Geeks.com Online Shop Has Closed 187
Duggeek writes "After 17 years, one of the best kept secrets in shopping, Geeks.com, has shuttered its online doors. Myself, I have a small book of sales orders from years past. According to the latest announcement, that stack will not be growing any larger. Quoting: 'Our vision has always been to provide the geeky tech consumer an alternative avenue to purchase quality refurbished and new techy products and gadgets. That vision was the cornerstone of our slogan "Best Deals Every Nanosecond." Unfortunately after a lot of difficult consideration the owners of Geeks.com feel we are unable to come through on this vision any longer. There are many why's... The e-commerce landscape, as well as the consumer electronics market, has changed dramatically with intense competition and a 1000lb gorilla (do we really need to say who) competitor that can lose millions of dollars to buy customers and suck up inventory. They can lose money with impunity, supported by the stock market. We cannot.' The landing page of their website now goes directly to this announcement; the storefront is switched off. They maintain a Facebook page where a combination of remorse and surprise is rapidly growing. The letter also asserts that they will fulfill all business obligations to online customers during their transition to both a solitary, brick-and-mortar presence in California and a wholesale division, Evertek. Personally, just about every keyboard in my closet was purchased from them, and another box full of USB devices as well. Five of my PC builds exist because of them. Feel free to share your own memories of the former Computer Geeks Discount Outlet."
You should have told me it existed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn, I never heard of it before, it never showed up in my searches for parts.
Hint, you can't have a successful business if you don't tell people about it!
Word of mouth only works for drug dealers.
Re:You should have told me it existed! (Score:4, Informative)
Same here. And I've been browsing the Internet for a long time, looking for geeky stuff.
Oh well...
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They used to be "Comp Geeks" (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought my DEC Alpha Multias from them... Same machine Malda started Slashdot on. I had two...
Also got a couple of nice Seimens-made web-terminals, which I converted to low-noise firewalls with Astaro.
Re:You should have told me it existed! (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. Never heard of it. *shrug*
Then again, I've only been online for 24 years.
Re:You should have told me it existed! (Score:5, Insightful)
The focus of Geeks.com was largely on refurbished equipment, but when your customers have options like Amazon, Overstock, and Newegg, it is hard to compete. I've been following them for a couple of years, always getting notices of their latest deals in my inbox, and it seemed like they had a lot of the same sorts of products on sale: 1TB internal hard drives, 23" monitors, and always a ton of the same Dell desktop computers that had features that might would have been acceptable in an office environment a couple of years ago (limited RAM and hard drive space, sometimes with a basic Windows install). They recently started offering a lot of first-generation iPads for a couple hundred dollars each as well.
Part of the problem is that customers new to Geeks will quickly lose interest if they bought one of those items because the inventory never really changed, and the deals were always around the same price points. In a market where newer items often sport better features and tend to get cheaper over time for the amount of power and functionality you get, there's less incentive to turn to a refurbished marketplace, especially for such a limited selection of hardware.
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They recently started offering a lot of first-generation iPads for a couple hundred dollars each as well.
A couple hundred? I got a second generation iPad on eBay for a couple hundred, not too long ago.
I'm sure there's a market for folks buying iPad1s, but they've got to get a deep enough discount acquiring the refurbished equipment to sell them for a "fair" price.
They make it out to be the big online retailers selling at a loss -- when it's not. Something was broken with Geeks' business model,
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Or they were relying on geek loyalty to Geeks.com.
Domain name for sale? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I suspect one of the real points to this article is to let interested buyers know that the domain name may be for sale soon (to pump up the price).
That's a good point... Geeks.com is a really neat domain name; i'd be willing to pay as much as a $1000 for it.
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They recently started offering a lot of first-generation iPads for a couple hundred dollars each as well.
A couple hundred?
I got a second generation iPad on eBay for a couple hundred, not too long ago.
I'm sure there's a market for folks buying iPad1s, but they've got to get a deep enough discount acquiring the refurbished equipment to sell them for a "fair" price.
