I have been told by wise people not to fall into the gimmick of buying at stores that recently went bankrupt. Apparently, liquidators are in charge of these stores, and since their goal is to make the most money they can, they may mark up the merchandise or sell merchandise from sources other than the store they are liquidating. ABC’s Good Morning America did a really good expose on this – you should check it out to learn more about the tactics that liquidators employ.
So, I stopped by a local Circuit City on Saturday to see how people are reacting to their going out of business sale. The first thing I noticed is that the store is completely packed. If it was this packed while Circuit City was in business, they would have never gone bankrupt in the first place. And boy, the checkout line had at least 50 people waiting. It seemed like it would take 30-60 minutes to go through that line.
I walked around the line to see what people are buying. It seemed like most of the shoppers had picked up DVDs. Some had computer/gaming accessories in their carts. Some had printers and digital photo frames. The funny thing is, I didn’t really see any good deals on any of these items. There were DVDs for $10, but you can pick up $10 DVDs at many places like Target and Walmart. The photo frame they had was $125. I had recently gone shopping, and bought a similar frame for only $80 from Fry’s.
It seemed like people were paying similar prices to what they would have payed in other stores for items that could not be returned or exchanged. Since people are generally not stupid, they must just not know that they are not getting a good deal here. Thus, the lesson learnt is that whenever you think something might give you a good deal, always do your research before you buy, or otherwise, you may be taken for a ride just like all these unsuspecting people I saw that day.
