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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

Answer: of course, yes.

When I visited Fry's in the DFW area last year (Irving Store off of LBJ freeway) I was shocked at how low energy and sad the place was. It was just one big pile of despair. Just a handful of people were shuffling in and out. They shelves were in complete disrepair, and there were areas where there was no stock on shelves. Computers on display were broken, twisted wrecks. The home theater areas had older model sets and speakers strewn about.

It was nothing like the late 90's when the place was an absolute zoo, and you could be guaranteed to have every gadget known to man on display. Christmas time at Frys was waiting in a checkout line 100's deep. It was a fun time.

That last time I visited is the last time I'll ever visit. It's clear Amazon and online retailing has decimated them.

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Same shocking experience in Austin a few weeks back. Trying to pick up a DisplayPort KVM and a couple of DP cables. This is the big one on MoPac by Opal Devine's. I'd say more than 50% of the shelves were bare, with merchandise strewn about, loose power cables still plugged into outlets. A surprising number of employees but no one was actually doing anything. The computer hardware section looked like a bomb went off. No stock anywhere. But there weren't any "Liquidation / Going Out Of Business" banners like you'd normally expect to see in these circumstances.

I used to love Fry's, they had a great selection for system builders and hobbyists. Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it - all the employees in their black and white outfits and the massive black locked cages behind the rows of registers. It seemed oppressive, like you wouldn't be surprised to find out that the managers were beating the cashiers or something.

Still, sorry to see it go. I've been disappointed with the other system-builder-oriented place in town who knowingly restock broken merch. I guess it's Newegg from here on out!

> Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it

Yeah. A weird vibe. The wood. The faux “luxury” trim. The yellow. Dudes in cheap looking suits trying to corner you so they can “ring up your order” for their commission.

Yeah. Fry’s was a weird place. The branding just didn’t match the service or experience at all.

You should see the Fry's on Northwest Hwy near Garland. It's almost scary, it has a sketchy bazaar feeling. A couple rows of shelves have just random perfume and colognes. All the televisions and stuff have 1/8" of dust on them. It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running.

I wondered if that Fry’s was some kind of dumping ground for returned shit from all the other Fry’s or something. It is so bad.

> It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running.

They probably own the buildings (maybe even the land, too.) Potential buyers of a commercial building would want said building's internals in good condition (i.e. not wrecked by looters.) And the simplest way to ensure the building stays in good condition is to keep it running.

I had almost this exact same experience three weeks ago at a Fry's in LA. It was honestly sad to see it.

I kept joking to my friend that it felt post-apocalyptic because it looked like it had been looted. There were rough and cut-open boxes on empty shelves, empty and open packaging on the floor, no signs for the aisles to show what they had on them, employees that looked dead in the eyes, rows of shelves that were just empty or had maybe two or three items on them. It was legitimately sad to see.

We were on the hunt for a dual monitor setup. They didn't even have a 4k monitor on the shelves. That was how poor their selection was.

I've heard they're having issues even paying their vendors, so yeah. I'm pretty positive Fry's is in big trouble.

I had the same thought at the Fry's on Canoga in Woodland Hills, it felt like the only items left on the shelves were the things nobody would steal.

Sad to see them slip away, one of the joys was wandering the aisles looking for things I didn't know I needed/wanted.

I work in the SVF but live in Ventura County. Sadly it's the same story for the Frys in Oxnard... LA really needs a Microcenter :-)

I used to live near the Fry's in Tempe, Arizona. Even 5-10 years ago, I didn't really like going there that much. Their prices weren't that great any more, and returning merchandise was a bad experience. It was clear their best days were behind them. Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. It was cool how you could find a lot of odd electronics items there (components, soldering equipment, wire, etc.), but you could still get all that stuff much cheaper online usually.

> Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now.

You mean Amazon doesn't police your receipt and merchandise at a checkpoint as you got out of the store?

That too (that was an annoying thing about Fry's too; I had totally forgotten about that!), but the returns process at Fry's also treats you like a criminal, whereas Amazon's is easy and asks no questions.

You aren't actually required to have your receipt checked. I just walk straight out and ignore them.

I've been forcibly stopped by them.

If they did that, it was quite illegal.

My practice when I used to shop at Fry's was to stop and let the receipt checking person mark my receipt with their pink marker, if no one was ahead of me in that line. This was only to let them feel good about their job, not because I had any legal obligation.

If there was anyone in the receipt checking line I would just smile and wave and walk by. They never stopped me, nor could they legally, but the people waiting in line would often look at me and look at the receipt checker, puzzled that I could get away with it and they "couldn't".

You’re in their store. If you don’t want to follow their rules, don’t enter their store.

Ownership changes at the point of sale. At the time they do the check, they no longer have any legal basis for preventing the customer from leaving. Costco and Sam's Club can only get away with it because they can revoke membership for non-compliance. At Fry's, stopping someone for a search risks civil suit for kidnapping.

Aside from that, it's a security theater tactic to discourage shoplifting, which also happens to discourage regular shopping.