They make it out to be the big online retailers selling at a loss -- when it's not.
Something was broken with Geeks' business model, or the execution -- it worked once, but the environment changes over time.
Or they've got to offer something eBay can't. eBay is always going to be a bit of a stressful experience, what are the shipping charges? do they ship to your country? is the seller credible? what exactly are they selling (since every page is formatted a little different)? what is the quality like?
ThinkGeek seems to do alright, they can't really out compete amazon on breadth or value so they don't even try. They embrace their niche and can offer a much better experience for consumers in that niche.
There's a
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Ebay is hell. Paypal is worse.
If I can't afford to buy it new or reconditioned from a respectable supplier I don't buy it. Life is so much better that way.
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I didn't use eBay for several years because of its problems, especially with sellers ripping people off. A few months ago, I noticed *Amazon* now has that problem with their tech equipment -- dollar-store quality no-name chargers sent in place of brand-specific ones, counterfeit items, broken stuff, fly-by-night companies reneging on warranties, etc. -- and stopped buying stuff there after discovering firsthand that Amazon's won't intervene when problems like that crop up even if the items were (supposedly
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If Amazon isn't selling it, it says right below the price, "Sold by " but may also have "and fulfilled by Amazon" if Amazon shipping options are available.
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There's a niche for a company that sells refurbished equipment at a higher price than eBay but offers a more polished experience. Either geeks.com didn't execute or they didn't get the word out.
You mean that there used to be a niche... back when eBay was young.
The people who want a polished experience go to the retail stores. The people who want to save as much money as possible, and are willing to take risks and extra work to save money dig through local newspaper classifieds around the country and
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And if you haven't heard of them, you weren't putting together your own systems 8-17 years ago.
I was. I've still never heard of them.
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Before geeks.com they were compgeeks.com. And before compgeeks.com they were computergeeks.com.
They were one of the first places I shopped that talked about Linux compatibility in their product descriptions. I missed that feature when it went away. I was willing to buy lesser known and more expensive gear because compgeeks said it worked with Linux so I wouldn't have to do the research myself. Doing my own research I was more likely to buy the cheapest and most popular gear instead, and frequently found
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I stopped using them when they stopped researching the items they were offering for sale. I'd go through and most of the products wouldn't have any specs and their return policy was such that you could only get store credit and you'd have to pay for shipping both ways.
Which was a shame because when I first started shopping there the prices were generally good and the merchandise wasn't bad either.
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I've been building my own systems since 1995, and I'd never heard of them.
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I never heard of them either but I don't buy refurb ever now. I looked at the other site and won't deal with "log in to view prices" from anyone.
I have at least 20 vendors I buy from which usually beat the juggernauts in one way or another. Since I don't have to spend gas and I can shop for free shipping I'll piece together a system from a dozen vendors.
Re:You should have told me it existed! (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. This sounds like a place that I would have used... IF I HAD KNOWN ABOUT IT.
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It's OK. (Score:2)
Nothing of value was lost.
Well, for you, me, many others...
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Damn, I never heard of it before, it never showed up in my searches for parts.
Hint, you can't have a successful business if you don't tell people about it!
Word of mouth only works for drug dealers.
Same here, I thought I knew all the suppliers but I never heard of them.
How did this get on slashdot? Has everyone else heard of them?
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A lesson for everyone buying web advertising (Score:2)
I had heard of them before. I had even bought things from them. Sad to see another potential supplier drop out, but to be honest I had not bought from then in years and had lost interest. While I had not even looked lately, the good deals and interesting items were getting fewer and fewer when I stopped shopping there. And they seemed to use shipping as a profit center, not just to cover shipping costs but to make a bit extra there. So you had to factor that in when you saw what at first looked like good de
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Geeks.com was a reseller on Amazon.com, and you could find their products via pricewatch.com or froogle.
I bought from them a few times, but they never really rose above the noise because their selection was small and patchy, and their inventory wasn't very deep, so they'd alternate, being out-of-stock on an item for weeks, then it being available again.
