Shopping for replacement computer parts has enabled me to see the brick and mortar stores (or warehouses) that have good prices (cheap) and those with bad prices (expensive). The stores I went to looking for replacement parts for my computer were Circuit City, BestBuy, Office Max, CompUSA and a warehouse seller that also sells at computer shows (I can’t give you an exact name because he uses several).
The store that surprised me the most was CompUSA. This store carries all computer related products. If you need something for your computer you could probably find it there. The problem is the prices on average for hardware and software are higher than the Electronics stores and the small warehouse hardware and software dealers.
CompUSA prices are not competitive and if you shop there to buy anything for your computer (even for the items carrying the CompUSA brand name) you are likely to pay more than if you went to the warehouse dealer or the Electronics’ stores.
Because of their prohibitive pricing the only thing brought from CompUSA was heat sink patches and grease. A survey of their prices for thing like graphic cards, CD and DVD drives of various types, and memory showed that their prices were higher the other stores mentioned here.
The only need to go to CompUSA is if you want to buy a Mac or Mac software. There selections (number and type of Apple products they carry) beat everyone else in this category. Since CompUSA is a computer store they do carry just about everything one would need for a PC or Mac so you get one stop shopping but at a higher than average cost.
The small warehouse dealer (there are a lot of them around but you may have to go to a computer show, internet, or in other ways search for them) is a good bet if you’re looking for hardware or software for the PC that is rarely found in electronic retail stores. The prices you find at the warehouse dealer definitely beat CompUSA (by large margins in my experience) so if the hardware or software is not that common in most retail stores then a warehouse dealer is your best bet.
Warehouse dealers are fighting to stay competitive with the large Electronic store chains. There is a tug of war going on in pricing between these two types of entities.
Sometime a combination of instant and mail-in rebates by the large electronic chains makes their pricing far better than the warehouse (computer show) dealer. This has taken the luster off of the computer show and the bargains that use to be very prevalent in that venue and many dealers are suffering big time.
The warehouse dealer in general still wins in pricing when it comes to graphics cards, memory (pre mail-in rebate prices), motherboards (with the only real competition in the brick and mortar stores being CompUSA), and most other minor peripherals like USB 2 cables, and all other type of connection cables, ribbons, etc.
A good place to find your warehouse dealers are on the internet and if you shop for computer hardware and software online you are likely to find some very good deals that beat almost all brick and mortar store pricing (buyer beware if you can’t physically reach the dealers outlet).
The problem I have with shopping on the internet is my strong need to see the product before I purchase it, to be able to physically return the product if I have problems, and the desire to make sure that my goods get from the seller’s hands to my hands as simply as possible.
Among the three stores Circuit City, BestBuy, and OfficeMax (OfficeMax is mainly an office supply store) I tend to prefer OfficeMax and Circuit City to BestBuy. This is because of a problem I had with BestBuy a few years ago.
I needed to purchase 128 MB of SDRAM memory (PC 133). I was building my first PC. I went to BestBuy because they had some very good prices on memory.
I installed the memory in my machine and was in business. When I booted into Windows 98 I immediately right clicked on the computer icon and a panel popped up that displayed the amount of memory it had picked up (among other things). It was 64MB. I was ripped off.
I immediately took the memory out of my machine and rushed back to BestBuy. They apologized and gave me another package. When I got in the car with this one I took the memory out and started to examine it when I noticed a label on the memory stating it was PC100 memory (it was suppose to be PC133 memory). I was furious.
I went back into BestBuy and complained profusely. I demanded that the next block of memory they give me be installed on one of the machines at the store by there tech before I took it home to make sure it worked and was the proper megabytes.
There could have been many reasons for the wrong memory in a package from corrupt employees anywhere in the line of distribution to distributor packaging mistake but since this incident I thoroughly check anything I buy from BestBuy.
I’ll give you one more incident with BestBuy. I purchased a Digital Research CD-RW drive from them (at a very good price before and especially good after mail-in rebate). The speeds on the box were 48x12x48. When I took the drive out of the box I found written in black on the front of the drive the speed 52x24x52.
The correct functioning speed was that found on the box. The product was defective in this matter, which should have been noted on the box, or the product should have been recalled. Evidently BestBuy and Digital Research decided to sell the product believing that the customer would not notice (although they sold it for an unusually low price for this CD-RW at that time- the reason I kept it).
The average computer user would have been unaware of the memory problem. They would have effectively been ripped off of 64MB of memory. BestBuy has earned my distrust of anything purchased from them.
Anyway customers should always be informed about their purchases especially of expensive items (caveat emptor).