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NihilismNow posted:Suprised ink and paper sell that well. Most companies i work with have a full service contract. You have a bunch of paper and toner in the supply closet and long before you run out the guy from Xerox/Canon/Ricoh comes and brings you new paper/toner. Yeah, but often times people with business contracts (which staples has a lot of) will just come into the store to get emergency supplies with their contract cards.
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May 26, 2016 20:15
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Frys electronics is pretty good as long as you don't want super high end stuff.
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May 26, 2016 20:50
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MicroCenter is the bomb. I've been shopping at the one near me for almost 25 years. I dread the day it goes away.
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May 27, 2016 02:03
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Altex is simple.
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May 27, 2016 02:19
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Krispy Kareem posted:MicroCenter is the bomb. I've been shopping at the one near me for almost 25 years. I dread the day it goes away. The one nearest me is always busy when I go there, I dont think its going away any time soon. Its like having newegg down the street, only better.
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May 27, 2016 02:55
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Haier posted:The last email from them said they were only closing some. The new email from them says: I just went in today. Everything must go, storewide sale, 10-30% off. Lots of pissed-looking employees. Hopefully the markdowns will get more extreme as August gets closer. loving sucks, I went to this same Sports Authority when I was 7 for my first set of soccer cleats 
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May 27, 2016 03:42
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NihilismNow posted:Suprised ink and paper sell that well. Most companies i work with have a full service contract. You have a bunch of paper and toner in the supply closet and long before you run out the guy from Xerox/Canon/Ricoh comes and brings you new paper/toner. Yeah you'd be surprised how often it's basically emergency paper runs and such like that. We mostly buy our paper from Amazon (poor mail guy has to lug that poo poo around) but we used to buy it from Staples because it was convenient and often like last-minute oh drat we're out of paper. Not really ink so much since we have some odd rare/oldish printers than some poo poo hp inkjet but yeah I'd imagine that also does pretty well for last-minute oh gently caress we're out of black ink. Then they closed up the only store near my company last year to "focus on online sales" and we haven't bought anything from them since. I dunno how the gently caress they expect to move to an online-business and compete with Amazon.
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May 27, 2016 07:55
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Xaris posted:I dunno how the gently caress they expect to move to an online-business and compete with Amazon. Staples/Lyreco/Corproate Express and their like are far better positioned to deliver the same goods over and over and over, which is what businesses want.
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May 27, 2016 08:27
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Nonsense posted:Altex is simple. They also know their $$$ customers are IT dudes spending someone else's money so they jack up their prices for lots of stuff because why shouldn't they?
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May 27, 2016 09:51
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I was asked by an anonymous source to post this:anonymous posted:Sears comes up a lot for good reason, and I work for their network provider. We just got the word from on high yesterday that, due to over 2 million Dollars in unpaid bills, we're putting a complete freeze on any and all work for them. Any pending orders for new service (yes, somehow Sears is still trying to open new stores in 2016) are being put on hold or cancelled outright, and any existing sites are having their monitoring disabled with any pending repair work also being cancelled. Any and all questions, comments or complaints are being referred back to Sears corporate.
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Jun 25, 2016 21:41
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Oh this is gonna be good if it's true. When it hits the wider world there will be so much finger pointing by those messed up execs.
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Jun 25, 2016 22:40
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red19fire posted:I just went in today. Everything must go, storewide sale, 10-30% off. Lots of pissed-looking employees. Hopefully the markdowns will get more extreme as August gets closer. Nah. Same thing happened with Circuit city. Some outside company essentially " buys" all the inventory. so you don't get any deals at all. It won't go lower than 30% and anything good will be MAYBE 10% at most, even 1 day before closing.
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Jun 25, 2016 22:50
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Blockbuster was like that....they wouldn't discount their games more than like 10-20% even near the end of the closings.
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Jun 26, 2016 01:33
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FlamingLiberal posted:Blockbuster was like that....they wouldn't discount their games more than like 10-20% even near the end of the closings. Speaking of Blockbuster, this article about why they died came up in another thread. Personally, I blame their mascots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClX9xlwvawA
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Jun 26, 2016 03:46
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Command Ant posted:Speaking of Blockbuster, this article about why they died came up in another thread. this is good
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Jun 26, 2016 04:45
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Command Ant posted:Speaking of Blockbuster, this article about why they died came up in another thread.