All that said, I don't see why they'd shut-down their online store. If they're
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Ah, but that requires marketing, and everyone knows marketing is the devil! Advertising too.
Can't advertise and can't market, because the geeks block all ads and hate marketers.
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I'm pretty sure they advertised on Slashdot in the past.....
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I wonder about the wisdom of advertising on a site dedicated to a community that has both a very negative view of ads and the technical knowhow to block them...
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Re:You should have told me it existed! (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to shop at computergeeks.com, which was then geeks.com and quite frankly the service was abysmal. Early on it wasn't so bad, but about the time I stopped shopping there they stopped bothering to even fill out the specifications on the things they were selling. The last order I made with them was to use a credit I had from returning the previous thing. The Bluetooth head set didn't work right, and I found out that it was incompatible, but they didn't bother to fill in the specs. I didn't even bother to return it as it would have cost me more to return it, just to get another store credit.
It used to be a decent shop, but this was a self inflicted wound, I'm just surprised they lasted as long as they did, considering how crappy the service had gotten.
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blast from the past (Score:2)
Geeks.com? (Score:2)
I was ordering from there where it was CompGeeks.com
They always had the coolest sell outs and unique, unexpected, weird items. Just whatever they stumbled across. I bought an IBM CRT monitor back in the day with unpowered Bose speakers in it, of course there was a proprietary IBM connector. They actually had a how-to on their website to wire your own standard connector up (and would do it for a fee). Found an amplified sound card, awesome sound.
Cheap monitors for the Japanese market, they sold LCD's for
Foolish (Score:4, Interesting)
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Amazon sells so much that they can't be bothered to sort or categorize it themselves.
That sounds very 2005. Try searching for 'Xeon CPU' [amazon.com] in Computers...
WHAT?!? (Score:2)
I'm angry and sad at the same time.
First purchase was made back in 2001...pair of Benwin speakers....still with me this moment on my desk. Been a customer ever since. Even did many a purchase on behalf of the school district.
Too, too bad.
Does anyone else know of a good online fire-sale type vendor like CompGeeks?
Going to miss them (Score:4, Interesting)
I discovered them years ago and bought from them both for myself, but also companies I worked for. Their customer service was great. All the best with the store front.
The mega corporations are buying up or pushing out of business all the small businesses. I recently sold by house and moved and in process used a lot of local businesses. Talking with them most were saying they will probably be gone in 3-4 years. The big corporations are cutting deals with cash strapped cites for major concessions that are driving the little guys out with extra fees, permits, and licenses.
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The mega corporations are buying up or pushing out of business all the small businesses.
There must be other reasons in play here. Amazon and such are not big on offering cheap/refurbished equipment, which is what Geeks.com sold a lot of (to me, anyway)
Re: Going to miss them (Score:2)
Geek also sold on Amazon.com. In fact, their shopping cart allowed you to login with your Amazon account.
You can complain about the megcorps but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't become mega corps by being " best kept secrets in shopping". There's been a lot of this on /. where some little known entity is shutting down their website or closing their doors. I think too many people actually believe in the field of dreams, but I am sorry, just because you build it, they aren't necessarily going to come, unless you tell them about it.
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That attitude probably has more to do with why they'll be gone in 3-4 years than any tinfoil hat conspiracy about being driven out of business by dark forces. Seriously, I've seen any number of local businesses go under over the last decade, and the ruling factors in most of them seems to be inertia (I.E. failing to realize it's 2013 and still doing business like it was 1963) and failing to compete (I.E. more of the previous).
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Damn... waited too long (Score:2)
I wanted to buy another of those Antec USB power adapters. They are really nice and work well in my car plugged into my 750w power inverter. (Those damned car-power adapters just suck and usually top out at 0.5a which isn't enough for my tablet which draws more power than that from its battery.
I guess I'll end up paying more elsewhere.
