Report: TigerDirect Closing Physical Retail Stores, Focusing on B2B Sales

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Bondfc11

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The comment in the article about holding the part in your hand is so true. However, I think at this point the parts have been around so long that the change from a GTX770 to a GTX 970 is all internal - that part is the part if that makes sense.

Back in the day I would love to go to Fry's and do that part holding thing. However, these many, many moons later I would rather order it online and have it here in 2 days via Amazon Prime.
 

balister

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The Jefferson Georgia store is a warehouse with a store front (if you've driven from SC to Atlanta, you'll see it on the south side of the interstate).
 

voodoochicken

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This is funny because around here Tiger, which took over what was left of CompUSA, started reopening Comp's old stores, only to shutter them again.
 

InvalidError

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Large-surface stores are expensive to operate. I expect Amazon's pick-up/drop-off points scheme to gain popularity: only need enough space to store items that are in transit between vendor and buyer, little to no on-site inventory waiting for sales.
 

soccerplayer88

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Well, great. Now I don't have any local stores that sell enterprise hard drives. Now I've got to ship them all and risk damage. Sigh.

Well it's not like they aren't ship to that brick and mortar store to begin with. Or are you implying that TigerDirect stores manufacture HDDs onsite?
 

iam118

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I would assume the Naperville, IL store would stay open as well since its also a warehouse store...

Not surprised to see they're closing. Their stores have gone to shit the last few years and I've stopped shopping there and instead go to Micro Center who have a better selection in store AND almost always better prices than Tiger Direct and many times New Egg as well.
 

thundervore

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I never knew they had Brick and Mortar stores until one night while I was in Tampa going down North Dale Mabry Highway and had to stop by Wawa to get gas. I thought i was just drunk and seeing things lol

I never shopped there anyway.
Always had to pay shipping and prices were higher than other online stores. Even if they matched Newegg prices there, Newegg offered free shipping and they didn't. Then there was the sales tax which I do not pay at Newegg
 

norseman4

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There is a Tiger very near where I work, though I really only went there for convenience. Their prices were higher than NewEgg (or Amazon) and there was sales tax which would normally put it over sales+shipping from the Egg. (Online wasn't much better)
 

noturbiz

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Being an ex-employee this comes to no surprise. They were clueless in the retail game. The horrible customer treatment, as well as there own people, made working for them one of the worst companies I had the dis-pleasure to work with. Then when they started B2B. All they did was take the customers from the retail side, idiots they didn't see this. Not to mention the amount of turn over, no company can afford such loss. Well, it's no surprise to me. I saw the writing on the wall when the President and Chairman of the board comes to the store and you introduce yourself and they turn away from you not saying anything, with their noses in the air. And spin goes on....
 

noturbiz

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6noturbiz, Wednesday 11 March 2015 20:17:230

Being an ex-employee this comes to no surprise. They were clueless in the retail game. The horrible customer treatment, as well as there own people, made working for them one of the worst companies I had the dis-pleasure to work with. Then when they started B2B. All they did was take the customers from the retail side, idiots they didn't see this. Not to mention the amount of turn over, no company can afford such loss. Well, it's no surprise to me. I saw the writing on the wall when the President and Chairman of the board comes to the store and you introduce yourself and they turn away from you not saying anything, with their noses in the air. And spin goes on....
 

dstarr3

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The reason why this is inconvenient is because I stress-test hard drives before I put them into work. If they fail within a month, all I do is take it back to Tiger for an exchange and it's taken care of in a matter of a couple hours. Whereas now, I'll have to do RMAs, which take much, much longer.
 

tical2399

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The headquarters is here in Miami at the Mall of the Americas. I remember going there to get parts to build my first rig. Pentium D, 2 gigs Kingston value ram, 250 gig wd hdd, x850 xt,. Memories. I still pop in there from time to time when I catch a movie at the mall.
 

InvalidError

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Bulk shipments are shipped in palletized crates traveling on fork lifts, which gives them a relatively smooth ride from the manufacturer to the warehouse/retailer. Small to medium packages shipped by mail go through automated sorting machines which can be quite brutal with their hydraulic or pneumatic package kickers punting packages from the conveyor belt into sorting bins.

Just for fun, I went to have a look at the WD Black specifications. They are guaranteed for up to 300Gs of non-operational shock. If a package got subjected to anywhere near that sort of trauma, I would expect damage to be blatantly obvious.
 

