TigerDirect Closing Most North American Retail Stores?

[ir0nw0lf]

The Microcenter here in Kansas City always has a full parking lot .... THANK GOD

Boy, imagine never being able to see what you want to buy in person. Horrible horrible thought.

Holy cow! I remember practically living at that place from 1994-1997 when I was stationed at Ft. Leavenworth, KS.

 

[Ryokurin]

They always made it hard to shop in their stores without having to travel there. You couldn't check their site to see if something was in store, or pre-purchase it before arriving. Basically the only thing online about their stores was whatever ads they had in the paper, which usually there weren't any. It was always a last resort option when Fry's and Micro Center didn't have it, and I needed the part ASAP.

 

[mope54]

I totally concur.
Its easier to point fingers at the "Evil" corporation, than putting your money where your mouth is.

Do you think it's possible that those of us putting money where our mouth is and complaining about large box stores shutting down mom and pops *aren't* the people shopping at them? and that there are *other* people in the community who do shop at them...

 

[KillerFry]

In El Paso the CompUSA/Tigerdirect was right next to a Best Buy.

Its both saddening and amazing seeing how many idiots went to Best Buy instead of CompUSA.

Hey there, fellow El Pasoan.

Though, to be fair, TigerDirect never really had anything interesting. I only used it when I needed some sort of cable ASAP. But usually, online prices wherever were lower than in the store.

I will miss it. Whenever I suddenly find myself in need of a SATA cable, or a Molex to SATA power adapter or stuff like that, where will I go to?!

 

[Deleted member 126051]

I honestly won't miss the local (Naperville, IL) Tiger Direct. The selection on the floor was vaguely reminiscent of a late 90's computer faire. All weird hardware and bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

I have a Frys and a MicroCenter in my area if I really need stuff NOW. For everything else, there's Amazon, Newegg and specialty sites.

 

[FLECOM]

well now without TD down here in south florida my options for computer parts is just best buy, which I refuse to shop at... so that's it folks, the computer B&M store is officially dead... at least down here

 

[Deleted member 126051]

being from AL, nobody here has even heard of Frys, but while doing business just outside Chicago, I saw my first TigerDirect b&m store. It was disappointing. It makes Frys look like a professional Scandinavian interior designer came up with their place. It's bland, boring, poor product selection, the employees seemed only mildly interested in what I was there for (and when I'm dressed for business it's done up.. I didnt appear scummy) and ironically, I left there and went to Best Buy for what I was looking for, which was a Sony projector. It was just a glorified warehouse that had tiles laid down, really. Same exact boring and basic metal racks on all isles with zero effort to dress the place up with banners, signs, color of any sort, etc. You'd think being so amazingly shitty looking that the prices would be amazing, but the ONE thing adding any semblance of life to the isles were the 2 workstations where you could check prices on tigerdirect.com against the store. All this seemed to prove to me was that yes, you did in fact have no reason at all to be standing there staring at a tigerdirect screen in a store when you could have just ordered it from home, anyway.

If that one store is representative of all of their stores, they shouldnt have opened them in the first place.

Yeah, this sounds like the Naperville store.

 

[acidrain97]

I envy anyone that has a micro center or fry's in the neighborhood. My dumpy ass town all we have is ma and pa stores (total joke) and Worst Buy. The sad thing about Ma and Pa stores they want to sell hardware that is 5 or 6 years old at the price of current hardware. For example one place tried to sell me a intel 945 board for $70. It was some piece of shit ASUS corporate board. Damn thing still had IDE shit on it. They said it was the top of the line... I laughed and left... BTW Never go to Reno, NV... It's a dump. The only thing redeeming about Las Vegas they have a fry's...

-ACiD

 

[rudy]

The deals form these liquidations are rarely all that great.

Usually they kick out all the regular employees and a special liquidation team working for the liquidator comes in. The liquidator gets paid based on how much they can squeeze out of the assets in the allotted time.

So they usually create a huge hullabaloo and hype, with big "going out of business" signs, etc, but start with very minor discounts, and then slowly up the discounts over time.

This means that by the time the discounts start getting good, most of the decent stuff is already gone.

Does anyone remember the CompUSA liquidation sales?