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I guess you've never been to Monoprice. I use one of their 2.1A car lighter adapters for my iPad, and it works very well. The main issue i have is getting it out of the socket, rather than having it stay in.
"one of the Best kept secrets in shopping"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well there's your problem right there...
The funny thing about this... (Score:5, Informative)
...is that it all comes from one warehouse location there in Oceanside. I worked for them for a short time as a temp. It was a less than fond experience, but that's beside the point. All merchandise for the 3 arms of the company come from the same stock. I forget what the 3rd company name they sold under was, but the items you bought under geeks.com was the same stuff you bought "wholesale" under evertek.com. I can only guess at why they feel the need to end the online arm of geeks.com if the store part will remain open, and the other arms (if the third still operates) use the same pool of stock. I will say this, they sold a lot of things that I wouldn't bother going to Newegg for because it would cost more.
Re:The funny thing about this... (Score:5, Informative)
There are 3 companies. Genica, Evertek, and Geeks. They're 2 blocks away from me in Temecula, California. Only the brick and mortar retail store is in Oceanside now. If you're a business, you can still buy from Evertek. I think they just bailed out of the online retail business. They have a pretty huge warehouse right here in Temecula. I just got the email notice, so I'm not sure what the rest of all this means yet. I'll find out more Monday though.
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Ah yes, IIRC Genica is the parent company, and you could buy keyboards and mice and such under that brand. Computer Geeks was the retail arm and Evertek was the wholesale/business arm. They must have expanded at some point if they have a warehouse in Temecula, when I worked there the O'side location was the main and only one.
A sad day (Score:3)
I can't remember how long I've been a Geeks customer - years. I've bought laptops, CPUs, memory, and miscellaneous hardware from them over the years. They were always a great place to check when you needed an older or oddball piece of hardware - often times they had it. Great service, great people.
You will be missed.
Evertek == geeks? (Score:2)
I was really sad to get email they were closing down been a customer since the dawn of civilization.
But then they mentioned evertek.com and WTF it is essentially the geeks site and inventory just with a different skin.
Long time customer (Score:2)
Crappy timing (Score:2)
the price is the problem (Score:2)
Why do people persist to offer second hand stuff cheapest on eBay and Amazon? I am not referring to the cheap Chinese sellers who flood the market with first-hand but second-rate good-enough stuff, but people who for some reason decide that the only place that you can offer older stuff is Amazon/eBay, and if you also have a web site, to charge MORE on that web site - even though it is trivial to get a payment processor who will take way less of a cut.
So... reasons, please?
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OK, let me be more direct: you can list something both on eBay and on your web site, but you list it for less on your web site, because you will pay less to sell the item there than on eBay. So you use eBay as a promotional tool, but prefer for customers to perform checkout on your web site, and encourage repeat customers to use your web site.
Since my credit card provider is better at challenging badly behaving vendors than Paypal/eBay is, and Paypal hate it when you chargeback, I'd also be happier buying o
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"So you use eBay as a promotional tool, but prefer for customers to perform checkout on your web site, and encourage repeat customers to use your web site."
Because doing so is somewhat contrary to eBay policy:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html [ebay.com]
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Except that many sellers include obvious branding in their packages or in e-mails, and everyone's cool about it. And the policy is partly just a way for eBay to try to stop people from moving outside the eBay system, obviously - although part of it is there to stop unscupulous fraudsters from offering to sell a specific listed (but often non-existent) item outside of eBay.
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It costs money to run a business. It's not the same to buy to Joe Sysadmin who stole a Catalyst 2900 from work than to buy from a store that has to keep a big warehouse, employees, and pay taxes.
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Exposure!
It may not be the cheapest, but Ebay is very convenient for customers doing comparison shopping between new and used items. The combination of vendors and the wide variety of photos of different and similar items facilitate comparison.
75% of my orders there were defective (Score:2)
including the last one which is on its second return waiting for a refund
good riddance to the garbage peddlers
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What in God's holy name are you blathering about?
