Circuit City may be bringing in liquidators to help clear out the remaining merchandise, but watch out for the first couple rounds of deals. You may find the prices, while bedazzled with huge sale signs, are not that great. Shoppers found this out during the first wave of store closings back in November. Eventually, most items should go cheap but beware the perceived sale. So here are couple of tips.
- Know what you want before you start shopping. Bargain hunters are notoriously impulse shoppers that are conned into purchasing overpriced items just ’cause they say sale sign. Have a plan and a shopping list beforehand.
- Do not trust the previous price. Liquidators are notoriously shady and will do anything to concoct a sale. Do your price shopping before you go searching for that great deal.
- Price shop at Best Buy before and after. Some Best Buy stores may have sales to compete with certain liquidated items at Circuit City. Even if the big ticket item costs a few buck more across the street from Best Buy, that store will be there when something happens. If the price is lower at Best Buy and you don’t care about serivce, ask to see the head scammer now running the Circuit City Store; he will probably beat Best Buy’s price.
- Consider the warranty. If you are warranty-type person, Circuit City doesn’t own their warranties and therefore they *should* still be good after the company is gone. The service plans might even be on sale too but read the fine print. Most of the time the warranty is a replacement plan based on purchase price. So if you bought a $1000 LCD at 75% off and you claim the warranty, you would get a check for only $250.
- Trust the Circuit City employees. You need to remember that most Circuit City employees at this point have removed their kool-aid IV and are on the customers side 100%. What do they have to lose at this point. Ask them about the price. Is it too high? Will it come down in a few days? How units many are left? You should find that most will bend over backwards to help you the customer and screw over the company that is laying ‘em off in a few days.
- Gift Cards. Spend ‘em before you lose ‘em. They will be worthless when Circuit City is closed and are not redeemable for cash. Remember, you can spend ‘em on the official website too.
There should be great deals out there but watch out for the scams.
Wait, so your saying that if I buy a $1000 LCD TV at 75% off (which would make it only cost $250) and I tried to claim the warranty, they wouldnt give me a full $1000? Only the $250 that I paid? What a scam!
Radie, on the assumption that you are being sarcastic:
It isn’t necessarily a scam, it’s just bad ju ju. They aren’t going to warn you about it before hand. So basically, if you get the TV home and the thing is DOA… you’re screwed. You’re out $250 and a TV because the thing won’t even turn on. And if you’re store is bye-bye before you can get them to do an in-store replacement or it’s the last one there, you are just plain screwed. So yes, it is something to worry about.
Yes Radie, they would only give you up to value of the warranty IF they can’t fix it. The value of the warranty probably limits how much the warranty company is willing to spend to repair something.
Warranties are usually priced off the purchase price of the item usually, so a $250 warranty is a lot cheaper than a $1000 warranty.
It’s like you insure $10000 diamond ring for only a value of $1000, you’re only ever going to be paid $1000 for that ring by the insurance company, no matter what the actual value of the ring.
I suppose you could by the $1000 warranty coverage. Technically, you’re not over insuring the TV.
Steve, even something marked down 99% should be covered by the manufacturers warranty, so what you’re saying isn’t true.
My main point (besides being a sarcastic prick) was that while, yes it isnt exactly a great deal, ther isnt anything “wrong” with much of this stuff and that warranty one was a good example of it. Its like the pic that runs with the article… Sure its only 5% off for a savings of $10 bucks, but it is just a crappy sale, not a scam or a way to get over on you.
You are a bloody moron and must have failed math in elementary school. People like you deserve to get screwed by companies, and they do it ALL the time. Take a look at the picture ONE MORE TIME and tell me what 5% of almost $1000 is…?
Now, does the story make sense?
lol. i went to mevyns during their liquidation “sale” I was looking at some Tshirts that were priced at $14 just 2-3 weeks before the sale. When i went and they said 60-70% off everything i was happy. I thought i was gonna leave with 5 pairs of those shirts. WRONG. When i went in, the sign above said the price used to be 25 dollars and it dropped down to like 12. LOL i just walked out of the store after that crap.
Problem with percentage off sales is they’re almost always based off retail price, which almost nothing is sold at.