Not only are the deals not great but the liquidation teams always cheat the system. When compusa went out of business the liquidation manager put a sign that said sold on all the valuable laptops and pretty much any other good item. Then he waited till the store hit 90% off and bought them all for him self and surely sold them on ebay. It was funny to see all these amazing items just locked up in plain sight and you were unable to touch them. This is why you will never find a good deal unless its a really odd item because the guys in the stores get first crack at everything. In most cases these guys aren't that obvious they just go hide the shit in a box or something and wait then when the sale hits where they want they pull it out of the box and buy it. But for compusa in my town they showed their cards for everyone to see.

 

[rudy]

I will also mention that in most cases especially with a company like tigerdirect they will bundle up any items of value once sales hit 25% or more off and ship them back to the warehouse.

 

[Marcdaddy]

I'm within 30 miles of a Microcenter, Frys, ABT, and Tigerdirect/Systemax as well as Best Buy and CDW. I still buy some stuff from Newegg and Amazon but Microcenter are the kings, I have a salesman that calls me and holds stuff for me until I make a online purchase and pick it up. He knows I buy and build for other people and he gives me great discounts ts.

 

[dr.kevin]

closing just like Circus Shitty.

it's better that they remain a lean online store like newegg. close all that shit down.

 

[wra18th]

I visited the TD in Orlando last May and it looked dingy and dark. I found irons and blenders across from the monitors. It was terrible. The floor was disgusting. Who would want to go there?

On the flip side, my local MC (Paterson, NJ) is awesome. Even in snowy days the place is packed. No blenders or irons there.

 

[westrock2000]

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.

And ask those people that worked at the small grocery stores if they actually got better pay and benefits than working at Wal-Mart. The answer is not a resounding "Yes!" like the media would make you believe.

 

[epicengr]

Nooooooo. Now I have to wait to have stuff delivered. All we'll have in Delaware is a worst buy. Tiger direct was the best we had... feel pity for me.

 

[swatbat]

Never had good experiences with their mail order services, but that really sucks for the people that lived near one.
If my local Microcenter were to close I'd be devastated.

Tiger direct tried to scam my stepfather and I out of under 200 bucks in the late 90's. We bought scsi zip drives to exchange data and he ordered the scsi cards from tiger direct. After like 2 weeks we call to see where the cards are. They were out of stock, not getting more, and had no intention of letting us know or refunding us. Gave us shit when we asked for a refund and tried to give us the run around. If I remember right my stepfather ended up doing a charge back as it was less hassle. Fuck them and I look forward to the day their parent company goes under. I've made sure that hundreds of thousands in hardware sales has never even considered them.

This was before all of the issues people had with them and mail in rebates. I'm glad I wasn't part of it.

well now without TD down here in south florida my options for computer parts is just best buy, which I refuse to shop at... so that's it folks, the computer B&M store is officially dead... at least down here

You are not missing much. I also hate best buy and the last few times I've gone in one was for a hard drive to reload a business machine over night that needed to be fixed asap. Walmart seems to have a better computer section now. Most of their stuff is out of stock and they swapped out good brands of things like power supplies for their generic brand of complete shit.

 

[timta2]

If you have a store that went out of business when Walmart came to town, then there must have not been much to draw people to your store in the first place other than being the only place to purchase said goods before Walmart came to town.

If you are the only player or one of the only players in town and all are small shops, and the Walmart or some other big box store comes to town and it hurts your business so much that it can''t survive, you are doing something wrong.

I know I don't shop at Walmart all that much anymore because their prices are really not all that great, and most of their products that are cheaper than name brand stuff are just trash.

We can get better deals at other stores locally for the most part.

Walmart opens new stores with lower prices and then once they put all of the local competition out of business they start raising prices.

Ever see this? : Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/

 

[cyclone3d]

Walmart opens new stores with lower prices and then once they put all of the local competition out of business they start raising prices.

Ever see this? : Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/

From what I can tell where I am at (Huntsville, AL) Walmart has not really had a negative impact on the small B&M stores around here.

Never really saw a negative impact in Tucson, AZ either.. and that is where I grew up.

The smaller shops were and still are in both places.

Now what I wouldn't be surprised about is if super small "grocery stores" - the ones with mainly alcohol and a small selection of way overpriced food products were hurt by lower priced stores... but I would never think about going to those places anyway.

And now we have Aldi, which is an actual smaller grocery store that puts Walmart's prices to shame on the stuff they do sell.. and the quality is higher to boot.

 

[Squall_Rinoa89]

NewEgg is better.. Personally hated my experiance with TD, and NEVER went back.

 

[mope54]

From what I can tell where I am at (Huntsville, AL) Walmart has not really had a negative impact on the small B&M stores around here.

