had time to dig deeper. Your post was unexpected good news. I have had to use that warranty already, and everyone I spoke to used the CC name, so I feared I was just one of those SOL creditors. Glad to get some good news on that front.
Thanks again for the effort.
By the way, my two cents, CC was 10 times better than BB for people like us (i.e., those who care enough about audio/video to actual participate in dedicated discussions). In our area, they had better products, better audition rooms (some is better than none, right?), better informed sales reps, and better layout. But, they stayed in the 90’s. When BB made a newer type of store, CC stayed the same. Shame, I generally tried to buy from there when I had a choice. RIP, and let the age of the BB monoply begin.

Comparing CC (US) and 'The Source' (CC in Canada) sounds like two completely different stores. I don't think The Source makes to much of a dent in the BB/FS machine in Canada. The Source definitely lacks in audio/video equipment by comparison. 2001 Audio Video, Trutone, avu.ca (audio video), Soundsaround (western Can), Telecity...there's a number of smaller chains in Canada than BB/FS. Where they can't necessarily compete with volume they have far less overhead to deal with...a lot of people out there, though, don't realize you can negotiate prices. It's too bad about CC though, I guess this is how capitalism works. Maybe in the future there will only be a handfull of companies left which will dwarf the largest companies around now.

As I was doing errands in town today, I saw some poor sap standing on the side of the road holding a sign indicating 30% off at CC - "Store closing" / "Liquidating" in big letters. I hope whatever they paid him was worth it in the 20 F weather (I know, not cold to you Canadians and Midwest types, but for this area, that's frigid).

Anyway, I checked it out and was disappointed. Some things were 30% off, I guess, but not the good stuff. Only 10% off of cameras, video games, computers. Only 20% off of CDs and DVDs. Presumably this includes Blu-ray.

I picked out a couple of CDs (Jingle Cats 3, Ernest Goes to Jail soundtrack, etc), but the line to check out was twenty people deep, at least, for only two registers that were barely moving. So the liquidators got none of my money today.

Maybe I'll have better luck online?

Wait a few days; that's what I'm going to do (sez the vulture). The discounts will be steeper then, at least judging from when Good Guys tanked.

My brother-in-law managed to snag a Salamander Synergy entertainment unit for under 80 bucks with the Good Guys liquidation. Still in the box, too. Not now, then. . .when he bought it.

Whenever the store closed here several weeks ago the discounts got larger each week, whatever they had left (wasn't much) was almost given away during the last couple of weeks.

Good Guys: Gone for Good.

Here's an interesting timeline of Circuit City, which shuttered its doors at the end of business last night.

Bet they wish they had accepted that $3B buyout a few years ago.

Bell Canada just purchased Circuit City here in Canada.