Costco and Sam's check your receipt to make sure you're leaving with everything you paid for. They're much more likely to find you've left something at the checkout rather than find you shoplifting.

That's the stated, euphemistic reason. The real reason is that they are doing security theater.

Finding something you may have forgotten at the checkout is the only possible benefit to the consumer, so they play it up as a point of customer service, to partially counteract the unreasonable queue they create for exiting the store.

If the genuine concern was forgotten items, they would do the additional QA check at the point of sale, where the item is most likely to be found, rather than at the exit doors.

Don't parrot the corporate propaganda without giving it your own analysis first.

The veracity is easily checked. Buy a small, disposable item with your regular purchase, and put it in your pocket after checkout. If the receipt checker notices the item is missing, note a positive result. Put the receipt in your pocket with the item. Next time around, take the item out of your pocket and put it in the cart, and see what happens. Make sure you project the confidence that yes, that object in the cart is yours, and was lawfully purchased during a previous visit. Beware that this sort of testing may get your membership revoked.

The reason you don't want your programmers doing your QA is that they're too likely to make the same mistake twice. Same with having the point of sale people doing the receipt checking.

I've considered using a collapsible box that I bought at Costco to pack my items after a shopping trip there. I wouldn't have the original receipt for it though, so I don't know how much hassle it would be. Haven't tried it yet.

I didn't suggest that the checkout person do the QA. They already have 1 or 2 people standing at the door. Move them to the checkouts and do QA as people start to leave. AKA look at the checkout to see if there's anything still there as the cashier closes out the sale and starts with the next customer.

It's a moot point, because good QA is not the goal.

You could swap collapsible boxes with someone who shops at Sam's Club, if it worries you.

> Costco and Sam's Club can only get away with it because they can revoke membership for non-compliance.

Other stores don't have the processes for it, but legally they could bar you from return visits to their properties.

hence the headline

Their considering me a thief by default has provoked me to spend elsewhere. The poor buggers manning the front door never gave me any grief for blowing them off, but the unanswerable managerial thought that put them there in the first place makes it a no brainier to shop elsewhere.

And yea, that is despite the pull of preferring to fondle and drool on the merchandise in person.

You can just ignore them. They have no cause to detain you, and you have no obligation to let them search you. I've never had a problem just walking past them out to my car. Only one time did someone even bother to yell "hey, I need to check your receipt!" and I just said NOPE and kept walking.

Virtually all of my electronics tools and supplies came from the Tempe store. Since I've moved back east it's a serious challenge finding stores with even a fraction of the inventory the Tempe store had so I end up ordering stuff off Amazon or Ali Express. I the RTP ares has a good electronics store, I haven't found it yet.

You can get electronics tools and supplies from techni-tool, probably cheaper than Fry's.

Never heard of them before, looks like they have a local DC so shipping would be fast so I'll add them to my bookmarks, Thanks!

> It's clear Amazon and online retailing has decimated them

And yet, somehow, Best Buy is doing fine apparently.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/07/27/best-buy...

I'll admit it, I love shopping at Best Buy. I much prefer purchasing anything at the local store and actively avoid Amazon if at all possible.

Best Buy often has better prices than Amazon. Since last year I find myself always double-checking the price of anything I want outside Amazon and for big items (e.g. TV, tv stand, etc.) Best Buy is a first choice for sure.

Not only that, but have you ever tried shopping for something like a laptop on Amazon? The descriptions are all three lines long and by the time you figure out what the hell you're buying you could just drive to Best Buy and see a display that clearly explains what's on offer.

Dell developer laptops are pretty good, not to mention Apple if you can put up with them.

I like Lenovo, personally.

Agreed... I've had relatively bad luck on mail ordered laptops and monitors in particular, stick to a physical location I can return them to in general. Walmart seems like a decent middle ground with online to store and returns.

The funny thing is that Best Buy also price matches bestbuy.com :)

Every time I go in there I have to ask the cashier for the price on the web site. The stores and site have different prices. I guess it makes sense because you capture 5% from everyone who doesn't bother to do that.

Just bought a new 3700x and 5700xt at best buy this week, I'm surprised I could that in person. I actively try to avoid purchasing anything at Amazon. They are Mr. Robot's EvilCorp in real life. Can't support that.

Best Buy price matches to Amazon. They also work with cashback services and often times gives you a $5 coupon after purchasing a certain amount. Finally, they also let you return open boxes, no questions asked. Forgot to mention, you can do same day pick up for an item.

Fry’s literally does all that, except for maybe the $5 coupon.

Around three years ago, bestbuy realized that they would need to make some sort of change. They did and their stores got better. It still isn't a replacement for what Fry's used to be.

But my point was that Fry's could have made changes too. It's very possible to compete with Amazon.

Yeah, it does look a bit like they just rolled over. Still, bestbuy and frys are not directly comparable imo. Micro Center is more analogous to frys. Somewhere else in the thread someone pointed that they had to bail out of california.

Fry's did make changes. Maybe not as many as Best Buy, but they do price match Amazon, last I checked.

