Quite a few years ago, I was in CC looking at new computers. A sleazy salesman approached me and started pushing the most expensive models (despite not knowing anything about me or what I was looking for in a computer). When I balked at the price, he offered to "help me out" with CC financing at "only 26%." Give me a f***ing break.

Over the years since then, I have spent a lot of money on computers and other electronics. But none of it at Circuit City!

I don't know that this reads as a confessional quite as much as a how-to guide for screwing over Circuit City. But still, some of the actual operational information is good to have confirmed even if many already suspected these truths anyway.

Gee, a former employee points out shady tactics that some salespeople have used - big deal.

By the way, #12 is clearly unethical and should be call theft. Consumerist would do well to remove that one.

I saw a lot of the same stuff while working for Best Buy. Lying to customers, stealing gift cards, inboarding item prices to get the service plan attachment, violating state labor laws, attaching expensive and unnecessary accessories, etc.

Is there no electronics store in the U.S. where one can shop for goods at a reasonable price AND not have to deal with this garbage?

@Pupator: Yeah, as soon as I read it the words "theft" and "that's called stealing" came to mind. It's the equivalent of shoplifting, only technically you offer SOME money for the product.

#21 also isn't right... Circuit City stores DO say "The difference, plus 10% of the difference." I put that to use just a few months ago, finding a TV we had bought at Circuit City on sale for $200 less at Sears.com, went into a nearby Sears store to pick up their weekly ad listing the lower price, brought that back to C.C., and was refunded $220 off our original purchase. Rockin!

@jwarner132:

Is there no electronics store in the U.S. where one can shop for goods at a reasonable price AND not have to deal with this garbage?

No. There isn't. I don't know why people still bother to go inside any of those places.

FSM BLESS TEH TUBES!

14. [...] and minus well have gotten the 2 year plan,[...]

- might as well have gotten

@Pupator: It's not theft when both parties agree to the transaction.

He forgot confession #28. You can get any product in the store with an 80% discount by dealing directly with a CC salesman. Cash only, thanks!

@lorddave: It's not theft when both parties agree to the transaction.

No, technically it's called fraud, and it's still illegal. FWIW, the store didn't really agree to what they thought they did, since you duped them.

I used to work at CC a few years ago over the holidays. I must say that it was the worst company i have ever worked for. I worked in the cell phone department back when CC didn't have those Verizon booths which are run by Verizon I think. My managers would always get on my case for not selling the 3 year protection plans for phones sold with 1 year contracts (back then T-Mobile only had 1 yr. contracts).

Yes, B & H in Manhattan. (NYC)

I had one of my best consumer experiences at a Tweeter's in the Chicago area. Ironically I also had a horrible experience at a different Tweeters located a mere 15 miles away. I guess it all comes down to luck and finding a truly helpful salesperson.

I'd recommend Cambridge Soundworks as well. I've had some nice experiences with them as well. I wouldn't be caught dead buying electronics at a Best Buy or Cicuit City.

That reminds me a lot of when I worked at Futureshop in Canada. It's a bit too familiar lol.

Unbelieveable, my friend took his HP that he had purchased from there back to the "firedog" part of the store recently and they said that all they could do was send it back to the manufacturer. I guess they were lying. Way to go Circuit City, that plus the fifty dollars they wanted for a diagnostic that I could (and did) do for free is enough to keep me away from there.

I witnessed a best buy employee refuse to sell a $5k TV because the consumer didn't want the $700 protection plan.

The sales associate said "your not buying that tv without the warranty" and walked away.

The manager came over and backed the employee.

Bottom line - buy your electronics from online retailers...they usually sell items below cost and make money on shipping, which still comes out cheaper than these chain stores.

As a current employee of CC, i must say that some of this applies to all stores, but quite honestly, most of the things mentioned would only happen in a POS store. Honestly, you must have worked at a very shady CC. For the most part, most of this was probably glamourized for the sake of hits. As for attaching things without customer consent, it would take a very stupid maanger to not fire people for that.

Enough with my rant about your rant though, for the most part I agree with your take on the whole thing, and honestly am getting out as soon as a I find a job with flexible hours as this (in-store firedog).

What a disappointment to see something like this on consumerist.

About 50% of what's written actually belongs on consumerist, the other 50% belongs in the garbage because good consumers are not good consumers because they steal or cheat.

Articles like this just teach more idiots how to rip off corporate america, so corporate america can rip off the rest of us.

Thanks Consumerist.

I used to work at a BB, most of this stuff is on a store by store and person by person basis. My store was never that bad, but one nearby got hammered by corporate after they got caught pulling stupid shit such as hiding products and "packaging". I personally never tried to screw the customer while others in the store would get to the point of harassment. It all depends, its like any other big corporation, you just need to be a smart consumer.

