Micro Center seems to be going fine. Fully stocked (with the exception of CPU) and always busy. No issues price matching online either.
The one in the Bay Area (Santa Clara Mercado) closed years ago and became a Walmart. As far as I know, there's only one in SoCal still open (Tustin).
Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
21–30 of 379 posts
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#22Answer: of course, yes. When I visited Fry's in the DFW area last year (Irving Store off of LBJ freeway) I was shocked at how low energy and sad the place was. It was just one big pile of despair. Just a handful of people were shuffling in and out. They shelves were in complete disrepair, and there were areas where there was no stock on shelves. Computers on display were broken, twisted wrecks. The home theater areas…
How is the Micro Center in DFW doing? I see other electronics retailers doing ok, so I think Amazon is just the coup de grace.
Microcenter is doing great, at least from the point of view of a frequent customer.
The Fry's in Plano is in a similar state to what parent comment is describing. It's an incredibly weird feeling walking thru. They've stopped restocking, so anything I remotely could use or need isn't there. What's left are things that nobody really wants. I have lots of memories growing up in that store, sad to see it like this. I definitely recommend hitting it up before the inevitable shutdown, it's quite the vibe to take in.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#23Part of the issue is that their quality of service has gone down. 10 years ago, most people who worked there were knowledgeable in their respective departments, but now it is quite often the opposite. I don’t exactly blame the workers, it could simply be that circumstances have caused training to become nonexistent. I remember the holidays at that time with the checkout line being so long that they couldn’t keep up w…
10yr ago those people had just got laid off from all their IT jobs and whatnot. Now they all have real jobs again and you've got lower quality labor. The same thing happened to Autozone, Home Depot and every other place a laid off skilled worker wound up getting a job to make ends meet.
That is a good point. I was lucky to get through the recession without being laid off, but so many others were certainly not as fortunate.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#24I wonder what that means for the American Institute of Mathematics (https://aimath.org/). It is partially sponsored by John Fry.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#25Answer: of course, yes. When I visited Fry's in the DFW area last year (Irving Store off of LBJ freeway) I was shocked at how low energy and sad the place was. It was just one big pile of despair. Just a handful of people were shuffling in and out. They shelves were in complete disrepair, and there were areas where there was no stock on shelves. Computers on display were broken, twisted wrecks. The home theater areas…
I used to live near the Fry's in Tempe, Arizona. Even 5-10 years ago, I didn't really like going there that much. Their prices weren't that great any more, and returning merchandise was a bad experience. It was clear their best days were behind them. Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. It was cool how you could find a lot of odd electronics items there (components, soldering equipment, wire, etc.), but you could still get all that stuff much cheaper online usually.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#26Once I became aware of Newegg and other online retailers, and trusted shopping form them, it was the end of Fry's for me. The Fry's close to me always had terrible products - off brand motherboards, orange stickered components, etc. For a period Fry's was my place to pick up emergency Cat 5 and other random components, but Home Depot/Lowe's sells quality product at far more convenient locations. I last visited the Renton store a few years back, hoping to find some unnecessary necessity and left disappointed. The store was under stocked and in disrepair. The general quality and quantity of goods had diminished remarkably. I was near the San Diego location a few months back with time to kill and decided it wasn't even worth it to wander around in the air conditioning for a few minutes.
Thinking back, Fry's was a perfect place to spend my teenage years - I had little money, and not enough technical knowledge to be a discerning consumer. As an adult it no longer serves its purpose - I can afford to buy higher quality goods, and have the time and knowledge to find them.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#27Micro Center seems to be going fine. Fully stocked (with the exception of CPU) and always busy. No issues price matching online either.
The one in the Bay Area (Santa Clara Mercado) closed years ago and became a Walmart. As far as I know, there's only one in SoCal still open (Tustin).
There is still one open in Sunnyvale a few miles away from Santa Clara Mercado, but I’m not sure how much longer it’ll be around.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#28Well, "trouble" is the wrong word. Fry's is more like "dead man walking".
The last time I went to Fry's was maybe 1 year ago. If you walk around, all of the electronics are older models, the game shelves are filled with games that are all several years old, even things like hard drives, etc are all old and expensive.
There were no salespeople to help except in places like the TV area. The car stereo area, which is what I was interested in, was empty and no one showed up. The car stereos themselves were older models. Nothing worked.
Why on earth would I ever return? The entire shopping experience at Fry's is worse than clicking through on Amazon.
Fry's is dead. Chalk one up for Amazon and automation a-la Andrew Yang. 30% of retail stores will close in 5-10 years and it's because of online stores like Amazon, that suck money out of local stores and diverts all the money to Seattle, except for the local warehouses where minimum wage workers are being worked like robots. This only gets worse unless we figure out how to rejig the economy with 21st century solutions like UBI.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#29Part of the issue is that their quality of service has gone down. 10 years ago, most people who worked there were knowledgeable in their respective departments, but now it is quite often the opposite. I don’t exactly blame the workers, it could simply be that circumstances have caused training to become nonexistent. I remember the holidays at that time with the checkout line being so long that they couldn’t keep up w…
> 10 years ago, most people who worked there were knowledgeable ... but now ...
That is the same in and vaguely specialist shop. Most of the workers will be the cheapest to employ or the least willing to fight back about a bit of unpaid overtime here or there. Having knowledge and/or skills is no longer a significant competitive advantage in that employment market.
Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
#30Part of the issue is that their quality of service has gone down. 10 years ago, most people who worked there were knowledgeable in their respective departments, but now it is quite often the opposite. I don’t exactly blame the workers, it could simply be that circumstances have caused training to become nonexistent. I remember the holidays at that time with the checkout line being so long that they couldn’t keep up w…
> 10 years ago, most people who worked there were knowledgeable in their respective departments,
The quality and depth of information available online, especially via forums, far exceeds what one can expect from a single employee. I don’t see how any store could compete on that aspect, although the online info is probably limited to people who are adept at reading English.