8 ms·

Answer: of course, yes. When I visited Fry's in the DFW area last year (Irving Store off of LBJ freeway) I was shocked at how low energy and sad the place was.

Answer: of course, yes. When I visited Fry's in the DFW area last year (Irving Store off of LBJ freeway) I was shocked at how low energy and sad the place was. It was just one big pile of despair. Just a handful of people were shuffling in and out. They shelves were in complete disrepair, and there were areas where there was no stock on shelves. Computers on display were broken, twisted wrecks. The home theater areas had older model sets and speakers strewn about. It was nothing like the late 90's when the place was an absolute zoo, and you could be guaranteed to have every gadget known to man on display. Christmas time at Frys was waiting in a checkout line 100's deep. It was a fun time. That last time I visited is the last time I'll ever visit. It's clear Amazon and online retailing has decimated them.

rossdavidh 7y ago
How is the Micro Center in DFW doing? I see other electronics retailers doing ok, so I think Amazon is just the coup de grace.
- denimnerd42 7y ago
  Seems to be busy enough. They always have new cool products and lots of new inventory. If he's in Irving that's pretty far from him so he might not visit.
- ajflores1604 7y ago
  Microcenter is doing great, at least from the point of view of a frequent customer. The Fry's in Plano is in a similar state to what parent comment is describing. It's an incredibly weird feeling walking thru. They've stopped restocking, so anything I remotely could use or need isn't there. What's left are things that nobody really wants. I have lots of memories growing up in that store, sad to see it like this. I definitely recommend hitting it up before the inevitable shutdown, it's quite the vibe to take in.
  - BitwiseFool 7y ago
    It's mostly school supplies and pallets of bottled water now.
- amyjess 7y ago
  I haven't been there in a while, but from what I've heard from friends it's doing well. You may also want to check out Altex. They have a store in Carrollton, and my experience visiting there a few months ago is that they're _very_ well-stocked and with excellent prices at that.
  - bnjms 7y ago
    Good tip. Never heard of Altex but I’m in Carrollton a lot.
- furgooswft13 7y ago
  Not DFW area (KofP), but it does feel a bit more like a warehouse to me rather than the exciting tech candy store I remember as a kid. Even the Apple section is depleted and meh feeling. Last time I went there was nothing particularly awe-inspiring as far as setup computers. Just a bunch of Dell and Lenovo's with normal looking monitors. Would have been nice to see at least one souped-up uber PC with all kinds of obnoxious leds quad SLI, and 4 8k monitors, or something. Granted it's still an extremely useful store, and I really wish I had one in the area I live in now.
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    Are we talking about Fry's or Microcenter?
    - furgooswft13 7y ago
      Microcenter
- jccooper 7y ago
  MicroCenter in Houston is always busy. Frys is a ghost town. Frys could be fine. They've just given up, I guess.
- wenc 7y ago
  Microcenters in the Chicagoland area (N Elston in Chicago, Westmont) are busy, especially on Saturdays. Shelves are well-stocked, and there's even an electronics section with a potpourri of Arduino and RaspPi accessories. I'm not sure how they're surviving in the era of online shopping but they seem to be doing well. I wonder if most of the foot traffic is driven by impulse same-day BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup in Store) sales. I'll admit that's how I ended up going to the brick-and-mortar store -- I didn't think that computer superstores still existed in this day and age.
  - celim307 7y ago
    browsing the shelves and just being around tech is soothing for me. and the feeling of walking out with a bunch of boxes too. for something i enjoy like tech i like to savor the whole experience
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      I can relate to that. I used to stop by the nearest Fry's store if I was in the neighborhood, even if I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I would just walk the aisles to see if anything looked interesting. And sometimes you would see people you knew, or knew of. On one of these random walks, I ran into Linus Torvalds in the Campbell store. Good times!
- chaoticmass 7y ago
  The one off 75 is always very busy when I go there on a Saturday. The DIY PC section always has a few people pushing around a cart full of parts, and even the pre-built system area will be crawling with customers.
denimnerd42 7y ago
Same, the Plano store is same story. I won't be going back. Microcenter, Best Buy, or an online retailer for me..
magduf 7y ago
I used to live near the Fry's in Tempe, Arizona. Even 5-10 years ago, I didn't really like going there that much. Their prices weren't that great any more, and returning merchandise was a bad experience. It was clear their best days were behind them. Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. It was cool how you could find a lot of odd electronics items there (components, soldering equipment, wire, etc.), but you could still get all that stuff much cheaper online usually.
- JKCalhoun 7y ago
  > Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. You mean Amazon doesn't police your receipt and merchandise at a checkpoint as you got out of the store?
  - magduf 7y ago
    That too (that was an annoying thing about Fry's too; I had totally forgotten about that!), but the returns process at Fry's also treats you like a criminal, whereas Amazon's is easy and asks no questions.
  - nradov 7y ago
    You aren't actually required to have your receipt checked. I just walk straight out and ignore them.
    - danesparza 7y ago
      I've been forcibly stopped by them.
      - Stratoscope 7y ago
        If they did that, it was quite illegal. My practice when I used to shop at Fry's was to stop and let the receipt checking person mark my receipt with their pink marker, if no one was ahead of me in that line. This was only to let them feel good about their job, not because I had any legal obligation. If there was anyone in the receipt checking line I would just smile and wave and walk by. They never stopped me, nor could they legally, but the people waiting in line would often look at me and look at the receipt checker, puzzled that I could get away with it and they "couldn't".
jonny_eh 7y ago
> It's clear Amazon and online retailing has decimated them And yet, somehow, Best Buy is doing fine apparently. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/07/27/best-buys-turnaround-you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/#5fd5fd6f4653 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/07/27/best-buy...
