Subject: Fry's sucks. (was: goin to CA soon, to be a CC tychoon

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Jun 8 18:09:39 2003

You guys are MUCH too easy on Fry's.

Yes, they do suck rocks.

> > Why do you suggest that Fry's is "effectively stealing from the 
> > general public." 

Fry's does not have enough competence to "effectively steal".

The Fry's staff has a much lower competence level than the MEDIAN of the
general populace.  It's where people go to work who can't pass the
McDonald's written test.

It helps if you speak multiple languages, because there are few employees
who are really fluent in English.

Yes, it is true that the majority of stuff that gets returned to a store
isn't really broken.  But putting it back on the shelves without testing
it is inexcusable.

They started off as a grocery store (part of the Fry's grocery chain),
that added in a couple of aisles of electronics hobby stuff.  Then they
got rid of the stuff that hackers didn't want, like produce.  In those
days, they were great as a one-stop hackers' store - frozen food, candy,
soda, aspirin, chips of both types, . . .

Years ago, when they sold us dozens of sets of bad RAM for our 5150's,
their "tech support" people "tested" them and declared them "good".  We
explained that they DID NOT WORK in real, genuine OEM IBM PC's.  Their
"tech support" people thought that OEM was a brand name.  Eventually,
after several letters of complaint, cc'ed to the editor of Microtimes
(Mary Eisenstadt (sp?)), David? Fry himself came to us and replaced the
bad RAM.

> any advertised product will be out of stock, that the  pepsi machine 
> will of be of  more help
It took my money and didn't give me my soda.  But the staff were even less
help than it.

After more than 20 years as an industry "leader", it wasn't until about a
year ago that they finally had enough in-house expertise to even HAVE a
website!

And don't forget the NOISE level!  Try a Saturday afternoon.  Do they
really need to have a barker WITH AMPLIFICATION peddling washing machines?

But we keep going back, because the prices are good, and it is a great
experience for tourists.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        [email-masked]

---

From: "Fred N. van Kempen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Jun 8 18:10:05 2003

> You guys are MUCH too easy on Fry's.
NO NO NO!

With the right attitude while going in there, it can be a blast!

--fred (regular camper @ sunnyvale, paloalto and huntington beach stores)

---

From: "Zane H. Healy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Jun 8 18:10:11 2003

>You guys are MUCH too easy on Fry's.

Pretty much.  Especially given how the prices, at least up here have gone up.  When Fry's opened their Oregon store, they had really good prices, often better than the local hole in the wall PC shops.  When DVD's started to hit mainstream, they had really good prices.  Now overall, a trip to Best Buy is more worth my time.  For us, it's a long trip, and the last time we went, which was a month or two ago, after over 9 months, the prices sucked!

There are some simple rules though to make your buying experience better.
1. Know what prices should be on stuff!
2. Have a reason besides Fry's to be in the area (In our case, first we visit my Grandmother, and we finish it off by going to a resturant that we like).
3. Only buy new merchandise (or a least try to).
4. Only go when there is a bunch of stuff you're looking for.
5. Don't buy anything there that you might want to return (though I must admit, they were very easy to deal with the one time we returned something).
6. Don't get sucked in by their sales!  Do they ever have enough sale HD's in stock?
7. Know what the competition in the area sells the same stuff for!  In other words know what prices should be on stuff!

			Zane

-- 
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| [email-masked] (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |