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Yvershek posted:Apparently Netflix and other services are starting the same trend for blu-rays and dvds. It's getting stores like Best Buy to start focusing on fridges and other kinds of home appliances.
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Apr 25, 2017 14:10
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FlamingLiberal posted:I know some have made the argument that the beginning of the end for Circuit City was when they fired all of the salespeople they were paying commission and replaced them with regular employees who didn't have anywhere near the knowledge about the company's products. I've heard this argument and I don't buy it. Circuit City was going to die anyway. The average customer doesn't need a knowledgeable sales person whose going to add 10 to 20% to the sales price. Audio/visual stuff is much easier to install and configure than before and if you need help there's plenty of free options online. What I don't understand is that I shopped at Circuit City semi-regularly and that place was always deserted even though it was supposedly the 2nd largest electronics retailer. So it's playing out like Glengarry Glen Ross. First place is a car, 2nd are some steak knives, and 3rd is H.H. Gregg.
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Apr 25, 2017 14:33
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Krispy Kareem posted:I've heard this argument and I don't buy it. Circuit City was going to die anyway. The average customer doesn't need a knowledgeable sales person whose going to add 10 to 20% to the sales price. Audio/visual stuff is much easier to install and configure than before and if you need help there's plenty of free options online. Yeah, honestly with modern A/V, if you're too dumb to match colors with RCA plugs, I'm sure you know someone who can do that for you in exchange for a beer.
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Apr 25, 2017 14:36
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there wolf posted:You're already doing all the work of picking what you want and finding it, so why add having to wander a big-box store and wait in line at the till? I find increasingly that if you put in the time to research well reviewed and value for money products you end up looking for brands/lines that big box stores don't stock.
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Apr 25, 2017 14:39
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Pocket Billiards posted:I find increasingly that if you put in the time to research well reviewed and value for money products you end up looking for brands/lines that big box stores don't stock. This is it. Look online at any models you find in store and there are 3 better models, for the same price, shipped to your door.
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Apr 25, 2017 15:35
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FlamingLiberal posted:I know some have made the argument that the beginning of the end for Circuit City was when they fired all of the salespeople they were paying commission and replaced them with regular employees who didn't have anywhere near the knowledge about the company's products. I worked at CC near the end when I was 18, and I can confirm this speeded the decline. They fired all the top tv sellers and just had random employees (like me, a guy whose job it was to unload trucks and retrieve orders) float around the TV area trying desperately to answer questions). My typical answer to queries about stuff like 720 vs 1080 was that you always wanted the bigger numbers. We asked my boss where I could go to learn more about what I was selling and he printed off two pages of the Wikipedia article on LCD technology. He also told me that plasma TV's we're the best and definitely the wave of the future, so sorry to anyone I sold one of those to. It was funny though. Before they fired them all the best salesperson by a huge margin was this fat dude with a bowl cut who was married to one of the customer service ladies. It was his habit to always walk the customer up there himself and whenever he did the wife and him would always be loudly bickering while she checked the customer out. She'd say stuff like "it's almost two and you've only sold three today, get back in the game!" And he'd call a devil woman and tell her to ring it up already. The customer would be looking bewildered at me while I helped them load it into their car. It was a weird loving relationship. Apparently after screaming at each other all day they went home and played a powerhouse tank/healer combination on WoW. My friend played with them and said they were always sniping at each other on Ventrilo. I wonder if him getting fired while she remained to work there for a few months improved their relationship...
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Apr 25, 2017 15:39
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Bonzo posted:*buys $10 item* This is why I feel like I'm on the right track by being a little stoned during all face-to-face retail interactions. I'm in a pleasant mood and I'm perfectly willing to sit through all this nonsense and just smile and nod. I do just give them my childhood home phone number and ZIP Code, that way everybody wins.
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Apr 25, 2017 15:56
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I used to be a regular customer at Best Buy, but I stopped going when instead of having anything in stock, it became "You can go to our website." No, if I'm going to shop online, I'll find somewhere cheaper. I'm in your store because I want to take it home now, not go home and order it from you. The BB I used to go to had been crammed with aisles and aisles of merchandise. Now, on the rare occasions when I do return, it's just vast opens areas.
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Apr 25, 2017 21:42
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The time I ordered a large grill and got free 2-day shipping of 150lbs of metal was when I knew online was going to win.
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Apr 25, 2017 21:45
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Is Burlington Coat Factory circling the drain? I paid a visit to a local store the other day and at drat near half of the entire store's floor space was an empty expanse of nothing. For a moment, I thought the place was closing up and liquidating, but I didn't see any of the usual big yellow clearance signs.
