[conspire] (forw) What's going on with Fry's Electronics?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Unfortunately some people in authority think stores that serve people 
> who live here are less important than housing for new people.  Meanwhile, 
> the only way they can address the extra cars on the road is by more 
> stop signs, speed bumps and traffic lights.

I'm with you, bro'.  Remember, traffic to/from my neighbouring town of
Menlo Park has been rendered absurd by successive waves of such things,
the latest being the metastatic growth of Faceplant on the far side of
town (on the Bay shore).

> Regarding Frys re-branding.  Frys electronics was basically one-stop
> shopping for geeks.  You could buy a mother board, frozen pizza and
> soft drinks.  What more did one need?

In fairness to Fry's Electronics, it remains a superb place to get
some particular things including (1) NiMH batteries and chargers, and
(2) magazines.  The breadth of selection for both is very gratifying.

My real beef with Fry's was less a beef than a lowering of the initial
expectation that stupendous retail space would imply proportionately high
variety.  And, actually, what I noticed starting in the late 1980s is a
subtle thing:  You were shopping for, say, an external enclosure for an
optical drive.  You tally up a significant number of merchandise items 
falling into that category, which means high variety, right?  But not so
fast.  Upon contemplation, you find that there's only 1-2 of those that
you would seriously consider buying, the rest being dubious in various
ways.  You wander over to Central Computer's main location in Santa
Clara, and at first you're dismayed that there are so few items in that
category -- but then upon contemplation find that you consider 5-6 of
them worth considering.  

So, at a bird's eye level, lots of choice -- but then, at a close-up
level, annoyingly narrow _good_ choice.

> Notice that they still have weekly and daily specials just like most
> grocery stores.

But, again, I'm not sure I'd touch most of those items with a stick.

Also, something I've occasionally pondered:  Do you really want to buy,
say, RAM or an SSD from Fry's stock -- or, worse, Fry's _sale_ stock?

One of the dirty little secrets of hardware is provenance and grading.
I won't point fingers, but certain vendors in the Valley historically
were known for low prices but seemed to generate a lot of returns,
leading to two speculations:  (1) Maybe their wholesale sourcing
included a lot of 'seconds'.  (2) Maybe their RMA returns tended mostly
to get re-shrinkwrapped and put back on the retail shelf instead of
being returned to the wholesaler.  Retailers get rewarded for low
wholesale-return rates with pricing.  The incentives tend to encourage
poor quality practices.

If I need RAM, I'd be inclined to skip Fry's (and especially its sales)
and buy from S.A. Technologies in Santa Clara (http://satech.com/), 
because they have decades of history doing The Right Thing and IMO
taking chances with quality doesn't save enough money to be worth it.