Say a TVs retail price is $1500, but it’s commonly available about $1000, so when even at 50% off, it’s still $750 for that TV.
I have a couple hundred of dollars of gift cards for Circuit City stashed up, will it be possible to turn those in for money?
no stupid
No, but you can exchange them for Circuit City stock.
I’ll be taking my G1 with ShopSavvy for this one for sure.
Maybe it was just to illustrate the story but 5% off the nearly $1,000 item that was ticketed would be more like $50 off rather than the $10. But you probably already knew that.
That’s why it’s the image.
THEY TRIED TO SCAM ME!
I just got back from Circuit City in Citrus Heights, Ca. 95610
I strolled through the extremely unorganized and screwed up store, finally decided I would pick up a 6′ y-cable (3.5mm to rca stereo). All cables are 30% off, it’s posted in a few places throughout the store. There are 2 hooks with this product, they are both marked 14.99…
I go to the customer service counter to check out (all check-stands are closed), and the guy tells me the cable is 18.99.. I tell him what the racks it was on said, he tells me he has to go by what the computer says. I remind/ask him politely that/if the normal policy would be to charge me the display price; and I asked him if he wanted to walk over tot he rack with me to see the price and compare model #s etc. He says “no”. At the same time he was trying to tell me it was only 20% off as well, while I was standing next to a sign, literally within 2 feet of it and it was facing him, saying “All Cables 30% off”…
I walked out…
Let me clear some things up about this horribly written article. Author, please get your facts straight..
I don’t know who conducted the previous 155 store closings but yes, those were done differently. Here is the way it is as of now:
The liquidators currently employd to sell through the stores are not “Scammers”. The liquidator in our store is servicing three other stores state wide. His name is Larry and he is a very nice guy.
He works for Circuit City… management still runs the store and makes decisions. He is not our boss, if you ask for the “Head Scammer” (as the article advises you) If you aren’t asked politely to leave the store for your rudeness you will talk to a manager about your “question”, not Larry.
We will not match Best Buy during liquidation… period.
We are not marking things up just to mark them down and call it a sale. Prices were frozen Saturday morning at MSRP. It’s the easist way to do it because then all products start at a level playing field and go through the 10%,20%,30% etc markdown phases. Remember, the idea is speed… so getting bogged down in special sale pricing on individual items is not effecient.
These sales are not scams. Author, do the due diligence before you make defamatory remarks.
Chris,
At a Circuit City in Denver, at least price was marked up before going on “sale” on Saturday. On Friday, after I saw the announcement of the closing of your company, I checked the price on a Sony LCD 32 inch TV (720 L series). The site said $549 — no mention of sale, web-only pricing etc. I called the store as well Friday night and got the same information – $549. On Saturday morning, the price on the TV was now $599. Just like Andy, I walked out of the store.
Chris,
This is the EXACT reason CC is going out of business, CC will be stuck with all the inventory there trying to “liquidate”.
Old Dinosaur business not able to bend and move with the current and future economy, see ya , survival of the fittest and CC was obscenely overweight.
I saw an example of shifting prices today. Been watching a Olympus Evolt 510 for about a week. Today the start price was up another $50.00 from last Sunday and still on 10% off. Now here’s the rub. Price with discount about 450. For about $20 more, on many online sites, I can get the same camera in a package with some extras and a guarantee. I thought maybe I could negotiate with a liquidator. I asked to speak with one. The staff shared they didn’t have a clue how to find him. I tried to talk to a manager, but he was walking around with his cell phone to his ear and dismissed me with the comment – the prices are what they are, take them or leave them. I left them. They deserve to go under.
response to Chris:
In regard to a few “straight facts”, we should consider these:
Visited a Albany, GA CC store on Thursday (1-29-09), looking at Sony receivers. This is what I found…
STR-DG720 – CC store price=$306 – SonyStyle price=$299.99 (i.e. MSRP)
STR-DG820 – CC store price=$426 – SonyStyle price=$399.99 (i.e. MSRP)
The STR-DG520 wasn’t priced, so I asked a salesperson to help out. He went to a computer terminal, typed in a few characters and then came to me with a price of $168.xx (which included the 20% store advertised and ‘bannered’ discount). Now, going to the SonyStyle website, it shows a MSRP of $199.99. 20% off of that = 159.99. I am sure all here are capable of working the math here.