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Apr 25, 2017 22:03
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Davros1 posted:I used to be a regular customer at Best Buy, but I stopped going when instead of having anything in stock, it became "You can go to our website." No, if I'm going to shop online, I'll find somewhere cheaper. I'm in your store because I want to take it home now, not go home and order it from you. Yeah, I went to BB for a specific vacuum cleaner, they didn't have it in stock, but i could go to the website and have it shipped to the store for free pickup. Whereas I could get the same thing on Amazon for less, shipped to my door for free in the same timeframe. red19fire has a new favorite as of 03:04 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 23:41
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Domestic Amuse posted:Is Burlington Coat Factory circling the drain? I paid a visit to a local store the other day and at drat near half of the entire store's floor space was an empty expanse of nothing. For a moment, I thought the place was closing up and liquidating, but I didn't see any of the usual big yellow clearance signs. The stock is trading at close to $100 a share so maybe
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Apr 25, 2017 23:42
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Rough Lobster posted:He also told me that plasma TV's we're the best and definitely the wave of the future, so sorry to anyone I sold one of those to. iirc at the time they were actually better than LCDs, which had motion ghosting issues early on.
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Apr 26, 2017 00:25
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Disproportionation posted:iirc at the time they were actually better than LCDs, which had motion ghosting issues early on. I'd put the final wave of plasma tvs ahead of any LCD. My dad has a pioneer kuro that he had isf calibrated and outside of hdr content I'd pick it over my 4K Samsung any day of the week. It's still going strong but he'll have to upgrade to oled if he wants something better. I mostly hated our local Circuit cities, even during the commission days, the salespeople were scummy sharks that barely knew the products. We were fortunate to have Sound Advice in the area and they had a huge price range of electronics and decent staff. They got kinda lovely at the end, pushing monster cables and stuff like that but from the time I could afford my own stuff until close to the end, I bought 90% of my electronics there.
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Apr 26, 2017 02:51
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Yeah, Plasmas rock if you put them someplace where there isn't any glare. Deep blacks...smooth motions...reflections of every nearby window.
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Apr 26, 2017 03:08
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I have a 2006 Pioneer and a 2008 Panasonic plasma and without a doubt they both look better than any lcd I've ever seen. Even ones from 2017. The only thing I ever saw that beat plasma image quality is OLED. Still too far out of my price range, though.
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Apr 26, 2017 03:25
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Krispy Kareem posted:I've heard this argument and I don't buy it. Circuit City was going to die anyway. The average customer doesn't need a knowledgeable sales person whose going to add 10 to 20% to the sales price. Audio/visual stuff is much easier to install and configure than before and if you need help there's plenty of free options online. It's not about whether a customer needs them; it's about whether they want them. There's a large group of consumers who just want to be told by someone convincingly expert that this what they want to do, and I think the trend away from proper-staffing and career salespersons did a lot to push that group right into the hands of online shopping. If you're going to spend over an hour in a Walmart only to find out they don't have what you want and can't tell you why what they do have is better, then you might as well setup that Amazon account and have a reliable 2-day wait with every purchase.
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Apr 26, 2017 04:37
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Plasmas are awesome. I was at the NAB show yesterday and Panasonic is still working on (unannounced) OLEDs to get plasma quality. Of course if you're a real (rich) pro you have the Sony OLED or Dolby monitor anyway...
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Apr 26, 2017 04:40
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Plasma did have some coolfeatures but they were also notoriously fragile. I think a buddy of mine bricked his just by laying it down flat while he was building the stand for it.
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Apr 26, 2017 04:54
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I was thinking about this the other day, but when did TED Talks lose their influence? I remember being downright inspired by some of them, but now they're either a punchline or, at best, sorta forgotten. Was it when they expanded it with the whole TedX thing? Was it when it was saturated by Silicon Valley snake oil? When did they lose their cultural influence?
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Apr 26, 2017 06:34
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Probably about the time every second motivational speaker type started describing what they were doing as a 'TED talk.'
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Apr 26, 2017 07:30
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Apr 26, 2017 07:31
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I don't understand that image, Lincoln's Wax.
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Apr 26, 2017 09:04
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It's from the Amanda Palmer ted talk where she teaches people how to be better panhandlers. Just one of the idiotic sessions. Right up there with "how to tie your shoes " and "how to wipe your hands with only one paper towel" spoiler alert- you sling your hands around like a goddamned animal and curl up on the towel in the floor of the train station and wonder about life on the surface. I think when people learned more about it and the outlandish costs involved and the quality of the content is just all over the place. And it seems to have been that way for a long time. One of my favorite talks is the "how to listen to classical music" it's quality. Next suggested video is some white guy beatboxing techno. I think Tedx just made the bad aspects much worse. Every loving idiot in town that saw a Tony Robbins show thinks they've got the next big thing- but wait it's not a thing, it's an idea! Not an idea for a thing, nonono. A vague idea about the nature of ideas! Boom, paradigm shifted, business disrupted. I had an idea to do a talk about what's wrong with six sigma while field dressing a deer onstage and from what I saw locally, it wouldn't have been the worst.