- nightski 7y ago
  I'll admit it, I love shopping at Best Buy. I much prefer purchasing anything at the local store and actively avoid Amazon if at all possible.
- option 7y ago
  Best Buy often has better prices than Amazon. Since last year I find myself always double-checking the price of anything I want outside Amazon and for big items (e.g. TV, tv stand, etc.) Best Buy is a first choice for sure.
  - emodendroket 7y ago
    Not only that, but have you ever tried shopping for something like a laptop on Amazon? The descriptions are all three lines long and by the time you figure out what the hell you're buying you could just drive to Best Buy and see a display that clearly explains what's on offer.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      Dell developer laptops are pretty good, not to mention Apple if you can put up with them.
      - emodendroket 7y ago
        I like Lenovo, personally.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Agreed... I've had relatively bad luck on mail ordered laptops and monitors in particular, stick to a physical location I can return them to in general. Walmart seems like a decent middle ground with online to store and returns.
chasd00 7y ago
You should see the Fry's on Northwest Hwy near Garland. It's almost scary, it has a sketchy bazaar feeling. A couple rows of shelves have just random perfume and colognes. All the televisions and stuff have 1/8" of dust on them. It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running.
- bratsche 7y ago
  I wondered if that Fry’s was some kind of dumping ground for returned shit from all the other Fry’s or something. It is so bad.
- derefr 7y ago
  > It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running. They probably own the buildings (maybe even the land, too.) Potential buyers of a commercial building would want said building's internals in good condition (i.e. not wrecked by looters.) And the simplest way to ensure the building stays in good condition is to keep it running.
milofeynman 7y ago
I've been to that same one twice looking for various electronics cables and they had nothing. Is there a DFW place now that sells that sort of radio-shack supplies? Or is everything online only now?
IPTN 7y ago
One of the only two Fry's in Georgia just closed it's doors permanently. Of the half dozen times I was in there over the past couple years I don't think there were ever more 10 customers in the ~125,000 sq ft store. Of course it wasn't doing them any favors that there is a Microcenter 1.5 miles down the road.
bratsche 7y ago
I was at Fry’s on Garland Rd in Dallas a few years ago and it was horrible. I wanted to pick up a hard drive that day rather than order one, but (and I am not exaggerating) literally every single hard drive on their shelves had one of those “this product had been opened/returned” stickers on it. Ridiculous! Fry’s is such a dump.
Rapzid 7y ago
Ah, I used to work at that location in the mid 00s. The place was a mad house back then. They probably still show the video of me getting a "customer" into a rear naked choke after he started attacking employees. Those were the days :)
- chaoticmass 7y ago
  And on black friday, the line would loop all the way around the store even with some 200 registers open.
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    Yeah, that was a bit nuts but TBH most weekends at the time were pretty darn busy. I'm talking the whole store being mall promenade busy. It was all very energized and felt like the place to be if you were interested in tech hardware.
chaoticmass 7y ago
I bought my camera bag from that same Fry's store back in July 2018, and the shelves were full, but it was still a far cry from how I remember it back when it first opened. Very few customers there either. Might have been 10 customers in the store max. Amazing how quickly it went downhill.
shakezula 7y ago
I had almost this exact same experience three weeks ago at a Fry's in LA. It was honestly sad to see it. I kept joking to my friend that it felt post-apocalyptic because it looked like it had been looted. There were rough and cut-open boxes on empty shelves, empty and open packaging on the floor, no signs for the aisles to show what they had on them, employees that looked dead in the eyes, rows of shelves that were just empty or had maybe two or three items on them. It was legitimately sad to see. We were on the hunt for a dual monitor setup. They didn't even have a 4k monitor on the shelves. That was how poor their selection was. I've heard they're having issues even paying their vendors, so yeah. I'm pretty positive Fry's is in big trouble.
- sswaner 7y ago
  I had the same thought at the Fry's on Canoga in Woodland Hills, it felt like the only items left on the shelves were the things nobody would steal. Sad to see them slip away, one of the joys was wandering the aisles looking for things I didn't know I needed/wanted.
  - octetta 7y ago
    I work in the SVF but live in Ventura County. Sadly it's the same story for the Frys in Oxnard... LA really needs a Microcenter :-)
hotsauceror 7y ago
Same shocking experience in Austin a few weeks back. Trying to pick up a DisplayPort KVM and a couple of DP cables. This is the big one on MoPac by Opal Devine's. I'd say more than 50% of the shelves were bare, with merchandise strewn about, loose power cables still plugged into outlets. A surprising number of employees but no one was actually doing anything. The computer hardware section looked like a bomb went off. No stock anywhere. But there weren't any "Liquidation / Going Out Of Business" banners like you'd normally expect to see in these circumstances. I used to love Fry's, they had a great selection for system builders and hobbyists. Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it - all the employees in their black and white outfits and the massive black locked cages behind the rows of registers. It seemed oppressive, like you wouldn't be surprised to find out that the managers were beating the cashiers or something. Still, sorry to see it go. I've been disappointed with the other system-builder-oriented place in town who knowingly restock broken merch. I guess it's Newegg from here on out!
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  > Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it Yeah. A weird vibe. The wood. The faux “luxury” trim. The yellow. Dudes in cheap looking suits trying to corner you so they can “ring up your order” for their commission. Yeah. Fry’s was a weird place. The branding just didn’t match the service or experience at all.