(Note: the SonyStyle (i.e. manuf) website prices were confirmed this day (2-1-09)).
Now, this may not be a ’scam’ as some have said – but it is *clearly* misrepresentation… and exploitation. Thank God for the internet.
I didn’t even have the MSRP with me when in the store (that research started after I got home that night) – but something was telling me to walk out of the store…
… which is exactly what I did.
– john.
They are not scams but simply not deals. 10% of MSRP or Manufactures Suggested Retail Price builds in a profit of about 20-30% for retail items. (Lower from cars which is about between 4-13%). Retailers in this recent environment are running at about 10% below MSRP except for the most popular items or ones which have restrictions-a good example is apple products which are locked at the MSRP with a few exceptions. However, as times goes on liquidators are under pressure to move the final volume they will begin a step progression of deeper discounts. That is why the suggestion is to shop later in a liquidation sale and not earlier. BTW, if you are worried about a product working..just plug it in at the store…they can and will do that :) nothing should be DOA . Just be patient and the liquidation sales CAN work.
BTW…Liquidators are one of the most profitable companies in the US and make huge profits. Take a look on the web. Just FYI…I guess the are nice for a reason-so be smart.
Prices are at MSRP?? Are you kidding me? That is indeed a markup because nobody sells things at those prices. If they really wanted to give people a deal and move merchandise quickly, they would have frozen all the prices at the currently marked prices in the system, and then started the mark downs. So in the grand scheme of things it is pretty much a scam anyways. I’m a CC employee and I was working yesterday and people were pretty much just walking out of the store without paying for it. We didn’t care because we’re getting screwed over anyways. If anyone is really looking for a deal, wait until after things are at least 60-70% off.
I was in Saturday afternoon…and the place was flooded with people but not many people were walking out with anything. This is not CC doing this though. It is a well established liquidation business plan. They do expect the uneducated shopper will empty some of the shelves. What they did not account for is that in our recent economic environment…shoppers are thinking first…spending second. This will hit the liquidators harder than they have experienced in the past.
I think its fairly normal for the first day of a liquidation “sale” to not have very good sale prices. Obviously the company wants to get as much as possible for their merchandise. The article makes a good point, that a person should know beforehand the item you are looking for. Go ahead and choose a model of flatpanel, for instance, that you want. Ask an employee how many of that item the store has, and just be patient for them to lower the price to an acceptable level. Also remember to check more than one store if there are several Circuit City stores in your area.
Yes, the sell offs are a scam….theyve been rippin
people off for years and the bottom finally fell
out…buisness now is “what kind of trick can we
use to get the money” not “lets figure out a way
to make a better product or outdo the competition”; a form of fraud.
Aliens bought most of the Earth technology to give as cute gag gifts.
http://weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/aliens-clear-out-circuit-city/
we had a “cc outlet” store in muskegon, and it when it closed it was under the management of that liquidator company and I really walked out the door in disbelief. I looked up several of the items they had for sale on 1. newegg (pcs) and 2. best buy (TVs) and on average CC was about 30% HIGHER with the 30% OFF SALE than the other two retailers. Now tell me if that makes in sence in the universe? Whoever is running the show is expecting ppl to be blinded by big sale signs and just bend over and take it with no kiss and I hope most consumers are not mindless lemmings that will follow the herd and might think 1st and buy 2nd
yeah I accidentally told me friend to buy a canon sd790is at CC cause it was 20% off, which came to about 199, i thought it was a decent price. but then i went home and checked out newegg, where i buy like…everything. and the same camera was on sale for 169.99 free shipping, with a free 8gb sd card. i felt bad haha. still havent told him though.
I still haven’t found any deals at CC. There seem to be a fair number of cars in the parking lot, but most people leave empty handed. Currently they have cameras up to 30% off the msrp, but it is higher than what you would pay at Amazon to get it at your door. CC isn’t discounting the display cameras either.
I asked an employee when he thought they might discount the items again and he said no idea. They don’t tell them.