@VA_White

I think that the Internet has really exacerbated these types of scams at brick and mortar stores.

1. People are buying more online because they don't have to deal with all the crap.
2. Stores lose sales
3. Stores lose profits
4. Managers/Corporate increases the pressure to sell more of the most profitable items (extended extended warranty, 'high-end' cables, etc.) in an attempt to curtail the hemorrhage.
5. Sales drones become desperate to meet their now-stricter quotas and pull all manner of shady crap.
6. Goto 1

It's a death spiral and I think many retailers are trapped in it. Good riddance I say.

@jwarner132: Not that I have found.

I was not going to Circuit City since the 80s. I didn't think they got any better.

When I was shopping for my DLP, I stopped by CC and had a pretty nice associate approach me to answer any questions I had. Real friendly and patient guy and explained that none of them were on commission, etc.

Anyways, what did catch my ear was that he highly reccomended the service plan which was going to be another $400 or so and how that "anytime you needed a bulb replacement, CC would come in and do it for free". He went on to say that, "if at any point you feel the picture output isn't as bright as the day you got the tv, they'll still replace it." Considering the bulb for my set right now runs about $215 or so, if it truly was "unlimited replacement" a $400 service plan would actually be cost effective.

Anyways, I went to CC.com, added the TV to my court and of course the website reccomended that same service plan. I pulled up the Terms of the plan which was in a box roughly the size of Consumerist's little comment box here. Started reading it, got mad and Copy and pasted the entire thing into a Word document for better reading. it turned out to be 26 PAGES put into that little box!!!! Anyways, read through, found the area on bulb replacement and of course what the salesman was saying was too good to be true. They only did one replacement and I wouldn't be surprised if they were dicks about replacing it (i.e. you had a blown bulb, not one that was no longer bright enough).

What the hell kind of store did you work at? When I worked in tech at CC we NEVER discounted the computers to add a warranty because we knew the customer would return the warranty and keep the PC. The only time I saw a PC get discounted with warranty was due to a customer service issue and the receipt was TAGGED in the PoS system as non returnable unless the warranty was returned also.

1 time use warranty? Only if you smash the laptop, we shipped out and received repaired units all the time.

While much of the last part of the article is true (22. on down) this employee allowed themselves to be warped by bad management was dicked with customers himself just to have "fun."

I quit CC because of the shitty management but half the crap this employee claims was done at their store only. I only knew one employee (after 2 years of working in tech) who would pull this crap.

@rubberpants:

I don't think the B&Ms necessarily scam consumers, but prey on the uninformed.

For example, if you pay more than $5 for an HDMI or USB cable online, you're being ripped off, yet they're about $100 and $30 a piece at any B&M. Most people aren't aware all these cables probably come from the same factory in China.

Gah, no edit button. I meant, "this employee dicked around with customers himself just to have "fun."

Agreed on B&H, I was going to say that! Also, I found the honest sales manager at Best Buy in SF, but he's just from a parallel universe.

@MonkeyMonk: i worked at a Best Buy for almost 4 years and I can say that I did my best to help the customers out. It's possible to do your job and be honest. A lot of these sales tactics are condoned or even suggested by management. I continue to use Best Buy or CC as a alternative to online shopping. It's simply important to be educated about what you're buying and take everything they offer with a grain of salt.

@rubberpants:
It's a death spiral and I think many retailers are trapped in it. Good riddance I say.
___________________________________________

Me, too. Best Buy, Circuit City, and their ilk disgust me. I much prefer to research a purchase online, shop around for the best price, then have it shipped right to my door.

Internet shops used to be touch-and-go as far as customer service but my experience has been that they are better than B&M stores these days because one or two bad experiences tend to get magnified through the tubes. A commited blogger can trash a stores reputation quickly especially in a niche market.

@ishred: When I was a vendor for CompUSA the act of not selling a product without the ESP was common. Since most of CompUSA's computers were 'in the back' they'd try to sell the ESP before 'checking inventory.' If the ESP didn't sell, the computer was out of stock.

I worked at Circuit City. Most of the policy stuff is fairly accurate. We didn't get into the shady business of keeping customer giftcards, adding items without customer consent, mishandling merchandise, or that kind of thing. We were very good at knowing where the lines were, and we were willing to push to the edge of them.

One trick I did do was to offer the customer a free remote. At the time, customers buying multiple coverage plans on a single ticket would get an automatic markdown ticketwide for all coverage plans. If a customer was buying one large item with a single coverage plan, adding a $4.99 TV remote and a $6 warranty would save the customer $30 overall.

@Beerad:
Sure, it's fraud. As long as we also count #8, #9, #17, #20, and #23 as fraud on Circuit City's part.

Oh, right. In that case, it's just a few bad employees. If the poorly paid employees systematically "screw up" in the company's favor, that's not Circuit City's fault. Havens no. But if they screw up in the costomer's favor, it's a crime!