rossdavidh 7y ago

How is the Micro Center in DFW doing? I see other electronics retailers doing ok, so I think Amazon is just the coup de grace.

denimnerd42 7y ago
Seems to be busy enough. They always have new cool products and lots of new inventory. If he's in Irving that's pretty far from him so he might not visit.
ajflores1604 7y ago
Microcenter is doing great, at least from the point of view of a frequent customer. The Fry's in Plano is in a similar state to what parent comment is describing. It's an incredibly weird feeling walking thru. They've stopped restocking, so anything I remotely could use or need isn't there. What's left are things that nobody really wants. I have lots of memories growing up in that store, sad to see it like this. I definitely recommend hitting it up before the inevitable shutdown, it's quite the vibe to take in.
- BitwiseFool 7y ago
  It's mostly school supplies and pallets of bottled water now.
amyjess 7y ago
I haven't been there in a while, but from what I've heard from friends it's doing well. You may also want to check out Altex. They have a store in Carrollton, and my experience visiting there a few months ago is that they're _very_ well-stocked and with excellent prices at that.
- bnjms 7y ago
  Good tip. Never heard of Altex but I’m in Carrollton a lot.
furgooswft13 7y ago
Not DFW area (KofP), but it does feel a bit more like a warehouse to me rather than the exciting tech candy store I remember as a kid. Even the Apple section is depleted and meh feeling. Last time I went there was nothing particularly awe-inspiring as far as setup computers. Just a bunch of Dell and Lenovo's with normal looking monitors. Would have been nice to see at least one souped-up uber PC with all kinds of obnoxious leds quad SLI, and 4 8k monitors, or something. Granted it's still an extremely useful store, and I really wish I had one in the area I live in now.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  Are we talking about Fry's or Microcenter?
  - furgooswft13 7y ago
    Microcenter
jccooper 7y ago
MicroCenter in Houston is always busy. Frys is a ghost town. Frys could be fine. They've just given up, I guess.
wenc 7y ago
Microcenters in the Chicagoland area (N Elston in Chicago, Westmont) are busy, especially on Saturdays. Shelves are well-stocked, and there's even an electronics section with a potpourri of Arduino and RaspPi accessories. I'm not sure how they're surviving in the era of online shopping but they seem to be doing well. I wonder if most of the foot traffic is driven by impulse same-day BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup in Store) sales. I'll admit that's how I ended up going to the brick-and-mortar store -- I didn't think that computer superstores still existed in this day and age.
- celim307 7y ago
  browsing the shelves and just being around tech is soothing for me. and the feeling of walking out with a bunch of boxes too. for something i enjoy like tech i like to savor the whole experience
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    I can relate to that. I used to stop by the nearest Fry's store if I was in the neighborhood, even if I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I would just walk the aisles to see if anything looked interesting. And sometimes you would see people you knew, or knew of. On one of these random walks, I ran into Linus Torvalds in the Campbell store. Good times!
chaoticmass 7y ago
The one off 75 is always very busy when I go there on a Saturday. The DIY PC section always has a few people pushing around a cart full of parts, and even the pre-built system area will be crawling with customers.

