I’m not sure about the rest of you, but there are two Circuit City stores that I used to frequent and another few stores that I’ve been in and out of from time to time. The main store that I went to was in West Long Branch and while I knew some of the people who worked there a few years ago, I have no issues with saying that the customer service at the local store was horrendous. I’m not necessarily saying that the people who worked at the store were rude, but the local store never had the cash register open. In order to pay for your items, you actually had to stand next to the register in a line waiting to go to customer service to pay! What sense does that make?!

And almost without fail you’d reach the front of the line and the person in front of you would have an issue with the item that they were buying or you’d be caught behind a person who was returning an item in an overly involved transaction. I don’t fault the customers in these situations, but you have to wonder about the quality of the store when these types of things pop up during each trip to the place…

And it would appear that many consumers did begin to question the quality of Circuit City and instead started to spend their ever-scarcer dollars at the bigger box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. But there is another reason why my local Circuit City quickly fell out of favor with consumers…

The prices!

Circuit City was notorious for charging 15% – 25% higher for DVDs and CDs than what you could buy them for at Wal-Mart or Target! And to show you how out of touch the Circuit City people are with both the market and what their consumers want, I went to big liquidation sale at the local store over the weekend and I saw that DVDs were marked down 20%. Are you kidding me? Even after the 20% discount you still wind up paying more than you would by just going to Wal-Mart in the first place!

It’s incredible, really.

And to add an insult to the bargain shoppers, the local store had no price cuts on video games, computer hardware and software, or car radios and speakers. Amazing.

So while I do feel extraordinarily bad for the 30,000 employees who will now need to find a new job, I can’t say that Circuit City closing down is a surprise. They didn’t care about basic customer service, charged way too much for their products, and didn’t stay competitive with the times. What else could you expect from such a company?

First, while the stores were filled with shoppers there was still room to move around (except Wal-Mart – more on that later). In previous years I remember going to some stores and being jammed into the shopping areas literally standing shoulder to shoulder with other shoppers. With that memory in mind, I was somewhat relieved that I had room to move around the stores and do some shopping without having to worry about bumping into people or tripping over product.

Second, the roads were less congested for the entire extended weekend starting on Wednesday. I drove everyday from Wednesday through today and I was never caught in anything other than normal traffic. That’s not bad!

Third, retailers did put out some significant deals. A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was gearing up for Black Friday and using a certain website to find out what the big deals would be for the day. That website combined with the various flyers which came in the Thanksgiving Day newspaper showed a retail industry that wanted to attract buyers into their stores this year. The big item this year seemed to be bargain basement prices on high definition LCD and plasma screen televisions. In terms of comparison to previous years…well some four years ago I had a comment or two about the lack of deals at retailers.

Fourth, Circuit City employees tried to overcompensate for the company’s current financial position – to their detriment. I went into Circuit City yesterday and I was amazed at how bad of a shopping experience I had at the store. In almost every aisle that I walked down, an associate asked me if I needed any help. The first two times that someone asks you this, it’s very respectable. The second two times, it becomes a bother. By the fifth and sixth time a different employee asks you if you need any help you wonder what’s going on and why these people won’t let you shop. Frankly, I felt like I was being tracked by one of the employees as though I was going to steal something – it makes for a very unpleasant shopping experience. I was going to buy something at Circuit City, but thanks to the overzealous sales staff I got out of there as quickly as possible.

On top of that, Circuit City had rows and rows of videos games out in buckets (buckets are the traditional sign of “sale on these items”). As I was browsing through the buckets some kid who works at hte store was trailing me and putting the items back as soon as I picked them up (at one point taking the items out of my hands). Then I asked him if any of these games were on sale. He said they were not, but were selling for regular retail prices between $50 and $60. Yeah…that will get people to purchase the product. Dummies…

Finally, the level of common courtesy towards fellow shoppers was somewhat high in all stores except for Wal-Mart (on Black Friday – Wal-Mart was okay on Saturday). I have a million pet peeves about bad shoppers and they were all on display at Wal-Mart on Friday: people standing at the end of the aisles talking to a friend and blocking passage out of the aisle, children running wild through the store with no parental supervision, shoppers putting their cart on one side of the aisle and standing in the other side of the aisle creating a roadblock, and consumers stopping short in the flow of traffic and turning around thus creating the “trout jumping upstream” effect. It was enough for me to get the hell out of Wal-Mart almost as soon as I got in there. But hey – at least I didn’t get trampled by a mad mob (more about that coming up in a future post).

All in all, it was a decent Black Friday and most of the retailers stepped up to the plate in an attempt to get their balance sheets in the black as well as shoppers through their doors. If you have any crazy Black Friday stories, I’d love to hear them in the comments section below.

Over at CNN.com they posted an article talking about how major retailers are luring in holiday shoppers with huge discounts. Well, I combined this article with the great information that I found over at one of my favorite holiday websites – BFAds.net – to come to a general realization: today’s retailers have no idea what the public wants! I’m sure anyone can come to these conclusions on their own, but looking at the “deep discounts” that are listed on the Black Friday advertisements is appalling.