I am inclined to believe the post not because of personal experience but because of the simple fact: follow the spreadsheets.

For employees, the shadiness is necessary to keep their jobs via the stats that are used to rank them.

For store managers, the stats are a difference between a small bonus or a large bonus. If you have a store that is a PoS, its always starts with managers that are more focused on the stats and their effect on their own bonus then any real concern over whether a job gets done or not.

Its all about the spreadsheets nowadays. Name that business and you have managers that quantify you not by your abilities/skills, but by whatever stats that person thinks is important.

@jwarner132:

No because in order to stay competitive on the core items, IE PCs, laptops, TVs etc they have to mark them down to the point they make like $20 on them so if the company is to make any money they have to sell accessories and service plans. In fact most of those ad items are sold for less than the store paid for the item which is why they only have like 5 of them and they sell out an hour after the store opens on the first day of the ad. This is why they hate "naked" or "dry" sales. If a store was to open where no employees offered you accessories and service plans you would then complain that the prices are too high.

As a former CC employee for nearly 5 years I can attest to the truth off all of those statements.

if only we had a bad ass salesmen like dwight schrute at staples...

There's a store called Visions here in Canada where, if you purchase a protection plan and don't use it, when it expires, you can use the value of plan as store credit. I guess their whole plan is to hope you forget about 2-3 years later, but we haven't and have gotten plenty of dvd's using the credit from the protection plan.

Ugh.

I love that this guy starts off his letter by writing, "I had worked at Circuit City for quite some time, until recently when I could no longer stand the shady operations of its business." But apparently he is fine with his own shady suggestions:

Circuit City may be a crappy place to buy stuff, but does Consumerist really want to promote the idea that it is okay to be a consumer who commits a crime to save money?

Just because some corporations may use deception or questionable means for making $$ does not make it okay for people like you and me to steal.

Item #12 is nothing more than committing theft (by deception):

"move some of those high speed SD cards onto a peg of cheaper SD cards.... you may need to look a bit upset.... Biggest discount I witnessed was an item that was $69 discounted to $12. Also you can look behind the tag on the peg, often people just put new tags in front of old, and leave the sale prices in the peg. Use that to get the (old) sale price."

Some people have no sense of moral right or wrong. Maybe working at a place like CC causes people to loose their sense of right and wrong. Or maybe some people are attracted to the work at CC BECAUSE they are immoral.

So that low-grade "sleaze" vibe I pick up every time I go into Circuit City isn't my imagination? Oh well, they do sometimes have interesting CDs, cheap. I know someone who works at the local CC. He told me about the big layoff of the qualified, experienced people. Sounds like certain accountants and/or managers REALLY want to keep their jobs. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

Once upon a time, when Toni Basil tunes wafted out of radios all over America, I worked at a mall department store (doesn't matter which, they're all quite similar in a lot of respects). I was stationed in that store's camera department, but my knowledge of cameras born of years of experience with cameras and darkroom work didn't cut any ice with my supervisors. Indeed, I seemed to be the only guy in my department who knew *anything* about cameras apart from how to put the film and batteries in. I once got written up for politely informing a customer who'd brazenly traipsed into the cashier booth (where he was definitely not allowed) that I'd be with him as soon as I finished with the customer I was with, who was trying to see if a lens that we sold would work on his camera. I got no credit at all when I helped another client find a new bulb for his slide projector. Many little technical things would go wrong (cash registers wouldn't read a product code properly, you got a mild shock when you touched the metal trim on the display cabinets, etc.) which would never get fixed. When it came time to lay some of us off, instead of giving us pink slips, they simply cut us down to 4 hours a week in order to avoid paying unemployment benefits. Conclusion: mall stores are about doing things cheap, cheap, cheap, even if it actually hurts the company.

About alternatives to mall stores: a lot of towns have their own local "geek store", an electronics shop which caters to ham radio operators, hard-core computer geeks, engineers for local radio and TV stations and electronic experimenters. It's probably nowhere near a mall. They may or may not have home entertainment gear. They sometimes carry overpriced garbage, but most have better deals that the mall stores on certain things, like computer components and audio cables, and are usually staffed by folks who actually know what the hell they're talking about. Look in your yellow pages under "electronics" and see what you come up with.

Ishred said:

I witnessed a best buy employee refuse to sell a $5k TV because the consumer didn't want the $700 protection plan.

The sales associate said "your not buying that tv without the warranty" and walked away.

The manager came over and backed the employee.

As well he should have. My wife and I bought a 61 inch Sony Wega LCD flatscreen for $4K, and bought the ESP for $500.00. Within 6 months the picture on the screen had bright yellow vertical lines and a nice red circle in the lower right corner. The part was $1400, and the labor was right around $400, plus a disposal fee, so we more than made the difference up, and we still have 3 years left on the ESP. The more expensive the technology, the higher the cost of repair(the manufacturer's warranty would not have covered our costs, making a $4K TV almost $6K!)