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Jun 26, 2016 05:13
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Johnny Aztec posted:Nah. Same thing happened with Circuit city. Some outside company essentially " buys" all the inventory. so you don't get any deals at all. It won't go lower than 30% and anything good will be MAYBE 10% at most, even 1 day before closing. We had a big chain of department stores go out of business here. Said department store was famous for having poo poo stuff no one wanted and no one ever shopped there (hence the going out of business). When they re-opened after their bankruptcy to sell of the remaining merchandise (at the regular 20-30% discount) fights broke out in the stores over the right to buy this slightly discounted lovely merchandise, they had to hire security before the going out of business sale could continue. A going out of business sale seems to have magic properties where people no longer consider if the deal they are getting is any good, it's a clearance sale so it must be good.
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Jun 26, 2016 11:39
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Which European companies will be most affected by Brexit?
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Jun 26, 2016 12:14
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Viruswithshoes posted:Which European companies will be most affected by Brexit? Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland
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Jun 26, 2016 12:36
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NihilismNow posted:A going out of business sale seems to have magic properties where people no longer consider if the deal they are getting is any good, it's a clearance sale so it must be good. This is basically Canada Black Friday, lovely "deals" like 5% to 10% off and people go insane over them, I suspect because they think they should be, since it's such a big deal in the States
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Jun 26, 2016 12:42
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Quantum of Phallus posted:Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland The entire financial sector in London, it's pretty good for Dublin and Frankfurt though.
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Jun 26, 2016 12:48
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Command Ant posted:Speaking of Blockbuster, this article about why they died came up in another thread. Simply amazing that a basically billion dollar company could be effectively ruined overnight by one man's idiocy and ego. Im not surprised at all but still amazed.
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Jun 26, 2016 19:17
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Nutsngum posted:Simply amazing that a basically billion dollar company could be effectively ruined overnight by one man's idiocy and ego. "The internet is worthless." A moron said this in the 21st century. Holy gently caress. I wonder how much Carl Icahn wanted to kill himself after realizing what a moron Jim Keyes was.
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Jun 27, 2016 00:18
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Irrecoverably tanking a profitable company in one year and finishing it off the next year is enough to make me think something else was going on 
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Jun 27, 2016 00:21
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Professor Shark posted:Irrecoverably tanking a profitable company in one year and finishing it off the next year is enough to make me think something else was going on actually no, there really are just a lot of people who are unbelievably stupid who also wind up in charge of things and then ruin them
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Jun 27, 2016 00:23
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Blockbuster got into a streaming deal with Enron in like 1998 or 99. Streaming in 1999 was a pixelated postage-stamp sized video in RealPlayer, so that went about as well as expected. So yeah, Blockbuster was full of business geniuses.
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Jun 27, 2016 00:35
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proof of concept posted:actually no, there really are just a lot of people who are unbelievably stupid who also wind up in charge of things and then ruin them also this was nearly a decade ago and there were still shitloads of old people who were terrified of the internet at the time
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Jun 27, 2016 03:59
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Necc0 posted:also this was nearly a decade ago and there were still shitloads of old people who were terrified of the internet at the time Like Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens. Granted, the Internet was a much different place 10 years ago, and he was 80 + years old at the time, but he sounds like a bumbling retard talking about it. Thanks for making me find this again.