denimnerd42 7y ago

Same, the Plano store is same story. I won't be going back. Microcenter, Best Buy, or an online retailer for me..

magduf 7y ago

I used to live near the Fry's in Tempe, Arizona. Even 5-10 years ago, I didn't really like going there that much. Their prices weren't that great any more, and returning merchandise was a bad experience. It was clear their best days were behind them. Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. It was cool how you could find a lot of odd electronics items there (components, soldering equipment, wire, etc.), but you could still get all that stuff much cheaper online usually.

JKCalhoun 7y ago
> Amazon has been a better experience for a long time now. You mean Amazon doesn't police your receipt and merchandise at a checkpoint as you got out of the store?
- magduf 7y ago
  That too (that was an annoying thing about Fry's too; I had totally forgotten about that!), but the returns process at Fry's also treats you like a criminal, whereas Amazon's is easy and asks no questions.
- nradov 7y ago
  You aren't actually required to have your receipt checked. I just walk straight out and ignore them.
  - danesparza 7y ago
    I've been forcibly stopped by them.
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      If they did that, it was quite illegal. My practice when I used to shop at Fry's was to stop and let the receipt checking person mark my receipt with their pink marker, if no one was ahead of me in that line. This was only to let them feel good about their job, not because I had any legal obligation. If there was anyone in the receipt checking line I would just smile and wave and walk by. They never stopped me, nor could they legally, but the people waiting in line would often look at me and look at the receipt checker, puzzled that I could get away with it and they "couldn't".

jonny_eh 7y ago

> It's clear Amazon and online retailing has decimated them And yet, somehow, Best Buy is doing fine apparently. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/07/27/best-buys-turnaround-you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/#5fd5fd6f4653 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/07/27/best-buy...

nightski 7y ago
I'll admit it, I love shopping at Best Buy. I much prefer purchasing anything at the local store and actively avoid Amazon if at all possible.
option 7y ago
Best Buy often has better prices than Amazon. Since last year I find myself always double-checking the price of anything I want outside Amazon and for big items (e.g. TV, tv stand, etc.) Best Buy is a first choice for sure.
- emodendroket 7y ago
  Not only that, but have you ever tried shopping for something like a laptop on Amazon? The descriptions are all three lines long and by the time you figure out what the hell you're buying you could just drive to Best Buy and see a display that clearly explains what's on offer.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Dell developer laptops are pretty good, not to mention Apple if you can put up with them.
    - emodendroket 7y ago
      I like Lenovo, personally.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Agreed... I've had relatively bad luck on mail ordered laptops and monitors in particular, stick to a physical location I can return them to in general. Walmart seems like a decent middle ground with online to store and returns.

chasd00 7y ago

You should see the Fry's on Northwest Hwy near Garland. It's almost scary, it has a sketchy bazaar feeling. A couple rows of shelves have just random perfume and colognes. All the televisions and stuff have 1/8" of dust on them. It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running.

bratsche 7y ago
I wondered if that Fry’s was some kind of dumping ground for returned shit from all the other Fry’s or something. It is so bad.
derefr 7y ago
> It must be more expensive to shut it down than to keep it running. They probably own the buildings (maybe even the land, too.) Potential buyers of a commercial building would want said building's internals in good condition (i.e. not wrecked by looters.) And the simplest way to ensure the building stays in good condition is to keep it running.

milofeynman 7y ago

I've been to that same one twice looking for various electronics cables and they had nothing. Is there a DFW place now that sells that sort of radio-shack supplies? Or is everything online only now?

