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Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

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Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#231

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

KoftaBob wrote: post #181
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is purely anecdotal. Take it with a grain of salt. We have a "high-end" Simon mall, in a town near where I live. It's quite "upscale," with Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, etc. It has an Apple Store near the South entrance, and a Microsoft Store, near the center. The Apple Store is always packed. I haven't been there in a few months, so I have no idea what's going on with it at the moment, but it has always be…

Lemme guess, Roosevelt Field Mall? Sounds like my experiences at that mall.

Walt Whitman, but Roosevelt Field is about the same, from what I hear (I know someone that worked as a "genius" at that store).

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#232

Post by AlphaWeaver »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #215
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #21

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable. I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to…

that’s the first I’ve heard of that area called “the triangle.” mind sharing what it’s significant for and what kind of person would fit? I’ve considered moving to the SE for better weather and job opportunities as a new grad.

To provide a counterpoint to the other commenters, I quite like the Triangle! (As someone who has lived there for several years now.)

I attend one of the major universities (NC State) but plan to stay here after I graduate. The three major municipalities (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Durham) are different enough and have a wide variety of suburbs around them to offer a lot of options for different price points, if you're planning on moving here.

I've met lots of different people in the area, and there are tons of things to do. Lots of good food.

The traffic isn't that bad. The major interstate that connects the three areas (I-40) gets congested some during the day, but it's nothing like what you'd see out in the valley. Living anywhere in the Triangle means you're effective 30-40 minutes away from everywhere else, so I know lots of people who live in e.g. Raleigh and work in Durham (or in the Park.)

The weather is pretty good! A bit hot in the summer, but spring and fall are really nice, and the winter isn't too cold. We usually only get 1-2 snows a year.

The best part though: you're 2 hours from the mountains and 2 hours from the beach. When you want to take a vacation, you've got both options to choose from.

Above all else, it's a fast growing area. Our public transit needs a lot of work, and there are plenty of other areas for improvement (bringing more startup talent to the area, rather than older established companies.) It's growing pretty notably though, and I for one am excited to be a part of the process _before_ the area explodes. 10 years from now, the area is going to be a lot more popular.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#233

Post by city41 »

m3kw9 wrote: post #229

Went in to a MS store just once ever. Before I go in, I always ask myself what have I not seen in windows already? Touch screen with a windows, not very hard to predict how it is same as using a pointer. That VR demo? I’m not gonna wait and look stupid. Maybe they failed to sell intrigue compared to Apple stores. Their products has mystique to it when they first come out and you always want to try it.

Apple hasn't really released anything new in quite some time. Pretty much just iterative releases and upgrades. yet Apple stores are often so crowded you can't even walk in them. I think it's more than just new product launches.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#234

Post by rsync »

muststopmyths wrote: post #56
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #21

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable. I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to…

Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to check out various Surfaces in person as well. I will say, the surfaces/laptops side of the store was usually empty. Some kids playing with the Xbox or people at the counter getting help seemed to be the extent of traffic the past couple of years. They seem to be aggressively destroying any paltry remaining goodwill with consumer enthusiasts.…

"Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to check out various Surfaces in person as well."

Agreed - about that specific store. However, I must reflect that after years of going there with my children, we spent exactly zero dollars there.

We had fun and played video games and hung out and futzed around with various "exotic" computing devices from MS ... and we never had any intention of buying anything.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#235

Post by fatnoah »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #21

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable. I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to…

>Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to genuinely care about fixing your issue

This was my experience as well. As a bonus, my kiddo always wanted to stop into the Microsoft store. There was something warm and inviting about it, especially in comparison to the Apple store (we lived about 1/2 a block from each).

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#236

Post by bobthepanda »

simonh wrote: post #111
muststopmyths wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to check out various Surfaces in person as well. I will say, the surfaces/laptops side of the store was usually empty. Some kids playing with the Xbox or people at the counter getting help seemed to be the extent of traffic the past couple of years. They seem to be aggressively destroying any paltry remaining goodwill with consumer enthusiasts.…

I don't really see the connection. If the only traffic to the stores was a handful of people, how can this have any significant effect on customer good will? They can't be both empty and influential. It seems like the stores were a missed opportunity, but they always had the odds stacked against them. Whatever you can get in an MS store, you could get a much cheaper alternative running the same software at another el…