Pauly88

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Out of all the online retailers which have been great except Tiger Direct. Ordering my 970gtx and canceling it was a nightmare in which paypal stepped in and got the money for me. Amazon and Newegg have been great
 

vajoiner

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The headquarters is here in Miami at the Mall of the Americas.
and their outhouse was in kendall near the Falls :) the mall of the americas was a special trip for us when kendall didnt (ever) have anything listed in the mailer.
 

tical2399

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The headquarters is here in Miami at the Mall of the Americas.
and their outhouse was in kendall near the Falls :) the mall of the americas was a special trip for us when kendall didnt (ever) have anything listed in the mailer.

I never went to that one. I lived all my life in the NW area (Carol City, Opa-Locka etc) I didn't even go to the one at the mall until I started going to FIU.
 

DRosencraft

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My brother and I were at one just a few months ago. We did some Christmas shopping for a build for our dad. The store was about 80-90% TVs and appliances, with just a couple aisles with PC parts. It's unfortunate because I do think there is a market out there for buying your tech in person, being able to pick it up and look at it, rather than paying for to be shipped to you and hoping you get what you think you bought.
 

ammaross

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BTW, Miami is in Florida, so the above is confusing

You must have missed the <city>,<state> notation, such as with the other example: "Jefferson, Georgia." Likely, the inclusion of just "Puerto Rico" threw you off.
 

f-14

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i used to work for best buy, there is a training video of what it's like to ride inside a loaded semi trailer basically a camera mounted on the ceiling recording every pot hole strike and speed bump hit and cracks in the roads, the packed snow and ice bumps on the roads, the 200ºF or -50ºF temps from siting in an enclosed trailer in the elements for days on end, the difference between a gravel road especially when there's 'washboards spots' and the city roads. palletized and shrink wrapped everything bounces and jumps from the top of the pallet to even the dirt under the pallet, everything leaves the floor at minimum of 2 feet and what ever is on top hits the ceiling, and well, then there's the impact of the fall. this is why so many computers, camcorders, dvd players cd players, projection tvs (all tvs) and other fragile stuff doesn't work after you buy it, it's shoddy packaging or the super rough

Bulk shipments are shipped in palletized crates traveling on fork lifts, which gives them a relatively smooth ride from the manufacturer to the warehouse/retailer. Small to medium packages shipped by mail go through automated sorting machines which can be quite brutal with their hydraulic or pneumatic package kickers punting packages from the conveyor belt into sorting bins.

Just for fun, I went to have a look at the WD Black specifications. They are guaranteed for up to 300Gs of non-operational shock. If a package got subjected to anywhere near that sort of trauma, I would expect damage to be blatantly obvious.
on conveyor belts at electronics retailers kickers aren't used, there's a mile long conveyor system that uses paddle flaps to direct passing packages fairly gently as i would trust a baby in a baby carrier to even be directed down the conveyor and it's would tip over or hurt even the baby carrier much less the baby because that's how we tested it, with one of those fake babies that records g forces and bumps in a wheelless baby carrier. not many businesses would survive having $600 and $4,000 products 'punted' around like a soccer ball as you say. any employee caught treating product even if it was a brick of batteries or printer paper was immediately fired ( i personally witnessed 2), and there are security cameras with at least 3 loss prevention officers watching every single camera at the warehouses on a wall bank completely filled by monitor screens for each camera and every single one of those cameras can zoom in to see the reflection in your eyeball even from up to 200 feet away and everything is recorded and stored for up to 2 years before it is erased, and nobody got away with even throwing broken stuff away whether some one hit it with a forklift it came off the truck that way or druggies ran into pallet racking or product. broken stuff was written up for manufacturer repair or credit or sent to service department for repair training or parts stripping.
 

InvalidError

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The electronics retailers, distributors, etc. might not use them but shipping companies do - or at least used to. Even today, most packages' first step into shipping companies' sorting facilities is a trip in tumble bins at the end of which they get dumped on the conveyor belt, which can be a drop from a few feet. Small-medium packages sent through USPS get bagged with other packages destined to the same sorting facility, so there is no delicate handling of individual boxes as those bags go through transit facilities; bags just get piled together with whatever forces this may apply until they get re-opened at their respective destinations.

My comment was about online stores that rely on third-party shipping like UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc. BestBuy has their own trucks for local deliveries, so they have more end-to-end control over what happens between their warehouses and final delivery. As you said though, this is not necessarily enough to save more delicate equipment.
 
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