Never really saw a negative impact in Tucson, AZ either.. and that is where I grew up.

The smaller shops were and still are in both places.

Now what I wouldn't be surprised about is if super small "grocery stores" - the ones with mainly alcohol and a small selection of way overpriced food products were hurt by lower priced stores... but I would never think about going to those places anyway.

And now we have Aldi, which is an actual smaller grocery store that puts Walmart's prices to shame on the stuff they do sell.. and the quality is higher to boot.

What tends to happen in situations like you're describing is that local municipalities levy special taxes to "revitalize" the town center so you may not see small shops close down, but it's more expensive for the community.

Also, if you note where they are built, Wal-Mart (and other super stores, it's not just them) tend to build outside the center of a town and it reshapes traffic away from the heart of the town. Those topographical issues are deeper than simple economic ones and may not be apparent to someone who is simply surveying options for where to buy a certain something. But you do notice it when you get fed into arterial roads and dropped off at strip malls versus how cities used to be planned out...and this has ramifications for zoning and taxes which fund things like schools, libraries, and public works.

 

[Low Roller]

Does this mean my outstanding TD rebates are FUBAR????

 

[DarkStar_WNY]

Fair enough. I'll grant you that regarding Amazon and Newegg, but it does take two to tango.

If you are objective regarding Walmart though, they do have a point. Walmart comes into a town, and sells everything at a loss for several months. Waits for the inevitable closing of the competition then jacks prices back up again.

If consumers in an area are willing to see the local mom & pop stores shutdown as long as they can save a few bucks then they didn't really care about the small stores to begin with.

I totally concur.
Its easier to point fingers at the "Evil" corporation, than putting your money where your mouth is.

Exactly!

Competition is a bad thing? Free market? Capitalism?

No, not at all. I was simply pointing out that Walmart opening in an area doesn't shut down smaller stores, people shopping at the Walmart instead of the smaller store does.

I envy anyone that has a micro center or fry's in the neighborhood. My dumpy ass town all we have is ma and pa stores (total joke) and Worst Buy. The sad thing about Ma and Pa stores they want to sell hardware that is 5 or 6 years old at the price of current hardware. For example one place tried to sell me a intel 945 board for $70. It was some piece of shit ASUS corporate board. Damn thing still had IDE shit on it. They said it was the top of the line... I laughed and left... BTW Never go to Reno, NV... It's a dump. The only thing redeeming about Las Vegas they have a fry's...

-ACiD

I agree completely, the two small computer shops near me are selling old low/mid range components at prices of new high end components. In fact, a friend at work showed me a flyer a couple days ago which showed a system they wanted $1,200, he was stunned when I listed the parts on pc parts picker website and it come to only $400 in components (and I only used high quality components, which I doubt the local store does as the list was very generic.)

And ask those people that worked at the small grocery stores if they actually got better pay and benefits than working at Wal-Mart. The answer is not a resounding "Yes!" like the media would make you believe.

I know, it always seemed the mom & pop places wanted the most experience but paid the least. The joke was always that these owners felt that they worked at their own business for free so thought you should as well.

 

[Ryokurin]

From what I can tell where I am at (Huntsville, AL) Walmart has not really had a negative impact on the small B&M stores around here.

Never really saw a negative impact in Tucson, AZ either.. and that is where I grew up.

The smaller shops were and still are in both places.

Now what I wouldn't be surprised about is if super small "grocery stores" - the ones with mainly alcohol and a small selection of way overpriced food products were hurt by lower priced stores... but I would never think about going to those places anyway.

And now we have Aldi, which is an actual smaller grocery store that puts Walmart's prices to shame on the stuff they do sell.. and the quality is higher to boot.

Bigger areas don't really see it, because there's usually is enough people who want something different to keep the smaller businesses alive if they can provide something a larger store can't.

I grew up in the shoals, about 70 miles west of you. Before Wal-Mart got into groceries I can remember several grocery stores in the area: Wilsons, Shop Ezy, Big Star, Shop Rite, Jitney, Sack n Save, etc. Now roughly 20 years later only two are left standing, and even then they are down to single locations. I'm not going to blame Walmart for every store's failure but it probably did help, and you can kind of say Walmart is specifically going after them now by building a Neighborhood Market and another super center within a two mile radius of both.

They do have Aldi, and Publix finally moved in a year or two ago, but it's hard to break habits. They are surviving but it still is nowhere near as much traffic as the 4 Walmarts in the area generate.