Was it low traffic or low sales traffic? Helpdesk traffic is unlikely to drive much in terms of immediate sales, but establishing a good helpdesk that can be trusted is very key to trust in the brand. And helpdesk is usually a get in, drop your laptop off, get out and pick it up later type of thing.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#237

Post by tracker1 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #182
simonh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it actually serving a purpose if not enough people are actually going into the stores, at the demos and playing with the toys? I don't think this is abandoning consumer tech. Their ~90% domination is still a thing. They gained it without stores, and the stores weren't helping them maintain it. There seems to be this cognitive lag where it seems like the stores should be a big deal, should be significant, givin…

I think that an interesting part of that lag is directly Windows Phone related. Phones seem to be the one consumer hardware product that customers "demand" a store to exist. Look at the retail landscape, other than big box electronics stores and office stores and Wal-Mart/Target, who is selling consumer electronics physically? There's a lot of strip malls packed with phone stores. People that want PC laptops/desktops…

Haven't really been a console person for a long while... That said, I pretty much favor big-box stores for a few different items namely game consoles, televisions and monitors. It's likely just my own anecdotal bias here, but I've had more of these die in the first month of use than any other electronics, and having a place I can go to "now" to get it replaced is usually a huge deal.

When the first X-box came out, the first one died within an hour of use... the second in about two days, the third is still running (or was last time I looked at it). 1/3 of TVs or Monitors I've mail ordered have been doa or didn't make it a month.

In the end, I really do hope some of them survive as there's something to be said for not mail order. Costco is usually really decent, and Best Buy is sometimes really frustrating, but I like having some options even if I don't like buying in person and would prefer mail order.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#238

Post by Redoubts »

The company tells The Verge that no layoffs will result from today’s decision. “Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this diverse talent pool is stronger than ever,”

Impressive, but pretty curious how they plan to successfully pull this off.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#239

Post by tracker1 »

nonrecursive wrote: post #164
sterwill wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case. I rarely go inside my local mall (Southpoint, Durham NC), but on sunny weekends the Apple store was often jam-packed with people. So busy that customers had a hard time getting through the door. Sales people talking non-stop and processing orders as fast as possible. There was a Microsoft store inside the main mall building, just a few minutes away. I walked by it a few times, but it was usually…

Good god the Southpoint Apple store is terrible. I went there once because I wanted to buy a new iPad and apple pencil so I could participate in a digital painting workshop the next day, and they wanted me to wait 45 minutes before they would help me. I said that I wasn't going to wait that long and hopefully wasn't an asshole about it (it's never cool to be a jerk to retail employees!) and they did manage to ring me…

I've had a couple decent experiences in the Apple store in Chandler, AZ mall. First was a battery replacement in-warranty, second was a pickup, then a return/exchange. The battery replacement did take longer than I would have preferred about half an hour, but not bad in general. A few years later, I got a mid-2014 rmbp, and didn't know they'd soldered on the RAM and that the storage wasn't upgradeable... wound up forking over for a top end model.

Of course with each progressive release being a little more cumbersome, and never really liking iOS devices. Some of the security locks that you can't turn off (enabled 2fa then sold off one of my two devices, don't know how the 2fa code got delivered to the device I was trying to re-log into, but was lucky in the end). I gifted my last mbp this past xmas, and haven't looked back.

I am mostly on my desktop or work issued laptop now. Hoping to see an upper-mid to high-end Ryzen model with at least 64gb ram and at least an RTX 2070 level gpu. All the current gen Ryzen laptops are seriously gimped in one way or another.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#240

Post by braythwayt »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #96
gipp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but a large portion of the Apple store crowds has always been people just hanging around and goofing off on the laptops. IIRC it's policy in those places to always let people do that however long they want, even if there's clearly no intent to buy anything. I've always wondered what portion of those crowds are actually customers. EDIT: Yes, everyone, I understand the marketing and lifetime-value reasons for doi…

That happens in many stores. I call them "store groupies." Around here, vape stores have them in droves. I remember them hanging around Science-Fiction bookstores; often using the back rooms to have D&D games. I think that every one of them becomes a customer, eventually. Many of them become evangelists, which can sometimes be even more valuable.

There was a "Byte Store" on Queen West in Toronto in the early days of personal computers.

There were--cough--a number of teenagers hanging around like groupies. One of them--cough--may even have installed their heavily customized SuperStarTrek game, and had it become the store's favourite demo.

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