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my last order was a laptop drive, tossed raw in a cardboard box and shipped 2000+ miles flopping around, and THAT was the replacement they sent me for the first one which looked like it had been stepped on
amazing they lasted this long and their other company still exists
Thank you geeks.com! (Score:3)
I should have placed another order last month. I need a few things.
I loved Geeks.com, for buying extra cables for internal builds, tiny mice for laptops, hard drive mounting brackets, and all these little things you need to keep in stock for builds. My current graphics card (GTX460 for $90) and laptop mouse came from geeks.com.
If the owners are reading this, thank you guys for the good service over the years. I've been recommending you since 1999.
If you start up a leaner or updated business model, send out an email to your former customers and let us know.
Dude, even *I'm* selling on Amazon. (Score:2)
They can too. If you have inventory, and you can sell it for more than you bought it for, you should be OK. Or even eBay. The last thing I bought on eBay was a random part to fix my clothes dryer from a seller with many thousands of good feedback. Get started!
Never heard of the place (Score:2)
... until today. So are they gonna ride on the Slashdot Effect fame, now?
The reason it closed (Score:2)
If the people you want as customers don't know you exist, you won't have the customers you want and your business will fail. It is that simple
What's the point of dropping online retail? (Score:2)
If they're just dropping the online retail to reserve themselves for middlemen, then what's the exact point of things?
They're not going out of business, just avoiding online retail.
Requiescant In Pace ... (Score:2)
Ah, damn.... (Score:2)
I've been a fan since they were Compgeeks, back-when. Geeks was a good place to do business. All other factors being equal, they were my first choice, because you could always get hold of a human with clues, and they were flexible about warranties -- a few days out, or an ongoing issue, and they'd still cover it. An item worth not much more than postage? don't bother returning it, we'll just refund you.
Re:1000 lb gorilla (Score:5, Interesting)
As everyone knows they were talking about Amazon, but I assume your question was about the "lose money with impunity supported by the stock market" comment. Amazon is not a very profitable company. In fact Amazon it often takes losses quarters on end. I don't have the time to search for the actual figures, but I am pretty sure they have been operating at a loss since 3rd quarter 2012.
Wall Street still keeps their stock price up because of rising revenues so Amazon can borrow money with impunity to make up for these losses. This allows them to keep dropping prices even when they are losing money. A small company cannot do this. It isn't hard to raise revenues when you don't have to care about profitability or cash flow when setting your prices. This is why Geek.com was complaining that Wall Street allows large companies to succeed with business models which would put SMBs out of business.
I am not commenting on whether this is a good thing, but it is undeniable that it is happening.
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Wall Street still keeps their stock price up because of rising revenues so Amazon can borrow money with impunity to make up for these losses. This allows them to keep dropping prices even when they are losing money. A small company cannot do this.
Sure they can, though likely they will do it through private equity, not Wall Street. The problem is that few small companies know how to dramatically increase their revenue by creating new industries like cloud computing, and reselling sunk costs like external f
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Wall Street still keeps their stock price up because of rising revenues so Amazon can borrow money with impunity to make up for these losses. This allows them to keep dropping prices even when they are losing money. A small company cannot do this.
Sure they can, though likely they will do it through private equity, not Wall Street. The problem is that few small companies know how to dramatically increase their revenue by creating new industries like cloud computing, and reselling sunk costs like external fulfillment.
It isn't hard to raise revenues when you don't have to care about profitability or cash flow when setting your prices.
Do you really think Amazon doesn't care about profitability or cash flow? Do you believe their business model is, "Fuck it, sell it at a loss, Wall Street will bail us out?"
QFT. If anything, their statement shows a profound misunderstanding of how Wall Street works. Companies that lose money are not rewarded. Hell, often companies that make money aren't rewarded, because it's not enough. The truth is that Amazon has a shitload more buying power and can negotiate more favorable credit terms. But they are not losing money.
