Wow, I have to admit, I get a little misty...
http://gizmodo.com/360544/the-sad-final-days-of-a-compusa
I'm tempted to run out to the store in Fairlawn for one last look. The GM out there is someone both Stephanie and I worked for at one time or another, post undergrad years. Retail certainly sucks, but it wasn't a terrible place to work.
One of our local CompUSA stores was replaced with a Micro Center. I'm much happier with them. CompUSA failed to reimage themselves when they started selling Electronics. It was still CompUSA with the same crappy service (at least here locally) plus TV's, Home Theater, DVD Players etc... They own the Good Guys name, instead of renaming the Good Guys stores CompUSA, they should have renamed CompUSA Good Guys and give, at least the consumer that didn't know otherwise, a reason to go back.
I still think that the point at which they started to go the wrong direction was the point at which they stopped doing in-store corporate sales. While Dell certainly has commoditized the market, there are still a lot of people who prefer to deal with local people. They seemed to be doing quite a bit of business back in the day.
Most businesses deal with "local resellers" who can perform on-site, value-add services, and eschew CompUSA, et. al. Best Buy now has a corporate sales group, but, again, how many companies use it? Very few.
CompUSA was/is a freakin' joke. Overpriced BS and ill-qualified sales help.
Putzie - You are my hero.