Circuit City Stores have been liquidating for almost two weeks now and hopefully some people have found decent deals at the sales. Most big ticket items are probably still not worth it thanks to shady liquidator tactics, but someone, somewhere hopefully scored something at a bargain basement price. Right?
by
Matt Burns
on
January 27, 2009
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I went in and bought a wired keyboard…I was in a hurry, and I needed one asap. I asked one of the employees how much it was, they told me it was “30.95 after our liquidation discount” it sounded a little expensive…but I needed one.
I went home and checked the Microsoft website, the MSRP on the keyboard I bought is 29.95…looks like that liquidation discount is legit eh?
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=030
I went there Sunday and seen non thing worth buying, most stuff was marked 10% off and ONLY the cables was 30% off but some dvd’s was marked 20% off that was ok, but there’s no real sales there YET!
Here in Morgan Hill, California, the local “The City” store (a subset of Circuit City, without major appliances), one fellow wrote to the local newspaper that they were advertising deep liquidation discounts on their jacked-up prices. In the end, the liquidation prices were the same, or higher than regular prices, both at The City and at the competition. With Circuit City screwing their customers in this fashion, it’s no wonder that they augered in. Good riddance.
I have gone twice, once each week of the liquidation. The deals on cables are a joke as the markup is about 7000%, they can afford to slash the price 70% with no loss of profit. All prices have been jacked up in most areas to MSRP and above. The GPS units were all priced above what bestbuy (across the street) was asking. Videogames were no deal either. Checked out computer supplies and they were over priced when you take the 10% off. Movies were not a bargain on blu-ray.
Will check again this weekend, maybe better luck, but they are “still getting trucks in every day” so there is likely to be nothing good (prices) for a month.
I got a TomTom RDS-TMC Traffic Kit from CC for $53.00 … this ends up being about a 45% discount.
At my CC in Reno virtually no good deals. It is amazing how people get glazed over and giddy when someone says “liquidation electronics”. It really makes these liquidators look like geniuses. By the looks of things, maybe they are. This isn’t the first time this P.T. Barnum scam has worked.
Mine had a Lenovo netbook (1.6GHz,1gb/160gb) for $350, which isn’t bad
If you’re talking about the S10, that’s pretty much what it costs online. I think there’s even a sale on those for $299 right now.
I got to keep one the one I tested, its a great little unit. $299 is a fair price.
Twin Cities area..checked at three local stores in each of past 2 weeks – nothing special at all. Prices were no lower than their previous ad pricing and often even higher. Comparable (or higher!) than the deals across the road at Best Buy. There won’t be “good deals” and a real blow-out until we see pricing at 25%+ off MSRP…better would likely be around 40% off MSRP.
Did notice lots of ‘looker’ traffic, but watching for 45 minutes in one store and very few people actually buying.
anyone know how much an xbox 360 is at the city? i need to know soon!
Quote from another source:
“Bargain hunters go to these sales expecting it to be the store they knew with the merchandise they used to sell, only at discount prices. But all bets are off when a liquidation sale happens. Nothing is the same and nothing should be assumed or taken for granted.
The first thing to know is that going-out-of-business sales are almost always run by a liquidator, not the store who’s name is still on the sign. The outside company comes in, pays for everything and takes over. The moment the percent-off sale signs go up, the original store is no longer involved. This can happen really really fast. The liquidators act in an overnight basis if need be. So when the sale starts, technically Circuit City is already gone. Dead. Closed. The store inventory and employees (usually) and everything else are now owned and operated by the liquidator, and they are the ones who are making the rules and setting these prices and no surprise, they want to keep them as high as they can. They usually would jack the “original” price up to a crazy level to make you feel happy. You may able to tear the liquidation price tag up to see the real “original” price. You may be surprised. Many liquidation prices are actually higher than street prices.
Other tactics to watch out for are merchandise transfers in both directions, where many of the undamaged resalable items will be packed up and shipped out before the sale starts -this was a major factor with the CompUSA closeout sales. They’re not going to closeout stuff they can resell for full value elsewhere. They pack it and ship it by the truckload. The sale is just what’s left. The bones, but little meat.
Even worse in this case, Circuit City didn’t actually own much of its merchandise so it may have had to ship a lot of it back to the manufacturers. CC was also having problems making payments for deliveries back in the fall so stores were already understocked. The stores in my area closed last year so I am not sure just how much was actually left to sell.
Another kind of merchandise transfers happens when the liquidator brings in their own goods (remember they do this for a living and tend to have warehouses full of random merchandise) and adds them to the closeout sale. Thus you can walk into a closeout and sometimes find the store filled with stuff that had nothing to do with the store that’s closing. Clothes or canned goods or books or toys at Circuit City, for example, or electronics and handtools and VHS tapes stacked in bins in a Linens & Things store closeout. Never assume you will find what the store used to sell. Could be anything.
If something doesn’t sell, they often pack it up and send it off to the next closeout. This is also why the bargains sometimes seem to disappear. Instead of selling at low low prices, the liquidator will just ship out anything of actual value and try to sell it later. They don’t want to sell it to you for 50% off when they can send it to the next closeout, raise the price back to 100% and offer 10% off that. No takers? Ship it again.
There will be tens of thousands of stores closing in the next two years and no chain or store is safe. The liquidators will be looking to maximize their profits amid the glut so expect to see these and other tactics used over and over again. “