 

[sliverjazz]

Maybe MNPop stores charge more since they don't barricade your mailbox with fliers just for buying a soda from the checkout line with your credit card.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

Fair enough. I'll grant you that regarding Amazon and Newegg, but it does take two to tango.

If you are objective regarding Walmart though, they do have a point. Walmart comes into a town, and sells everything at a loss for several months. Waits for the inevitable closing of the competition then jacks prices back up again.

I have witnessed this first-hand. I was one of the few people that continued to shop the other stores because I did not like paying money for junk, even if it was cheap junk. Once the other grocery store and the lone department store in town went out of business, Wal-Mart's prices went up by 10 - 15% across the board, basically overnight. I can go to the Wal-Mart in a neighboring community where there is also a Target and pay a minimum of 10% less for the exact same item, or pay approximately the same price at Target there.

Sadly, there are a lot of areas now where at best you are choosing between Target and Wal-Mart because everything else, even grocery stores, have gone under. I don't necessarily blame Wal-Mart, since it is the people that chose to shop there that pulled business away from other stores, but they definitely have a way of increasing revenue in "captive audience" situations.

I used to shop at CompUSA when they were still around. When they went under, the liquidation sale wasn't very good. Prices were actually higher than what I used to pay before they went out of business. The good news was that they opened a MicroCenter in the area after the CompUSAs were all gone.

 

[memphist0]

Anyone check out what kind of sales they have this morning?

For what its worth I believe TigerDirect is closing because of poor service, skeptically pricing tactics, unmaintained store, archaic return policy and poor store organization. I will however miss them as it was the only place to buy components locally in Orlando. I really wish Fry's would expand down here.

 

[Armenius]

Anyone check out what kind of sales they have this morning?

For what its worth I believe TigerDirect is closing because of poor service, skeptically pricing tactics, unmaintained store, archaic return policy and poor store organization. I will however miss them as it was the only place to buy components locally in Orlando. I really wish Fry's would expand down here.

The guy who made the Reddit post works at my local store!

It was the only place to buy components here in Fort Myers, too. I'm going to have to go on a shopping trip this weekend. Actually going to be in the area this afternoon for a meeting, so I'll stop by and check out what's good.

 

[HisSvt76]

Anyone check out what kind of sales they have this morning?

For what its worth I believe TigerDirect is closing because of poor service, skeptically pricing tactics, unmaintained store, archaic return policy and poor store organization. I will however miss them as it was the only place to buy components locally in Orlando. I really wish Fry's would expand down here.

This nails it. I was a store manager years ago in the naperville il store the higher ups didn't have a clue and always tied our hand and kept the stores as a second class citizens compared to the warehouse online business.

I am sad to see them go though because getting parts locally is still my preferred method. That leaves me with fry's electronics and microcenter locally thank god.

 

[HockeyJon]

Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves and as such I have to respond.

Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.

So much this! I'm so tired of all of that crap. People vote with their feet and then complain about traditional channels eroding. Either pay extra to maintain those channels, or don't complain.

Besides, it's easy to compete against Wal-Mart if you don't try to go toe-to-toe with them on their specialty. For example, I never buy anything hockey or paintball related at Wal-Mart. Why? Their stuff is all low end. Want to beat Wal-Mart? Carry better brands. People wanting to buy at the cheapest price don't have to be your customer. They're Wal-Mart's customer. If you want to sell the same pack of 10 tube socks for a few dollars, you're going to go out of the business, because Wal-Mart will kick your ass.

 

[HockeyJon]

Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves and as such I have to respond.

Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.

If Tiger Direct is really closing their Canadian stores I'll show up the first day. I haven't bought anything from them since I bought a Hyundai Imagequest monitor in 2005 because they were the only guys carrying them. I'm not really surprised because their stores were dirty, the online store is badly organized and their prices are worse on most things than their the local competitors (NCIX, Newegg, Canada Computers).

Last build I did a year and a half ago, I bought a few components from Tiger at Heartland Mississauga because they were the lowest priced of the listed stores. It tended to go in cycles I think. Sometimes they were good vs those guys, sometimes not.

 

[Pringle]

This nails it. I was a store manager years ago in the naperville il store the higher ups didn't have a clue and always tied our hand and kept the stores as a second class citizens compared to the warehouse online business.

I am sad to see them go though because getting parts locally is still my preferred method. That leaves me with fry's electronics and microcenter locally thank god.

