CompUSA Closing Stores

[CowboySlim]

CompUSA announced that they will be closing of about half their stores.
There was neither mention which particular stores nor of sales at those stores.

I did notice a big CLOSING sign on one of the stores as I was passing bye this AM.

@TCAS: It was the store in the Pacifica Marina center at PCH and 2nd ST.
I haven't gone bye that store on Bellflower.

Slim

[stix]

Thanks for the heads-up Cowboy. Here's a related item:

As part of the restructuring, CompUSA said it will receive $440 million from its Mexico City-based parent U.S. Commercial Corp, a holding company controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú.

quote came from this article:
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/16803371.htm

Note the billionaire's middle name is "Slim"

[Ian]

Good.. the Madison store is staying open. It looks like the Brookfield store is closing. Serves em right.. that place sucked when I worked there in college.

Here's a list of stores that are left.

http://www.compusa.com/locations/store.asp

[CowboySlim]

Thanks for the link, Ian.

They are closing TCAS's store in Long Beach and
my neighborhood store in Fountain Valley.

There are location issues with both.
The LB store is in a weak shopping center exactly next to a CC, and
the FV store is free standing in a little corner area and only two miles from our Fry's.

[stix]

They are closing the Littleton store in the SW Denver metro area. Not sure about the other ones here. I was over and have a look around. So far, media and software are 10% off, including all the microsoft stuff. Most other items are anywhere from 5% to 20% off. None of the hard drives or optical drives are good deals yet. Processors and motherboards are 20% off. Monitors and printers 10% off.

[TheWizard]

CompUSA already closed the store near me, in Syracuse, NY, last year.

[Wesociety]

Wow! They closed out all the Phoenix, AZ area stores. Only one AZ store left now, in Tucson ( 1.5 hours south of Phoenix).

I read about the massive nationwide store closing on Engadget or Gizmodo last week...

I didn't realize they were owned by a Mexican parent company. I've heard of that guy "Slim", he used to own a large stake in MCI, and he was in the news when they were selling off MCI to other companies.

The biggest thing I will miss is probably all the jokes about their name. They always ripped off people with their unreliable rebate programs. Bye bye ChumpUSA, CompUSSR, and ConUSA!

I think I might have actually purchased my first DVDR media EVER at a CompUSA store. 1x CompUSA brand PRINCO DVD-R garbage. I think they were "on sale" for $1 per disc at the time. LOL!

[Ian]

I prefer the name CrapUSA, especially in regards to their media.

[Justin42]

They're closing all the stores in the LA area.. my nearest store will be in Bakersfield now.. wow.

I'm not too sorry to see them go, except for the lack of competition, and occasionally they did have good deals, or random parts. It basically means Fry's becomes the only game in town for more esoteric computer parts. (granted, that's what online shopping is for but sometimes you just need something NOW.)

[Dartman]

I never shopped there because of their lousy return policy and the fact that the closest one was over half hour away.
BUT then they opened one very close to my favorite Best Buy store so I watched their sales and bought a few trinkets now and then. Got another BenQ 1655 drive in full retail config through their Connect Computer Branded
Boxes. Too bad but most of the time they were higher priced then other places and they still have a lousy return policy, plus their rebates can be a real hassle to get back.
So far everything I have bought recently has been fine though and I did actually get a rebate back after the normal long wait without any incidents. Probably just means some poor geeks will need another job and prices may not drop as low at times because of less competition.
Yeah, they are closing the nice close to me store, plus their closeout sale prices at this point suck. Corporations just don't take the time to let a new store grow anymore.
So I guess I wont be shopping there from now on as the closest store is again a longer drive then I need to make for one good sale item.

[aviationwiz]

All the stores in Minnesota are closing. I went to my local one, and they had 10% off most stuff, 20% off some other stuff. Problem is, they had a whole lot of nothing. I bought some case fans, and some of the labels said they were sitting in the store since December 2005! That helps explain why their closing so many stores!

[HKS]

10%-20% off is lame. 5% off is a joke. With or without the discounts they still don't stock anything I wanted. Clearly they are going out of business from a failed strategy.

[Wesociety]

Yeah, I didn't even notices all of the ChumpUSA stores closed in my city until I read this thread.

20% off is a joke too. If they want to have a close-out sale, they need 50% off at least!

As Dartman mentioned, I will also miss the extra retail competition, which might have helped to drive down prices more.

[TheWizard]

They will usually build up the percentage off clearance sales; starting low at 5% and building up to 50%, 60%, even 70%. This is actually a good business strategy...not for consumers like us, but for the company it is. Reason being: if they can sell a 100 pack of DVD-R discs at 10% off the MSRP as opposed to 50% off then they'll still make a profit. Some people think 10% off the MSRP is a great price. Although, I'm willing to bet none of these people frequent CDRLabs.

This build up strategy happened at the CompUSA that closed near me, and it also happened at a Media Play store that closed near me. Unfortunately, in both cases, by the time prices were 50% off or more, the selection of goods was extremely poor.

[bill]

The store in Richmond VA is staying open, i'm glad. The sales staff is fairly ignorant of the product they sell but they do, on occasion, have better pricing than a Best Buy a few blocks away.

It's hard to expect much in the way of "deep discounts" from this limited store closing / realignment. CompUSA isn't going out of business, they're trying to improve their bottom line by closing some low profit stores. I don't think they'll cut their own throat unless they go to bankruptcy court.

[TCAS]

For all practical purposes, the CUSA in SCAL is dead and gone. With all those high prices and too many MIRs, this situation was predictable. It is sad to see many people getting out of job and famous retailer brand goes dead.

[CowboySlim]

They never could figure out their role in the marketplace.

The Good Guys chain was also a part of the larger organization.
A while back the decided to close many of the stores in that chain and convert the remaining to combination Good Guys - CompUSA.

They'll be completely gone by the end of '08.

[Wesociety]

They never could figure out their role in the marketplace.

The Good Guys chain was also a part of the larger organization.
A while back the decided to close many of the stores in that chain and convert the remaining to combination Good Guys - CompUSA.

They'll be completely gone by the end of '08.

Ack that sucks! I know a lot of my friends in Cali used to mention Good Guys pretty often when discussing tech shopping or tech deals.