Forums | MacLife

Whoa!  They are closing both stores that I frequent!

I worked for CompUSA as their Mac guy in one of the very earliest Apple "store within a store" layouts. Being "The Mac Guy" rocked, I got a cool looking black polo shirt with the Apple logo on it instead of the lame red CompUSA shirt the PC losers had to wear.
But even way back then I was amazed at how terribly the store I was at was managed and frankly I am surprised CompUSA managed to last thins long.

BestBuy is killing them.
BestBuy has cleaner stores - at least in my experience.

I neither shop at CompUSA or BestBuy. The reason is easy: Rebates.
I refuse to deal with stores who's marketing is built upon assorted rebate scams and schemes.

If I ever deal with rebates, it's the instant ones. In my area Best Buy charges quite a bit than what other stores in the area charge and if you see any rebates they're always the mail-in rip-off ones. CompUSA at least had instant rebates on a regular basis.

Then again when I was in there, I was usually just buying blank media.

In my nieghborhood mall, they closed the Best Buy. The AppleStore is still going strong, though!

Yeah, they lost their direction. Although their tech support always sucked, in my opinion.

Frankly, nothing bad enough could happen to CompUSA.  Every store in the chain and the corporate headquarters in Texas could catch fire and sink into the swamp and I wouldn't shed a tear (well, after making sure the employees made it out alive...I'm not heartless).

"Don't mince words, Bones, what do you really think?"

Basically, I bought an iBook G3 from the Las Vegas store.  Now it was a floor model, but they said it worked fine, and I even bought their CompUSA Care.  This would even cover fixing the LCD screen, which AppleCare would not.  Cool.

About three months later, the logic board blew.  AARRgh.  So I sent it in the nearest CompUSA store to get fixed.  THey send it out to Apple.  Oh well.  Apple puts in a new logic board.  I get it back.  Two months later, the logic board goes south again.  GRRRRR. ong story short, this happened six times in the space of a year. 

After consulting one of those storefront lawyers, I wrote and called the corporate headquarters.  After several months, I finally talked to a lady who, after reviewing the faxed copies of my repair orders, agreed that this situation was not good.  I was entitled to a replacement iBook.

I went to the nearest CompUSA to get this replacement.  The first time, they hadn't heard anything about this deal from the corporate office.  Then, they wanted to charge me for transferring the information from the old laptop to the new one.  I called up the corporate lady: "I'll be damned if I'm paying a dime in order to get my data onto the machine I should have gotten in the first place."  She agreed, and I got the transfer done gratis.

Now at this point, you're probably thinking "He actually got some decent customer service here." Keep Reading.

Several months later, we had an accident with the LCD screen, and needed it replaced.  Now I will admit that there were a couple of minor things with this laptop -- one of the Shift keys was busted, and the modem port had a slight crack, but nothing major.  I just wanted the LCD screen replaced, and this was covered under the CompUSA Care that I bought - again! - for this machine.

I get a call a week later, asking for $450, to cover all the repairs they had done on this -- including the modem port and the keyboard.  THey also said that the LCD screen was the result of "abuse" and was not covered.  I had already explained what happened (something was dropped on the LCD screen) and I had not authorized them to do anything about the modem port or the keyboard.  "That'll be $450, please."

I called the lady at the corporate headquarters again, but she no longer worked in that department (methinks she did her job too well) and I couldn't get anybody to listen to me this time.

Actually, I see CompUSA's closure as karma.

I'm not surprised. I think CompUSA is ok, but now that I order from NewEgg.com and I live kind of close to an Apple store I don't really need to go there - or to WorstBuy (aka BestBuy) or CircuitCity.
(NOTE: never really ever had a problem with any of the above mentioned stores - but I've heard horror stories, so I try to think twice if I need to buy something for the computer.)

Never been to a CompUSA in my life. I actually have no idea where I would even find one!

I like to visit the closest CompUSA to touch the new Macs.
Then I buy from Apple online.

BTW, where is the list of stores that will close?

Looks like all my "local" stores are staying open. They are all listed.