At the same time bestbuy started price matching, the also stepped up their customer service, return policy, and stock.

Which I find a bit annoying; what I like about Fry's is that they have low-level components in addition to the high-level stuff. With Radio Shack closing, and Fry's probably closing soon, the only non-internet place left that I'll be able to purchase components will be Micro Center.

My point is, Best Buy has never been a one-to-one comparison to me. There are things that Fry's has that Best Buy simply doesn't.

Frys' component selection used to be good. But nowadays it feels like a throwback to the 90s -- they still carry a ton of parts for repairing CRT TVs [1], yet they don't have a single microcontroller or flash chip in the entire aisle, and their prices for basic logic chips like [2] are ridiculous.

[1]: https://www.frys.com/product/1000013 [2]: https://www.frys.com/product/1003503

One of the only two Fry's in Georgia just closed it's doors permanently. Of the half dozen times I was in there over the past couple years I don't think there were ever more 10 customers in the ~125,000 sq ft store. Of course it wasn't doing them any favors that there is a Microcenter 1.5 miles down the road.

How is the Micro Center in DFW doing? I see other electronics retailers doing ok, so I think Amazon is just the coup de grace.

Seems to be busy enough. They always have new cool products and lots of new inventory. If he's in Irving that's pretty far from him so he might not visit.

Microcenter is doing great, at least from the point of view of a frequent customer.

The Fry's in Plano is in a similar state to what parent comment is describing. It's an incredibly weird feeling walking thru. They've stopped restocking, so anything I remotely could use or need isn't there. What's left are things that nobody really wants. I have lots of memories growing up in that store, sad to see it like this. I definitely recommend hitting it up before the inevitable shutdown, it's quite the vibe to take in.

It's mostly school supplies and pallets of bottled water now.

I haven't been there in a while, but from what I've heard from friends it's doing well.

You may also want to check out Altex. They have a store in Carrollton, and my experience visiting there a few months ago is that they're _very_ well-stocked and with excellent prices at that.

Good tip. Never heard of Altex but I’m in Carrollton a lot.

Not DFW area (KofP), but it does feel a bit more like a warehouse to me rather than the exciting tech candy store I remember as a kid. Even the Apple section is depleted and meh feeling.

Last time I went there was nothing particularly awe-inspiring as far as setup computers. Just a bunch of Dell and Lenovo's with normal looking monitors. Would have been nice to see at least one souped-up uber PC with all kinds of obnoxious leds quad SLI, and 4 8k monitors, or something.

Granted it's still an extremely useful store, and I really wish I had one in the area I live in now.

Are we talking about Fry's or Microcenter?

Microcenter

MicroCenter in Houston is always busy. Frys is a ghost town. Frys could be fine. They've just given up, I guess.

Microcenters in the Chicagoland area (N Elston in Chicago, Westmont) are busy, especially on Saturdays. Shelves are well-stocked, and there's even an electronics section with a potpourri of Arduino and RaspPi accessories.

I'm not sure how they're surviving in the era of online shopping but they seem to be doing well. I wonder if most of the foot traffic is driven by impulse same-day BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup in Store) sales. I'll admit that's how I ended up going to the brick-and-mortar store -- I didn't think that computer superstores still existed in this day and age.

browsing the shelves and just being around tech is soothing for me. and the feeling of walking out with a bunch of boxes too. for something i enjoy like tech i like to savor the whole experience

I can relate to that. I used to stop by the nearest Fry's store if I was in the neighborhood, even if I wasn't looking for anything in particular.

I would just walk the aisles to see if anything looked interesting. And sometimes you would see people you knew, or knew of.

On one of these random walks, I ran into Linus Torvalds in the Campbell store. Good times!

The one off 75 is always very busy when I go there on a Saturday. The DIY PC section always has a few people pushing around a cart full of parts, and even the pre-built system area will be crawling with customers.

I was at Fry’s on Garland Rd in Dallas a few years ago and it was horrible. I wanted to pick up a hard drive that day rather than order one, but (and I am not exaggerating) literally every single hard drive on their shelves had one of those “this product had been opened/returned” stickers on it. Ridiculous! Fry’s is such a dump.

I bought my camera bag from that same Fry's store back in July 2018, and the shelves were full, but it was still a far cry from how I remember it back when it first opened. Very few customers there either. Might have been 10 customers in the store max. Amazing how quickly it went downhill.

Same, the Plano store is same story.

I won't be going back. Microcenter, Best Buy, or an online retailer for me..

Ah, I used to work at that location in the mid 00s. The place was a mad house back then. They probably still show the video of me getting a "customer" into a rear naked choke after he started attacking employees.

Those were the days :)

And on black friday, the line would loop all the way around the store even with some 200 registers open.

Yeah, that was a bit nuts but TBH most weekends at the time were pretty darn busy. I'm talking the whole store being mall promenade busy. It was all very energized and felt like the place to be if you were interested in tech hardware.

I've been to that same one twice looking for various electronics cables and they had nothing. Is there a DFW place now that sells that sort of radio-shack supplies? Or is everything online only now?

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