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Jun 27, 2016 04:19
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The more you study business the more you realize that kind of incompetence is normal, trust me
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Jun 27, 2016 04:56
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idk about backroom numbers or the dealings with Netflix but I think that article paints far too rosy a picture of pre-2007 Blockbuster, I remember back in like 2003 BB built a new store and everyone was already "well that ain't gonna last long." I remember clearly that The Total Access stuff and canceling late fees seemed more like desperate moves than brilliant strategy . Maybe they were actually in decent shape but in my corner of America the perception was that they were toast No doubt that new management was really terrible but I think "EVERYTHING WAS GREAT THEN IT SUDDENLY COLLAPSED" is really reaching on the authors part
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Jun 27, 2016 06:37
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The standard no plans weekend day used to be "errands, shopping, borders/Barnes noble book/music browsing/coffee, then lunch/dinner out then rent a physical movie at a physical place." It was nice because your laziest possible day still meant going somewhere and doing a thing. You could take a girl out on "lazy Saturday" and as far as she knew it was a nice date ALL of that is now tapping your phone alone in the dark and boxes magically appear in my apt building, movies and music are instant and often free and I can't be bothered to even watch them on a TV. If I'm single I wouldn't even leave my house now sometimes unless forcing myself to jog
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Jun 27, 2016 07:18
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There was also a large Gen Xers population that openly disliked Blockbuster for a long time, too, after the mid-90s or so. Blockbuster was quite often viewed with a lot of contempt because they were big corporate video store that didn't care NC-17 versions of films (even though they did get around this sometimes with 'unrated' releases) and they weren't the same sort of curated selection of a college town indie video store, they were too slow to upgrade their stock to DVD, they were monsters for dumping (literally) their VHS collections when they finally did because they needed the room for all the new DVD stock they were rebuying and didn't want other local stores to buy up their VHS stock.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:19
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I doubt Blockbuster would have knocked out Netflix, but after reading that article I can definitely imagine a world where we have Netflix alongside BlockBuster on Demand, or a re-branded version of the same company. Family Video is still doing pretty well in my area, and they are essentially doing what Blockbuster tried to do. A lot of in stock movies, you can buy them, and a nice little area for free kids movies, merchandise, and so on. Its always busy and I've even used them myself. The problem is it seemed that the management on Blockbuster was just searching for their golden parachute and the company crumbled as a result.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:24
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JediTalentAgent posted:There was also a large Gen Xers population that openly disliked Blockbuster for a long time, too, after the mid-90s or so. Blockbuster was quite often viewed with a lot of contempt because they were big corporate video store that didn't care NC-17 versions of films (even though they did get around this sometimes with 'unrated' releases) and they weren't the same sort of curated selection of a college town indie video store, they were too slow to upgrade their stock to DVD, they were monsters for dumping (literally) their VHS collections when they finally did because they needed the room for all the new DVD stock they were rebuying and didn't want other local stores to buy up their VHS stock. "Liking music and movies" was a thing that required real effort and driving around looking at physical stuff and networking with people to find out about "that one movie it was insane what's it called oh yeah evil dead heh you haven't heard of it" and then YOU got to be "go watch this movie it's insane heh" to someone else and that could be your whole thing. "I like movies" It wasn't just "tap your phone some more oh yeah I watched this" I'm a millennial (just) but I remember the rummaging around in a cardboard box of disks era like some kind of cultural heritage was being passed down by that one 25 year old in a black tshirt everyone in high school was somehow friends with
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Jun 27, 2016 07:29
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Blockbuster for years was making a lot of money on late return fees. It was adding 15% to their bottom line. The problem was that they would also ding movies returned on time and hope the customer wouldn't remember or would just pay so they could get another movie.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:30
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Therapists and their practices. I can read all your brain magic stuff online.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:50
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Speaking of old media distribution, kids these days don't know how good they have it with their NetFlix and their Kindle. I remember being a teenager and really wanting to read Stephen King's The Dark Tower, but I couldn't because it was out-of-print and the one dogeared used copy I found cost $110 in 1980's money. At Blockbuster we'd hang out near the video return slot like loving scavengers, trying to grab a choice movie before it got restocked.
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Jun 27, 2016 14:19
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naem posted:"Liking music and movies" was a thing that required real effort and driving around looking at physical stuff and networking with people to find out about "that one movie it was insane what's it called oh yeah evil dead heh you haven't heard of it" and then YOU got to be "go watch this movie it's insane heh" to someone else and that could be your whole thing. "I like movies" Teah, that's something I definitely haven't considered yet. Fridays for me from about 1999 until 2003 consisted of getting home from work, then hanging out with my friend, be it at his job (at a music store), or driving around and rummaging around the place that had a lot of used CDs. Then we'd hit up the rental place, pick out a couple of bad horror VHS and watch them while playing board games. When we went to blockbuster we almost never rented DVDs because they had such a poor selection, and they were like $12 for a rental.
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Jun 27, 2016 14:21
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monster on a stick posted:Blockbuster for years was making a lot of money on late return fees. It was adding 15% to their bottom line. The problem was that they would also ding movies returned on time and hope the customer wouldn't remember or would just pay so they could get another movie. They also started counting the days the day you rented it. Unlike Hollywood video who started counting your days the next day. There was some other stuff I can't remember they did better as well.
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Jun 27, 2016 14:46
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I rented VHS for longer than most (up until 2004 when I stopped renting altogether) because the cheapo DVD player I had refused to play scratched discs. Rental DVDs always looked like loving dog chew toys. I want to say my parents actually use Blockbuster's Netflix-like mail service to this day (they live in the stix and can only get stiffly-capped mobile broadband), but I might be mixing that up with another company (Amazon?)
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Jun 27, 2016 16:54
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