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0 pointsneilv2y ago0 comments

The CompUSA that opened in Cambridge, MA, had a guard who insisted on checking your purchases after the registers, like you were a criminal, or implying it was a crime-heavy area.

Not the kind of insult or atmosphere anyone should have to put up with, and, further, the generally affluent people of Harvard and MIT, which the store was located right between, weren't accustomed to it.

I called this out in 2000, when I made Web page about assembling PCs, during the rise of Web ecommerce retail. https://www.neilvandyke.org/cheap-pc-2000/

> I actually spent a lot of time checking out the local vendors, but was generally dissatisfied, and used them only as a last resort. If you're in Cambridge, MA, USA, some vendors I looked at: PCs for Everyone (informative Web site, but long waits at their showroom, and they didn't have a floppy drive after I'd waited 30 minutes), MicroCenter (large superstore, mailorder generally has better prices, didn't have advertised CD-RW drives in stock, the three of the four things I bought there were somehow defective), BestBuy (very poor component selection, guards at the entryways), and CompUSA (smaller version of MicroCenter, guard at front door insists upon comparing every shopper's purchases to their receipt as they leave). So much for brick&mortar service.

> UPDATE 2018-12-10: MicroCenter brick&mortar has risen to the challenge, and is now my overall favorite source for PC parts.

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kstrauser2y ago

Still better than Circuit City. I bought a graphics card there once. It was dead on arrival. I took it back to the store to exchange it, but that was their last one. I asked for a refund then, and they told me about their restocking fee. The kindly offered to give me 100% credit to another card that was twice as expensive.

That was the only time I’ve been asked to “sir, please keep your voice down” and “sir, we need you to leave”. I still think I was on the right side of that one.

My credit card company eventually handled it for me.

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