I guess what really gets me is that while there are discounts on a variety of items in each of the stores, you don’t see any of the stores really cutting prices on items that people in my age group would want. For example, Circuit City has great DVD discounts, but not really on the programs that I’m looking for on Black Friday. On the same token, all of the stores have some semblance of a sale on the next generation of video games (Wii, X360, and PS3), but none of them are going out on that limb and reducing the prices $50 or $100 below the competition. Granted, there are some restrictions in terms of how much money the various companies expect to receive with each sale, but isn’t that a basic premise of marketing and advertising? Draw the customer in with a blockbuster, financially-bad deal for company and then make up the difference (and then some) with other sales during the customer’s visit.

Looking through the Black Friday ads it just doesn’t appear that retailers understand this concept. What will it take for a profitable Christmas season? Deep discounts on quality items that will bring shoppers into your specific store. Simple, right?

Well, let’s see how it goes on Friday…

The worst part of the day were the lines at Circuit City. Someone at Circuit City has got to get their act together and NOT have a bunch of high school teenage girls running all five registers in the place. First off, you don’t have enough registers for the crowds – fix that.

Just like last year, the worst part of the day was Circuit City’s lines. However, I didn’t stick around this year when there were dozens of cashiers available at the local Wal-Mart and Target stores. And Best Buy has got a great, fast checkout system even though the line looks deceivingly long. But Circuit City – they ought to be ashamed of themselves. This is almost 2007 and an electronics store that specializes is gizmos and gadgets to make life easier can’t manage to figure out a way to put in a few more registers and NOT have their lines wrapping around the store?

Disgraceful.

The sales today were so-so, nothing really to go crazy about. I got a nice 6-in-1 Remington shaving set at Wal-Mart and a few DVDs at Target and Best Buy. The problem with the DVDs on sale this year is that they were all mostly crappy movies and box sets! When I get back to Monmouth County tonight or tomorrow, I’m going to take a swing around the stores down there and see what they have on sale.

My Mom also got a really great leather jacket for my Dad at an amazing price from JC Penney. I didn’t venture out to the K-Mart or Kohl’s today because the K-Mart was too far and the Kohl’s is guaranteed to have a line that actually does wrap around the store. During our travels this morning, there were no Playstation 3’s or Wii’s to be seen (as expected), though the demos were good to look at.

All in all, this was a decent Black Friday. I saw a lot of people cramming their car trunks full of gifts, which is great. Unlike Black Friday 2004, which was a total bust, this year there were some good deals on some quality items. Now that being said, it’s only 2:20pm my time so I could probably go out for round two tonight!

The worst part of the day were the lines at Circuit City. Someone at Circuit City has got to get their act together and NOT have a bunch of unprepared kids running all five registers in the place. First off, you don’t have enough registers for the crowds – fix that. Second, you’ve got a bunch of kids that are more concerned about their appearance than telling Mr. and Mrs. Asshole in line that the $100 box set of their favorite musician is NOT on sale for $9.99! It’s Black Friday – get your act together Circuit City.

That’s my only criticism of Circuit City. On the flip side, they had some tremendous sales! Good job on being able to lure the customers in to the store with promotions! You gotta respect a company that knows how to put together a good Black Friday marketing scheme. I applaud Circuit City for their DVD prices – but someone really has to get a completely new checkout system over at that place…

Best Buy was alright – much better checkout situation. Nothing like the 45 minute line that my Mother and I waited on at Circuit City. The sales at Best Buy were alright – nothing crazy.

Same goes for Wal-Mart. The lines were alright, nothing too terrible. The best part of the Wal-Mart promotions that I saw was at the third Wal-Mart that I went to (you have to shop around at these places!) – they were selling box sets for $20. I was going to get the box set of Smallville because I heard it was a great series. Anyone have any thoughts on that? They actually have seasons one and two for $20 each…

I didn’t go into any actual in-door malls today because in my view, they can’t compete with the discount stores like Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Target. Ah – Target! I went in there today and was completely unimpressed. It reminded me a lot of Black Friday 2004 in Wal-Mart – lots of hope and nothing to show for it.

All in all, I got 16 DVDs for under $100. Some of these movies are pretty good (Kingdom of Heaven, I Robot, Robots, Anchorman, Arrested Development Season Two) and some are pretty funny just to own (Masters of the Universe starring Dolph Lundgren, Jeff Foxworthy: Totally Committed). I was hoping to get more movies today, but I guess that sixteen is a good start.

Of course now that I’ve shopped for myself, I should probably make some time to go Christmas shopping for the family and friends…there better be good sales coming up in the next few weeks!

Oh, and what was the deal with Kohl’s today? I went in there and the line was literally wrapped around the entire store! That’s ridiculous! I don’t know how long some of those people were waiting in line, but there was no WAY that I would have waited there! I’m one of those big “Cyber Monday” folks…in other words I see a ton of people in line at Kohl’s on Black Friday, I say screw it – I’ll buy whatever I was looking for online when they offer free shipping (which is usually this Monday).

I hope that you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and Black Fridays! Starting Saturday morning it’s back to the hum drum of plowing away at papers for Rutgers, beating myself up at the gym, and trying to find time to plan out my volunteer-based events. Fun!