#12 is half correct. I dropped into my local CC to look at ink cartridges, and asked for a price check on a set (CMYK, $70 retail). I got them for $15 (3 color set) and $20 (black) because the price labels were so badly labeled that none of the labels matched the products on the shelf.

Also, a price tag is a price offer. The consumer can counter offer, and the sale is legal if accepted. I read about a man in Canada who wanted to see if a poorly designed online store would let him enter a lower price.

His consultation with a lawyer after receiving the item for 10% was that since the site emailed him to let him know they were reviewing his order, and then shipped it and charged the lower amount to his credit card, it was a legal transaction.

I always purchase protection plans on items I think will break in a few weeks. For example I purchased a computer headset which only cost 40 dollars at newegg.com, costed me 72 +tax at Best Buy. Paid 10 bucks for a 2 year replacement warranty, and have replaced it like 5 times since. I just tell them it makes a fuzzy sound when I put it on. The wire was torn, the headset was falling apart. They never asked 1 question just take it back and give me a new one. Off course they had to call the company to get a RMA number but they still give me a new one. All in all I think Best Buy is a good store I haven't had a problem with them, but then again I haven't purchased something that cost a lot from them. Also when waiting on line for the customer service i let people pass me if i think the person on the register will give me trouble. So i say "its no problem you can pass,im waiting on someone". Then the other register is free with the easy to work with person and theres my chance.

Not surprising as Sony products have a 90 day manufacture warranty. Spend your money on a brand that backs up the quality of their product with a quality manufactures warranty.

@skrom: It's called Wal-Mart.

I am glad Anonymous came forward with his or her report. The information about Circuit City's slimy practices is important for consumers to know. I don't at all approve of customers cheating Circuit City, but I also believe Circuit City invites that kind of disloyal, game-y behavior by virtue of the environment in its stores, which is, I gather, rife with manipulation and frank deception. It's like, if you beat your kids, don't be surprised if they hate you in return.

My last time in a Circuit City was several years ago. I had some done research, and came in with pages with Consumer Reports, looking for a very specific model of air conditioner. I explained my interests to a sales associate. He pretended to not hear me, and immediately tried to sell me on a much more expensive model than the model I was seeking. It was incredibly insulting. My interests were clearly not a factor motivating this guy's behavior on the job. He had obviously been trained on the value of selling, not on the value of customer satisfaction. I left, vowing not to give them a dime of my business. That's the irony that always gets me: Businesses that care about sales instead of customer satisfaction make fewer sales.

@jwarner132: Wal-Mart has been criticized for other, good reasons, but the truth is I've had excellent experiences buying electronics items there. Their selection is certainly smaller, but their small inventory of desktop computers, laptops, etc., seems well-chosen, and has the huge advantages of a hassle-free buying experience (no add-ons, no upselling, no $1 scratch protection BS or other sneaked-in charges, zero pressure) and a very reasonable price. A breath of fresh air compared to Circuit City or Best Buy. And cheap is not necessarily crap: Wal-Mart, because of their scale, puts their suppliers through major rigors relative to quality. As a matter of self-interest, I'm sure Wal-Mart seeks to avoid selling crappy goods (e.g., a computer that people en masse have to return).

@Moonshine Mike:

And Wal-Mart sells cheap Chinese garbage. Youll never find a Sony Grand Wega TV at Wal Mart or a HP PC for that matter. The sell no name TVs, and Emachines and dell PCs.

@skrom: Wal-Mart does sell HP computers and Dell is hardly no-name.

I buy all my electronics either online or from local mom-and-pop stores exactly to avoid the sleaze in big chain stores. And on top of superior customer service, I also get much better price. Why would I ever want to buy anything (other than sales items) from CC or BB?

When I worked at Best Buy most of the shady things i hear about didn't apply to my store. I'm starting to think that we were either in the minority or best buy has changed.

I worked there over 5 years ago so their policies might have changed but the only things I really sold replacement plans on were phones and vacuum cleaners. The reason is that for phones it was an easy sell because we'd mention that the battery would die before the warranty or would at least not work as well. The Vacuum because the belts break. The replacement plan is different than the warranties in that Best Buy didn't try to fix the product. They just gave you a new one. If they no longer made the new one then you got the newer model. I saw a lot of PDA's get upgraded. We also didn't check most of the items to see if it was your fault or not. If your kid dropped it in the toilet just make sure it's dry before returning it.

I was a cashier and didn't sell too many extended warranties because they did not count for the operations number only sales.

Some interesting facts. It's true that most sale items are sold at cost or close to it as well as CD's. What isn't is home and car audio. That stuff is marked up 100% no joke.