I’ve done some research online and want to say that it is not official that Circuit City is filing for bankruptcy. They haven’t filed for a Chapter 11 or any sort of documents that the public knows about. Trust me I’m just as curious as anyone to know if this is true. Look any person that has a brain and watches how the economy is doing could say it’s definitely possible. Granted the economy has grown and thankfully not shrank but it sure seems like anyone could tell you things are looking bad.
What we do know is that Circuit City turned down Blockbusters deal because they don’t know where Blockbuster is going to come up with this money to buy them out since they in some serious debt. All I know is that when I was working for Circuit City as a regular employee I’d always be asked if they were closing.
In the District we’d be #2 or #1 in numbers and I’ll be honest with you it had gotten really slow not to mention the pressure that was put on us to sell was getting ridiculous. I would make sales no problem just because I sold on pure honesty. If you dealt with me I literally would say you can spend $80 on an HDMI cable here or order one from monoprice for about $3 dollars. Since I had some of the most experience in the store I could easily sell 7-8k on a Saturday consistently. No joke it was getting to the point that some Saturdays I’d only sell 3-4k and top seller in the department. Work wasn’t fun anymore when there’s no one to sell too. I’m not sure if things have turned up now because of all the new models but it just wasn’t fun anymore when the store was dead most of the time. Literally there were days where people were getting written up because we didn’t sell any services yet the department only had about 5k in sales on a budget of 17k. I have no idea how that store was staying in business and every month it seemed like we’d hit goal but our GM was never high. One thing I know is that if that store in the district was getting ranked #2 or #1 since the new store director how bad were some of the other the stores doing. This is not small district in the middle of nowhere we are talking Miami,FL where people like to flaunt things.
UPDATE: (10/20/2008): Circuit City’s shares are going for .40 cents… It was announced earlier that Circuit City is planning to close an estimate of 150~ to get financing it’s been seeking out. This ultimately equal tons of people losing their jobs.
(11/10/2008): Circuit City files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. We knew it would happen eventually.
Recently:
- las cosas nunca suceden la misma manera dos veces
- How to get TrueHD & DTS MA without using a HDMI cable
- Sony XBR 8 vs Samsung 9 Series
- Blu-ray Basics - Blu-ray is there a difference?
- Upcoming post… AV Receiver buying guide
- Miami Art Week-end
- YouTube HD - 720p only
- Obama might not take office if true?!
- LCD vs Plasma Television Guide
- Dubstep Tunes
Comments
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Circuit City has not filed for bankruptcy. I do some work with them and this is only a rumor.
Thanks for all the feedback. I continue to do research on this topic . As of now Yes it does seem like a rumor.
My husband is a manager for Circuit City and I can assure you that they are not filing for bankruptcy. Infact, I just read that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia have just given Circuit City a borrowing power of $1.3 billion also giving $350 million on standby. My husband and I are not so nieve to beleive that Circuit City is going to be around for the long run but we do know for a fact that it’ll be a few years before they can lose all that money beings that they lost about $49 million last year. And we know where the rumor came from. It was an employee that was fired.
I too work for Circuit City in the entertainment department. Everything you said was preaching to the choir. Hopefully they can rebound with the new stores opening but we’ll have to see.
The corporate office isn’t really helping out that much. They had an install skew that allowed for delivery and install for %199.99. Very competitive price for all the features. Well, the corporate members in all their wisdom decided to take that away and charge people %169.99 for a basic installation to go along with a $75.00 for a Partnerpickup skew. Why hurt the associates who are fighting to keep business in their stores even more? People don’t want to pay someone close to $250.00 to plug things in and configure it. $75 for delivery when they live less than 3 miles away sometimes is rediculous. And we wonder why Best Buy does better than we do…..
Last thing too is that Circuit City will be going down to one associate in the TV department per day. This even happening with the suspected influx of customers from the Rebate checks. Circuit’s going to lose a lot of customers who won’t want to wait for the one associate because he’ll be busy helping one couple. Doesn’t really make sense to me….
I completely agree. I’m from store 0867 district 20, lakeland florida. I was the supervisor of the computer department, and as you said people were getting written up for not selling services or cca. it was rediculous. my store director would always be on my ass about my guys performance. Writing people up because the have a issue isnt my managing style. Alot of the problem is they care more about the money coming in then they care about the customers or the employees for that fact. Its nice to know my store wasnt the only dysfunctional one. I put in my 2 weeks and they let me go. it was nice because i got my last paycheck double paid. Maybe if their HR didnt make idiotic mistakes like that they wouldnt be in this position. but hey who am i to complain. nice parting gift. my aim is Shiruomg2 if you want to talk. I currently work at best buy which is a huge turn around. everyones really cool there and the management is quite astounding compared to my previous work places.
