Thoughts on Fry's Electronics?

[SushiKii]

What are your guys' thoughts on Fry's Electronics? It's one of a few chains that comes close to nationwide that has a location here (them and Best Buy), and I want to know what your thoughts are.

 

The Fishers, IN store is massive and has a lot of wasted free space (due to the location being converted from an Incredible Universe), because of which seems somewhat outdated in displays. The staff is friendly and more knowledgeable at that location than most Best Buy's though, and the prices seem somewhat better than Best Buy. Still, certain things Best Buy will have more variety on.

[Tsuki]

i used to work at the one in oregon, so here is an insider perspective:

 

the place is shit, its not managed very well, the sales people will over-sell, get you parts that dont go good together, or even lower quality parts, just because it pays them more commission.

The sales people sound like they know what they are talking about, but in reality, they dont. they know more than bestbuy, but so does the homeless guy down the street. they only know whats written on the box.  ask them anything remotely technical and they either have no idea, or straight up lie to you to get a sale.

when i worked there, i wasnt a sales person, so i didnt get commission. i would regularly stop customers who had already talked to a sales guy, and let them know what they should actually be buying and try to save them money on better stuff.

 

if you go there knowing exactly what you want, then its a pretty decent place.

[SushiKii]

21 minutes ago, Tsuki said:

i used to work at the one in oregon, so here is an insider perspective:

 

the place is shit, its not managed very well, the sales people will over-sell, get you parts that dont go good together, or even lower quality parts, just because it pays them more commission.

The sales people sound like they know what they are talking about, but in reality, they dont. they know more than bestbuy, but so does the homeless guy down the street. they only know whats written on the box.  ask them anything remotely technical and they either have no idea, or straight up lie to you to get a sale.

when i worked there, i wasnt a sales person, so i didnt get commission. i would regularly stop customers who had already talked to a sales guy, and let them know what they should actually be buying and try to save them money on better stuff.

 

if you go there knowing exactly what you want, then its a pretty decent place.

 

So similar to Best Buy in a way on knowledge, huh? At least the prices are better. 

[Tsuki]

9 minutes ago, SushiKii said:

 

So similar to Best Buy in a way on knowledge, huh? At least the prices are better. 

i cant speak for all of them, just the one i worked at, but yeah.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Tsuki said:

i cant speak for all of them, just the one i worked at, but yeah.

The one in Roseville seemed to have fairly knowledgeable staff, judging from my own questioning, backroom interrogation, friendly chats I've had with them. There is a giant train sticking out of the building right over the entrance, so take that for what you will...

[Tsuki]

39 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

The one in Roseville seemed to have fairly knowledgeable staff, judging from my own questioning, backroom interrogation, friendly chats I've had with them. There is a giant train sticking out of the building right over the entrance, so take that for what you will...

29 of the 34 stores across the US are themed in some way. the one i worked at is not sadly.

my big problem with the sales people is stuff like motherboards, customer is not going to sli, or overclock, and doesnt need more than one sata port.  but the sales person is gonna recommend the best X370 board on the market, instead of a decent B350 for half the price, even though it would fit the customers needs better.

the reason? the more X370 gives 47 cents more commission than the B350.

 

this becomes and even bigger issue when dealing with stuff like power supplies where the margin is much better. "have this 1200w psu for your 200w system cuz its silent and wont fail, and in case you upgrade you'll need it it pays me $15 more"

"get the 1600X because its better it requires you to buy a cooler which ill make another $10 on, but dont worry, we can help you put it all together for only $50! in which i make another $20 from"

 

i would straight call them out on it too in front of the customer.

 

most of the money they make is from modems/routers, security systems, and builds, but they dont sell them that often. ill see them try to sell a fucking $450 nighthawk router to grandma even though she really just needs maybe a $40 one for her phone. gotta make that $30 commission

[dizmo]

It's worth signing up to their sales emails, gotten some pretty awesome deals from them.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

It's worth signing up to their sales emails, gotten some pretty awesome deals from them.

I agree.  I got the 6700K in my laptop for $259 last November from them.  (The promo was for $269.99 but they also matched Micro Center.)

 

Also I got these around the same time.

I got 2 HDDs but only 1 is pictured.  The 2 receipts were because of a "limit" of 1 per customer, but they let me do 2 transactions with 2 promo codes.  I think it was probably cause it was almost the end of the day, and they still had almost half a shopping cart full of them.  I might have bought 4 or 5 if they'd been 8TB or larger drives.

 

On the other hand, I see things like this.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

As of a few days ago, they did have an MSI GT 710 for $24, which is about $10 lower than I've seen any GT 710s anywhere else.  If I was building a NAS whose mobo didn't have any HDMI or DisplayPort outputs (maybe just VGA, or no iGPU support at all), and it had 2 or more x16 slots, I'd probably get one.

 

I'd require 2 x16 PCIe slots to leave one available for a 2 SAS / 8 SATA LSI HBA off eBay.  There is also a GT 710 that uses an x1 slot, but that's like $45 or so, within striking distance of a GT 1030.