I actually live closer to the Schaumburg store nowadays, but the Naperville store was always clean and a joy to go to. The traffic in that area is a real bitch though.

Sad to see these B&M stores go. Guess I gotta haul my ass to the Downers Grove Fry's now.

 

[DarkStar_WNY]

So much this! I'm so tired of all of that crap. People vote with their feet and then complain about traditional channels eroding. Either pay extra to maintain those channels, or don't complain.

Besides, it's easy to compete against Wal-Mart if you don't try to go toe-to-toe with them on their specialty. For example, I never buy anything hockey or paintball related at Wal-Mart. Why? Their stuff is all low end. Want to beat Wal-Mart? Carry better brands. People wanting to buy at the cheapest price don't have to be your customer. They're Wal-Mart's customer. If you want to sell the same pack of 10 tube socks for a few dollars, you're going to go out of the business, because Wal-Mart will kick your ass.

Exactly!

 

[NotEd]

I honestly won't miss the local (Naperville, IL) Tiger Direct. The selection on the floor was vaguely reminiscent of a late 90's computer faire. All weird hardware and bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

I have a Frys and a MicroCenter in my area if I really need stuff NOW. For everything else, there's Amazon, Newegg and specialty sites.

I'd never actually been to the Naperville store, but now I'm not sorry about it. I was surprised when TD reopened it as a CompUSA and then changed the name to Tiger Direct after a year or two. That was kind of a weird choice.

Luckily I work right near both the MicroCenter and Fry's, so there really is no pain in losing the store.

Plus I've always had a pretty low opinion of the company after I learned, when I worked for an electronics manufacturer, that they were selling our refurb equipment as new. Not cool, TD. Not cool.

 

[DarkStar_WNY]

I'd never actually been to the Naperville store, but now I'm not sorry about it. I was surprised when TD reopened it as a CompUSA and then changed the name to Tiger Direct after a year or two. That was kind of a weird choice.

Luckily I work right near both the MicroCenter and Fry's, so there really is no pain in losing the store.

Plus I've always had a pretty low opinion of the company after I learned, when I worked for an electronics manufacturer, that they were selling our refurb equipment as new. Not cool, TD. Not cool.

Ironically most people who I've seen comment about this that are near a TD store also have a couple other similar stores in the same area, be it a MicroCenter, Fry's, BB, or similar so I have to wonder how much of these closing are the direct result of that proximity?

I understand the urge to target large markets, butu adding stores to a saturated market doesn't increase overall sales, it simply splits it into smaller pieces, and if your name is associated with low end and refurubished goods you probably wont do well there.

 

[ROTO]

Two?! The only one I know of is on Dale Mabry. I've been there several times, but I do know the parking lot is quite often empty.

there is one in Clearwater @ 19 and Sunset Point, right down from me

 

[LOCO LAPTOP]

It's true. I just came from the store, Got a GTX980 Superclocked ACX for $500.

 

[Octonaut]

Went by the one in Pembroke Pines, fl. Nothing good at all. Picked up a Hdmi to dual Dvi for 30% off but nothing too great. Most everything else isn't worth it. The arc ssd was 50 with 5% off for the 120gb. If they get to around 40-50 the ssd would be a good deal

 

[LOCO LAPTOP]

Went by the one in Pembroke Pines, fl. Nothing good at all. Picked up a Hdmi to dual Dvi for 30% off but nothing too great. Most everything else isn't worth it. The arc ssd was 50 with 5% off for the 120gb. If they get to around 40-50 the ssd would be a good deal

That store never really had anything good. Deerfield and Fort Lauderdale has the good stuff.

Maybe too late now, couldn't get 2TB Seagate's to fill the rest of my file server.

 

[rat]

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Tiger Direct in Chicago managed to be the worst store I've ever been in. Half of it was empty with "open box" marked up before being marked down junk was kept off to the side and everything else was unmaintained. Fry's has always been a shitheap and this TD location managed to be worse than that.

 

[xorbe]

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Tiger Direct in Chicago managed to be the worst store I've ever been in. Half of it was empty with "open box" marked up before being marked down junk was kept off to the side and everything else was unmaintained. Fry's has always been a shitheap and this TD location managed to be worse than that.

Man, I went to Fry's for a USB thumb drive recently. (1) Their mark-ups are huge (over 50%) on decent usb3 drives (2) they mostly carry old usb2 drives many which try to trick you with "compatible with usb3 ports" in larger letters. Left empty handed. It's like b&m retail stores are reserved for the uninformed.