Community/SoapBox

Just looking for come clarification on the above article.  You said you went to the cell phone department in Circuit City where Manuel helped you.  Does this mean you went to the Verizon booth?

“A good sales person would have given me a couple of cool things to look at and experience while he had to step to the back room”

It is unfair of you to judge Circuit City’s customer service based on this experience if you were in fact dealing with someone who worked for Verizon Wireless.  Verizon associates often have to go to the warehouse to look for merchandise that they can’t fit in their limited floor space. 

Circuit City does carry their own limited selection of cell phone accessories, so if your experience was with one of their associates, then your comments regarding your shopping experience are fair.

I have no love for this company but this is a terrible article. If you were there around Black Friday, this would have been well before the layoffs so you couldn’t have wanted to ask Manny about the recent layoffs. Also, CC doesn’t sell extended warranties on cell phone chargers. No one does, it is an accessory and silly do to so. Good job embellishing that story a bit, you had to throw in the obligatory reference to warranties.
I was a sales manager for that company for 3 years and they sucked my soul from me. They are a terribly run company grasping for anything to hold onto, blindly copying everything Best Buy does but 5 years too late.
I now work for a small high-end A/V company doing sales and installation. I enjoy it very much.

I saw nothing that indicated a Verizon booth or employee. But even if it was indeed a Verizon person, you have helped substantiate my overall point—that they are racing towards the bottom.

As for embellishing my story, Manny may have been trying to sell me a warranty or come to think of it, maybe it was a magazine subscription. Either way it was a feeble attempt at customer service.

It has been pointed out to me by a PR representative from Ultimate Electonics that they didn’t close the entire operation. The new owner did however close 32 of the 64 stores. While I knew that, and didn’t mean to imply that Ultimate had closed down entirely like The Good Guys had, my leaving out the word “at” before the mention of “Ultimate Electronics” may have caused some confusion. My bad. I’ll endeavor to be more precise in my future blogs on this topic.

My point still stands however. The upheaval taking place in the middle of the market is due to the factors I have pointed out. My suggestion for improving customer service sure seems like a no-brainer.

Customer service is lacking at the big box places & has been for some time now.

My place of emplyment is privately held & has a strong emphasis on customer service. We accept a smaller bottom line percentage to ensure that our customers can get the information they need before the sale & the help they deserve after the sale.

This is the way all businesses should run.

I’m sad for the people at those places who’ve lost their jobs. Good luck to them all.

The company said the dismissals had nothing to do with performance but were part of a larger effort to improve the bottom line. The firings represent about 9 percent of the company’s in-store workforce of 40,000.