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Apr 26, 2017 10:04
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The original run of stuff was kind of interesting but unfortunately the concept of TED Talks is directly wired into the brains of all the worst people at your company so you'll hear about them loving endlessly, and yeah the concept has been diluted to the point that homoepaths will try and cure cancer with it.
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Apr 26, 2017 10:36
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Am I crazy or was there a TED Talk that was just some batshit old woman rambling on about how humans are all descended from secret sea-apes?
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Apr 26, 2017 10:44
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The Onion "What is the biggest rock?" TED Talk was more illuminating than any actual TED Talk I've seen.
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Apr 26, 2017 11:06
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The problem with TED talks is it's a lot of "idea people" who are all about talking an idea to death but not actually implementing the solution in a practical manner.
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Apr 26, 2017 11:28
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TED Talks are still used by lazy or dumb teachers who take whatever the whoever is talking about as gospel because they're on a stage
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Apr 26, 2017 11:59
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WampaLord posted:The problem with TED talks is it's a lot of "idea people" who are all about talking an idea to death but not actually implementing the solution in a practical manner. Counterpoint, the lady who did a TED talk about wearing second-hand clothes really was dressed like poo poo. But yeah, it's like browsing Indigogo. Lots of crazy, futuristic ideas that will never see realization.
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Apr 26, 2017 12:16
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Lincoln`s Wax posted:I had an idea to do a talk about what's wrong with six sigma while field dressing a deer onstage and from what I saw locally, it wouldn't have been the worst. I'm in.
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Apr 26, 2017 13:07
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Prokhor Zakharov posted:Am I crazy or was there a TED Talk that was just some batshit old woman rambling on about how humans are all descended from secret sea-apes? You are not crazy. She (and the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis") has been around foreverrrrr.
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Apr 26, 2017 13:50
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I don't like to give Sam Hyde credit usually, but his rambling TEDx Talk that progressed into mentally ill conspiracy theorist was a pretty good performance
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Apr 26, 2017 13:57
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s
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Apr 26, 2017 18:10
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steinrokkan posted:The Onion "What is the biggest rock?" TED Talk was more illuminating than any actual TED Talk I've seen. They're all good, but my favorite was this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
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Apr 26, 2017 18:13
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Lincoln`s Wax posted:Just one of the idiotic sessions. That narrows it down
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Apr 26, 2017 18:26
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Davros1 posted:I used to be a regular customer at Best Buy, but I stopped going when instead of having anything in stock, it became "You can go to our website." Ugh, THIS. I absolutely hate when stores do that and it's one of the biggest reasons I don't even try brick and mortar retail anymore. It's not the employees fault of course, I just can't understand how some exec thinks this is an acceptable course of action. What really kills me is when the store offers to order something for you like it's a huge favor and tell you it'll arrive in 10-12 days. Excuse me? Amazon can deliver to me in under an hour if I want to pay $5 or in two hours for free. I realize I went off on a slight crazy rant there but that's one of my biggest retail pet peeves and the main reason I avoid stores if I can help it. Subjunctive posted:The time I ordered a large grill and got free 2-day shipping of 150lbs of metal was when I knew online was going to win. Same here. For me it was when Amazon delivered my brand new lawnmower in two days for free.
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Apr 26, 2017 19:59
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Domestic Amuse posted:Is Burlington Coat Factory circling the drain? I paid a visit to a local store the other day and at drat near half of the entire store's floor space was an empty expanse of nothing. For a moment, I thought the place was closing up and liquidating, but I didn't see any of the usual big yellow clearance signs. Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware Valley hired on a guy to shake things up and turn numbers around. Among his credentials is pulling Coat Factory out of a slump. If they're dying laffo and no surprise because every idea since this guy showed up has loving sucked.
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Apr 26, 2017 20:00
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Without looking them up, I'd be surprised if Burlington Coat Factory was in trouble. The market for discounted name brands is pretty strong (i.e. TJ Maxx, Marshalls) and it's not like any Burlington has ever been in a 'hip' or 'good' location, so it's not like a mall where you're paying a premium in rent.
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Apr 26, 2017 20:30
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Krispy Kareem posted:Without looking them up, I'd be surprised if Burlington Coat Factory was in trouble. The market for discounted name brands is pretty strong (i.e. TJ Maxx, Marshalls) and it's not like any Burlington has ever been in a 'hip' or 'good' location, so it's not like a mall where you're paying a premium in rent. It's became a lot worse for employees about 10 years ago but I don't think the experience for the customer has ever changed that much.
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Apr 26, 2017 22:13
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