CompUSA to Shut Down After Holidays

[Onkel Neal]

CompUSA, the computer retailer that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim owned since 2000, will shut its doors after 23 years, succumbing to competition from Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Restructuring firm Gordon Brothers Group LLC bought the chain for an undisclosed sum and will sell or close its 103 stores after the U.S. holidays, CompUSA said yesterday. The 67- year-old Slim, Latin America's richest man, failed to turn around CompUSA after investing more than $1.5 billion in the chain over eight years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aomuLvfkNzTY&refer=home

[JSLTIGER]

Sorry to see them go...they usually had much better machines than other retailers and at reasonable prices. On the bright side however, there should be some fairly decent deals out there.

[Torplexed]

The CompUSA I used to frequent (I bought SH2 and 3 there) shut down last summer. Was sad to see it go. Sure enough the probable culprit, a Best Buy was just two stores away in the same strip mall.

[Drebbel]

I noticed that compared to TigerDirect their prices where not really impressive.

[GunnerGreg]

My biggest problem is that my last positive customer experience at a CompUSA store was about 10 years ago in Houston, TX.

The store I went to in the Washington, DC area tried to pull a "bait-and-switch" on me TWICE, once tried to prevent me from leaving the store without submitting to a search (I hadn't bought anything because they were sold out of something I NEEDED, and no, I didn't set off the electronic monitoring thing at the door, and no they weren't polite about it.

I actually went out of my way to go to the local CompUSA here in Little Rock, AR BECAUSE I felt sorry for them. I figured the employees probably didn't get told first, the investors did, and the employees found out about it by hearing it through the media, just like I did. By the time I left, I had been so poorly treated and was so mad that I stopped the manager and told him that he and his employees were getting what they deserved.

[FIREWALL]

No warning here. One day two were open here and next day closed. No chance to get any good deals.

[Zayphod]

Sorry to see them go...they usually had much better machines than other retailers and at reasonable prices. On the bright side however, there should be some fairly decent deals out there.

Got one near me, right across the street from Best Buy.
I took a friend there some time back to purchase a cell phone (her first).

The kid (obviously a refugee from high school) barely knew the phone, barely
knew any of the plans for the phone, barely knew about what features it had,
barely knew anything about the other phones at his counter.

CompUSA used to be populated by geeks, fully knowledgeable about anything
that delt with computers. Now, no such luck. They're all over at the Geek Squad.