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Years ago, before Amazon as you put it "created cloud computing", the running joke was that they made a loss on every sale but made up for it in volume. So yes, basically, for years on end when they were just a retailer they were propped up making a substantial loss for years on end.
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I first thought NewEgg.
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They are probably referring to Amazon, but Newegg has probably taken more of their business. I do not see Newegg loosing huge sums of money on older inventory.
As a former reseller and heavy previous buyer from their sister company Evertek.com, we slowed our pace greatly when geeks.com came out as they were undercutting us on many deals straight to the consumer. They also sometimes kept stock on geeks.com that they sold out on evertek.com which left us with a bad taste.
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Yes, but after she was finished, did they give you the seven monitors or not?
Amazon (Score:3)
Makes me wonder what America's going to do. Amazon and Walmart are putting the last of the mid sized companies out of business. They're already show that when tha
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Are we gonna suck it down and just live worse or will we regulate them with the gov't?
try Option C: They'll regulate us with the gov't.
Either way (Score:2)
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I keep hearing this argument.
What argument? That was merely an observation.
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Amazon is still losing money on books, according to the other bookstores. At one time it would have been considered a monopoly and forced to negotiate a settlement. Probably not now. I think dumping is one factor in a legal determination of monopolistic behavior.
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DUUUH I will buy wherever it's cheaper DUUUUUH I don't care about brick and mortar stores DUUUUH they are too expensive and if they can't compete they should go out of busines DUUUUUUUH I don't feel sorry for them, they should have found another job. DUUUH i don't care if they had the store for 30 years and are about to retire, it's their fault because they should have adapted DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRR.
There's your answer. Look around slashdot and you'll see the average geek is a lot like the average person. T
It's fine if brick n mortor goes away (Score:2)
Basically, the modern capitalist economy breaks down in the face of progress. I realize it's hard to get past that realization. In school I was never taught even the concept that there were alternatives to Adam Smith style 'competition makes everything better' capitalism. I don't mean I wasn't taught competing systems, I mean the notion that there _were_ a
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I don't think the Communists were right (Score:2)
Recycling can't really be done on the backend like that. It requires too many chemicals and prod
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DUUUH I will buy wherever it's cheaper DUUUUUH I don't care about brick and mortar stores DUUUUH they are too expensive and if they can't compete they should go out of busines DUUUUUUUH I don't feel sorry for them, they should have found another job. DUUUH i don't care if they had the store for 30 years and are about to retire, it's their fault because they should have adapted DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRR.
There's your answer. Look around slashdot and you'll see the average geek is a lot like the average person. They only care about the lowest price TODAY.
Although price is always going to be a factor, I tend to buy from specific online retailers because I like dealing with them (like Newegg, Monoprice, Amazon, etc.). But you're right, I couldn't give two shits that the brick-and-mortar store, that I never had a need to patronize, decides to shuts down.
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amazon is far in the lead indeed:
Amazon 2011 revenue: 48 billion
Rakuten / buy.com 2011 revenue: 4.7 billion
Newegg 2011 revenue: 2.5 billion
(Supposedly Newegg is the #2 online retailer in the US though, a good portion of Rakuten's sales are in SE Asia)
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and couldn't find any horn rimmed glasses held together with sticking plaster.
You're thinking of thinkgeek.com.
Joking, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that in their store at some point. I'm amazed they're still in business.
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That's no excuse. It just makes it that much harder to do cost analysis. Sorry. All your "I'm a b2b site" chest thumping doesn't mean squat. If I'm a purchaser, especially a bulk-purchaser, I'm expected to do some comparison. That means going through log-ins on all your stupid sites, instead of being able to automate it in some sane way. Electronic stock exchanges quote slightly different prices that get arbitraged away, and that business doesn't hurt, so the idea that price transparency will hurt your
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It doesn't work that way. If you're "a purchaser" you're only comparing prices from the handful of approved sellers that your company has already worked-out a contract terms with.
Only once in a great while, if you're ambitious, will you decide a product is massively over-priced, and start looking around for the
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