Thanks for all your comments they make me realize even more how greatful I am for my new job. Honestly I just want to make this clear, I LOVED my job at Circuit City I took serious pride in it. It was always my goad to educate myself in every product in my department and make good sales. My problem was lying or even knowing that I was suppose to up sell everything when I knew most people didn’t have serious money to spend. I also left because I live with my girlfriend and working week-ends really is tough when she works only during the week. Hope you guys check out the site or if have any questions feel free to comment and should get back to you asap. Thanks for the visit and hope this answered any questions you had before you got here!
I actually work closely with Circuit City and I know they are not filing for bankruptcy. This is just a rumor.
Being a current employee of CC, I can say that I would believe they are going to file for bankruptcy, maybe not soon, but time is counting against them. Of course, they’re epic failure can be only be blamed on the management and idiots at corp. offices.
Their poor customer support comes from the November firings of 3,400 overpaid-by-25-cents employees and replacing them with younger, lower paid teenagers. CC’s business method is to sell you as little as possible but still squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
Being a Firedog tech there, I’m expected to fix computers and to help all 40 customers in my department at the same time. The result is poor computer repairs, angry employees, and rip-offed customers. I’m glad I hand out my business card at work too, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills with them cutting my hours because I don’t rip-off, oops, I mean sell enough. Sorry for having a heart, Circuit Shitty.
I need to apply to Best Buy already.
[…] City Bankruptcy part 2Circuit City Bankruptcyhttp://www.john-michaeldelvalle.com/2008/05/03/circuit-city-bankruptcy-part-2/Bankruptcy Information .com - Personal Bankruptcy InformationPersonal bankruptcy Information […]
[…] City Bankruptcy part 2Circuit city Bankruptcyhttp://www.john-michaeldelvalle.com/2008/05/03/circuit-city-bankruptcy-part-2/Circuit City Stores Inc. CC: Transactions - BusinessWeekGet information on recent circuit city […]
I am also an employee of Circuit City in Hickory N.C. We have been struggling for the past few months not much in the way of services are going out the computer dept. blows home entertainment away most days. It does make me wonder if we are going down hill I love my job i used to be in H.E. but then moved to PFT because selling was not fun anymore so i completely understand where everyone is coming from.
I actually work in the new store The City(3369) at San Patricio Plaza in Guaynabo city, Puerto Rico. I think the company is in Bankruptcy. In the last 3 weeks various experience and customer service partners have 7 to 10 hours schedule. Nobody lives with that shedule. Several supervisors and other personal was dismissed. In the store, merchandise are not received almost, and other bad operations things.
I am a Sup at my ccity store. Yes management is bad and thier pushing sales alot but it comes from upper from district and coperate. If it continues ccity will no longer be in business because all i here everyday from all employees is there tired and dont care anymore. I remember when ccity was fun u walked around helped customer and was never nagged. Oh well maybe the old days will comeback
Dont count on it. The issue is that all the employees that did a really good job and sold their butts off were fired for making what they were worth. ccity is known for bad decision making. That comment was exactly right. You fire your best people (usually highest paid for a reason) and then have the balls to ask them to come back for 7 dollars an hour less. Yeah not a good plan. They wont declare bankrupcy until they are in alot of debt and so far they have none.
It’s so funny reading all the comments employees write on here. Its like dejavu. I must say that there is some corupt stuff goin on at circuit city. I work in store 0859 and we cater to alot of international customers seeing how it is located in Miami ,FL. Just to give an example, we had one tech manager who would not let us sell computers by them selves. This ment if you (the customer) came into the store to buy a computer we would
(continued)ask what services you wanted with the computer and if you wanted non then we would pull the bait and switch and tell you it was out of stock. This was done numerous times and many international customers were takin advantage of. Needless to say I immediatley left the tech department as I was not going to take part in what i believed to be a crime. Soon after other employees got fed up quick and petioned to have the manager fired and so we did. Sadly this is just one story. I do believe Circuit City will go bankrupt. But I solely blame that on poor poor managment and corupt corprate officials.
S.L. sure you’ll find this funny as much as I did as well: http://www.john-michaeldelvalle.com/2008/06/25/circuit-city-home-entertainment-specialist-say-the-funniest-things/
All the CC’s in Miami have gone down hill. If your company is doing poorly then you should at least train your employees to be the best when it comes to knowledge. NOT pay them the same wage to now be in charge of 3 departments. I complained greatly when I was told that now I was to help Car Audio when I already was in charge of Video & Home Audio. I get more responsibility and get paid the same?! That is total BS. I could easily have taken charge and been the ’super employee’ but it’ll cost you.
