Sad To See How Far Fry’s Has Fallen

Fry’s Electronics used to be more than just a store, it was a temple for techno geeks and nerds. Before there was Dell, before Egghead, before Inmac, before Newegg, before Amazon, Fry’s Electronics was special.

In the early 80’s it was the place to go when you were building your own computer like real computers were meant to be built. If you wanted to upgrade your motherboard from an 8086 to an 8088 CPU, or add and 8087 math co-processor, that’s where you could get it. If you wanted one of those double-sided, double-density floppies back before there were 10MB hard drives, let alone 10GB or 3TB drives, Fry’s was your place. If you needed to kludge together a wiring harness to get your Z80 (running CP/M) connected to an Epson wide-carriage dot matrix printer, you went to Fry’s. You were on the cutting edge, ditching that 25×80 monochrome monitor for a CGA, EGA, or (if you had the bucks) a VGA monitor? Fry’s.

Not only did they have the hardware, they had the software and technical people in the store who could walk you through things. Long, long before “plug and play,” you needed to scramble with every piece of hardware to get device drivers so the new hardware could talk to everything else. You had to go play with BIOS settings, or go tweak the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to make the magic happen. The guys at Fry’s (sorry, but I don’t remember there being any women working tech there in that day and age) could help you do that. They knew what you were talking about.

No mas.

I’ve been growing increasingly upset and frustrated with Fry’s for five or six years now, if not more. The customer support and technical expertise is long gone. The aisles are patrolled by sales associates who only want to get their salesperson number on a big ticket item, presumably so they can get a commission.

No one knows squat. Ask for “scanners,” they’re “over there.” “Over there” are the multi-function printer/FAX/copier/scanners. Ask for the single-function, flatbed scanners and they’ll look at you like you just grew a second head.

Need DVD-R blank disks and not finding them? Ask someone and get pointed at the shelves full of DVD+R and CD disks. They don’t know the difference. Try to explain the difference and ask your question again?  There’s that second head growing out of your shoulder again.

Keep it simple, you just want to buy a Blu-Ray or DVD. Not even something obscure, a recent release. But to your dismay, you find that the movies are split into aisles for Action, Comedy, Drama, Family, and so on, but whoever did the filing has a much different idea of which movies go in which category. So you go look in two or three aisles, but the discs are only kinda sorta filed into alphabetical order, with no real indication where one section or letter starts or ends. It’s not “fifty-two pick up,” but it’s close.

Maybe through blind luck you found what you were looking for. Now you find out how much they’ve cut back on hiring and staffing cashiers. Over forty cash registers at the one I go to in Woodland Hills, but it’s rare to see more than three or four cashiers, even during the weeks before Christmas. I often see only one cashier working at a time, despite a line of twenty or thirty people trying to check out.

So you finally get to the cashier, having found the hardware or accessory that you needed. You hate going there any more than you have to and you’re buying for the office, so when you found those blank CDs that you’re using for system backups, you grabbed four. Only to get told that there’s a limit of one or two. No sign in the aisle. No notice anywhere. No shortage of them, there’s a whole aisle with hundreds just like it. But you can only buy two. I think that was the day that I left all four sitting there and walked out of the store for a while.

With lousy customer service, a disorganized store, clueless sales personnel, at least they now have significantly higher prices. For example, I’ve been thinking about upgrading my scanner to one that’s significantly faster and easier to use. I’ve seen one that I really like, the ScanSnap ix500 from Fujitsu. I was two blocks from Fry’s this afternoon (donating blood at the local Red Cross donation center) and decided (against my better judgement) to look to see if they had it in stock.

I had looked online – Newegg has it for $419. When I finally found it at Fry’s, the shelf tag said $199! I checked and double checked to make sure it was the same model and confirmed that it was. I finally noticed that the section of shelf with the $199 tags was for a different scanner. I scouted several feet of shelving before I found the tag for the ix500, a shelf that was full of scanners from other manufacturers, of course. But the price for the ix500 at Fry’s was $499, almost 20% higher! I even pulled out my phone to double check the price on both Newegg and Amazon, verify that it was the same model, same package, and so on.

20% more to spend ten minutes hunting for something that’s mislabeled on the wrong shelf, so that I could then go stand in line for fifteen minutes waiting for the one cashier to get to me.

Needless to say, I did not buy the scanner. Nor did I buy anything else. One of these days I’ll just wise up and stop going altogether. It’s so much simpler to order online, and most places offer free shipping to boot.

The one thing that Fry’s had that they still have is their decor. Each store is done up in a different fantasy theme. The one in Woodland Hills has all kinds of “Alice In Wonderland” decorations and statues. The Burbank store is science fiction, with a large, crashed flying saucer over the doors. The Fountain Valley store is decorated like ancient Rome. San Jose looks like a Mayan temple.

Go to Fry’s for the decor and the memories, if you must. If you need computer hardware, software, or supplies, check online.