Good deals hard to find at Circuit City’s liquidation sale

Would you knowingly spend $435 more to buy a big-screen TV at a store that going out of business? How about paying double for a computer printer?

Probably not. But those were some of the “deals” we found during the opening days of Circuit City’s liquidation sale.

The nation’s second largest consumer electronics retailer announced Friday that it was holding liquidation sales at its remaining 567 U.S. stores, which it expects to close by the end of March.

To find out whether the liquidation was producing bargains, we compared Circuit City’s prices this weekend with those charged by other retailers. We also looked the advertised prices in this week’s Circuit City circular, which, though distributed in newspapers, is not being honored by the stores. The advertised sale prices were in some cases hundreds of dollars less than what we saw at the liquidation sale on Sunday at the Circuit City store on E. 14th Street in Manhattan. And in most cases, we found much better savings at Circuit City's competitors.

For example, at the liquidation, a 50-inch Panasonic plasma TV was discounted to $1,800, a $200 savings. That might sound like a bargain, but if you check the circular you’ll see that Circuit City had planned to cut the price this week by $500. What’s more, we found the same model online for $1,365, including free shipping.

An HP all-in-one printer, at the liquidation for $270, was scheduled to be on sale for $150. And we found it as low as $135 online. A Garmin GPS system, discounted to $225, was $160 in the circular and $141 online.

Despite the modest discounts, the checkout counter was mobbed. We repeatedly overheard salespeople telling customers that they had run out of merchandise. Shoppers were undeterred by signs proclaiming that all sales are final; that the store no longer was accepting the Circuit City credit cards, personal checks, or coupons; and that it wouldn’t match competitors’ prices.

We did find a few deals. At $152, the Nintendo Wii version of the Guitar Hero World Tour Band Bundle video game was nearly $30 cheaper than the best price we found elsewhere. One of our staffers bought a Toshiba LCD TV for within a $1 of the lowest price we found online, albeit at a retailer that’s not going through liquidation. But such deals were hard to find and produced relatively little savings.

Our findings underscore the need to carefully compare prices when shopping at liquidation sales, where the excitement of a store’s closing can lead shoppers to mistakenly assume that there are big savings. As we’ve seen many times, prices often are higher than the best deals you’ll find elsewhere, at least initially. And by the time the liquidator is offering substantial savings, you may there’s find little left worth buying.

As one Circuit City salesman told us: “That’s Business 101. That has been going on for years.” —Anthony Giorgianni

Comments

[Anne]

My understanding is that most liquidation sales are run by outside companies. Essentially they've bought the inventory and the rights to use the bankrupt company's name for the sale. They do not have incentive to sell at the lowest prices around, but rather to build up the hype and convince people to buy without price-checking, as you saw. They also often bring in outside inventory "of comparable quality" to bolster the sales and make more money.

[Sandy]

I visited Circuit City on January 21st looking for a monitor for our old computer. I wasn't sure about their prices so I went to Office Max which had a AOC Wide LCD Monitor 19" regularly priced at $139.99 on sale through January 24th for $109.99. They didn't have any in store but informed me that I could go online and get it with free shipping. I had to make a trip back to Ciruit City for something and decided to check out the monitors again. OH MY GOD!! The monitor that Office Max had for $109.99 Circuit City was selling for $171.00 and that was discounted.
Be very careful and do your homework as far as what you should be paying for items. I have the purchase ticket and it was the SAME EXACT MONITOR. Going out of business does not always mean big savings.

[Anita]

My husband and I went and bought a 40 inch Toshiba LCD TV. It was marked down to $750 from $900 and we received a 20% discount on top of the marked down price - we found it to be a good deal.

[Tim]

I was tempted to travel 30 minutes to the nearest store on Saturday morning, the day after the liquidation was announced, but thought better of it. Are the savings really worth the aggravation of having to deal with employees who don't care and the mob of customers looking to make a deal? In the end I stayed home and did something useful...cleaned the garage.

[Miriam]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Miriam

[Will]

I've also noticed that Circuit City is selling TVs that are several years old for the same price that other retailers are listing the newer comparable models. 40LG30 at Circuit City for $904 and a 42LG50 at several online and brick-and-mortar retailers for $899? Really is a total scam designed to take advantage of the uninformed consumer. It should also be noted that these LCDs with inflated prices were the display models for sale and there were several signs stating "LAST ONE" "No ADDITIONAL DISCOUNTS FOR DISPLAY MODELS"

On an unrelated topic if you are looking for TVs compare display models between Best Buy and Target and then ask yourself, "Does Best Buy go out of their way to make the picture on their display models terrible?"