Wow, and I thought my store was the only one….
It’s not fun at all working there; I feel like management is always adding on new things for us to do. I’m a CSA, and just 3 months ago things were fine, but then they started giving us (CSA’s) budgets and CA quotas. Seriously, I applied to be a CSA so that I would NOT have to sell. If I had known I would have to sell, I would have applied as a salesperson and get paid more to worry about sales alone, and not do everything else CSA’s have to do. And they got rid of our LP/APA’s on weekday mornings, leaving CSA’s to greet and check receipts. My store director even wants us to stop people and ask why they didn’t buy something if they don’t have a bag/receipt! That reeks of desperation.
[…] ya hear that? i got my whole audio system in the whip thru them under warrenty until 2011…. Circuit City Bankruptcy | John-Michael Del Valle’s Blog only a rumor. if they were filing for bankruptcy, tbh i doubt they would be doing something like […]
Things were great when i was there, however, associates were getting paid commission. I was pulling in 40K a year with only 35hrs a week, was going to school at the time. And no wonder CC is in the crapper. From what i hear they kept the scrubs case in point supervisors like RS, grammar is bad, very bad dude. Use spell checker man.
If I am not mistaken, Circuit City did NOT turn down an offer from Blockbuster. Blockbuster withdrew their offer once they saw Circuit City’s earning statements. As far as the company losing money, and work “not being fun, because there is no one to sell to,” couldn’t the company at least SLOW their earnings, if their salesmen weren’t sending people to the internet to buy cables? Hrmmm…just food for thought.
Yes you are correct. I just haven’t kept up with the updates for this article.
When I use to send customers to buy cables online it was a tip. To me it is completely unethical to tell a customer to by a cable selling for $100 when they could purchase practically the same one (test done online) for more than 80% cheaper.
Circuit City did make a big change for employee’s in the HE department to stop doing this by giving incentives to sell items which high GM. Those items being Monster products, mounts, installations, calibrations, warranty’s, etc…
Even with those extra commission checks at end of the month I assure you that someone like me being honest would still make bonuses.
I’m quite surprised that Brandsmart has an SEO company or outsourced one for link building/reputation management. Personally I use to send people there all the time. Why? When we couldn’t give them the best price I’d tell them everything they’d need to know and educate them well on everything and send them to battle with your employee’s. If people are on a tight budget and you know they just wanted a TV for cheap and I was about to get cherry picked, send them to Brandsmart!
I have no idea how you guys sell TVs for way under cost sometimes. A repair guy from Brandsmart actually came in to buy a set from me because what he quoted was that the company would call up manufactures and buy out the last batch of units left that weren’t bought and got a better deal and reason they sold sets for so cheap. Of course this could be completely false but have no idea how Brandsmart makes money.
One thing is for sure if you know what you want and know the actual cost of the product without mark up, you can walk out of there with something below cost by negotiating. This is why I have this site to help educate people so they can go out and make the right choice. Not get ripped off by a person who sells them a cable with 80%+ markup.
I worked for them in 2000/2001 and it wasn’t a very good experience. They didn’t treat their employees very well and I saw them to a lot of unethical and illegal things. (does anyone remember “manager training books”, a very good way get hourly employees to work off the clock and call it “training”) I quit and went back to my prior job after just 18 months with them.
No, they haven’t gone chapter 11 yet… BUT THEY WILL! Retailers never declare bankruptcy before Christmas. Customers are much less likely to buy during the holidays if they think the store won’t be around (see montgomery wards). There share price is less than .50 cents, they’re going to be de-listed from the nyse soon, and there is not even a remote chance they’ll be able to recover their share price in the near future. Banktrupcy is a GUARENTEE by the summer of 09!!!!!
With their share price less than 1.00 there is really no reason not to declare bankruptcy. At this point chapter 11 actually helps them. About 25% of their stores are in very poor locations. It would benefit them to liquidate those stores but the leases are too expensive to buy out. Chapter 11 would allow them to get out from under a lot of bad debt and contracts and emerge a more stable company.
Basically every financially troubled retailer goes through at least one chapter 11, before they go chapter 7 and close down for good. (see wards, ames, venture, bradlees, etc, etc, etc) If you work at CC your biggest worry should be getting laid off or your store being one of the 20-25% they will close. I would start looking for a new job just in case. Remember I GUARENTEE they will go chapter 11 by the end of their 2nd qtr 09’!
CC finally pulls the trigger on a Chapter 11 filing! I found the bankruptcy docs at
http://www.chapter11library.com