IPTN 7y ago

One of the only two Fry's in Georgia just closed it's doors permanently. Of the half dozen times I was in there over the past couple years I don't think there were ever more 10 customers in the ~125,000 sq ft store. Of course it wasn't doing them any favors that there is a Microcenter 1.5 miles down the road.

bratsche 7y ago

I was at Fry’s on Garland Rd in Dallas a few years ago and it was horrible. I wanted to pick up a hard drive that day rather than order one, but (and I am not exaggerating) literally every single hard drive on their shelves had one of those “this product had been opened/returned” stickers on it. Ridiculous! Fry’s is such a dump.

Rapzid 7y ago

Ah, I used to work at that location in the mid 00s. The place was a mad house back then. They probably still show the video of me getting a "customer" into a rear naked choke after he started attacking employees. Those were the days :)

chaoticmass 7y ago
And on black friday, the line would loop all the way around the store even with some 200 registers open.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  Yeah, that was a bit nuts but TBH most weekends at the time were pretty darn busy. I'm talking the whole store being mall promenade busy. It was all very energized and felt like the place to be if you were interested in tech hardware.

chaoticmass 7y ago

I bought my camera bag from that same Fry's store back in July 2018, and the shelves were full, but it was still a far cry from how I remember it back when it first opened. Very few customers there either. Might have been 10 customers in the store max. Amazing how quickly it went downhill.

shakezula 7y ago

I had almost this exact same experience three weeks ago at a Fry's in LA. It was honestly sad to see it. I kept joking to my friend that it felt post-apocalyptic because it looked like it had been looted. There were rough and cut-open boxes on empty shelves, empty and open packaging on the floor, no signs for the aisles to show what they had on them, employees that looked dead in the eyes, rows of shelves that were just empty or had maybe two or three items on them. It was legitimately sad to see. We were on the hunt for a dual monitor setup. They didn't even have a 4k monitor on the shelves. That was how poor their selection was. I've heard they're having issues even paying their vendors, so yeah. I'm pretty positive Fry's is in big trouble.

sswaner 7y ago
I had the same thought at the Fry's on Canoga in Woodland Hills, it felt like the only items left on the shelves were the things nobody would steal. Sad to see them slip away, one of the joys was wandering the aisles looking for things I didn't know I needed/wanted.
- octetta 7y ago
  I work in the SVF but live in Ventura County. Sadly it's the same story for the Frys in Oxnard... LA really needs a Microcenter :-)

hotsauceror 7y ago

Same shocking experience in Austin a few weeks back. Trying to pick up a DisplayPort KVM and a couple of DP cables. This is the big one on MoPac by Opal Devine's. I'd say more than 50% of the shelves were bare, with merchandise strewn about, loose power cables still plugged into outlets. A surprising number of employees but no one was actually doing anything. The computer hardware section looked like a bomb went off. No stock anywhere. But there weren't any "Liquidation / Going Out Of Business" banners like you'd normally expect to see in these circumstances. I used to love Fry's, they had a great selection for system builders and hobbyists. Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it - all the employees in their black and white outfits and the massive black locked cages behind the rows of registers. It seemed oppressive, like you wouldn't be surprised to find out that the managers were beating the cashiers or something. Still, sorry to see it go. I've been disappointed with the other system-builder-oriented place in town who knowingly restock broken merch. I guess it's Newegg from here on out!

spookthesunset 7y ago
> Although I will say it always had a kind of grim, penitential air to it Yeah. A weird vibe. The wood. The faux “luxury” trim. The yellow. Dudes in cheap looking suits trying to corner you so they can “ring up your order” for their commission. Yeah. Fry’s was a weird place. The branding just didn’t match the service or experience at all.