Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
Fry&#x27;s was great in its heyday. They had so much stuff!<p>Well, somewhat great anyway. Sometimes you would get a box that looked brand new - without one of their &quot;discount&quot; stickers that gave you at best 5% off on a returned item. I bought a modem that had the previous buyer&#x27;s dirty old phone cord in the box.<p>I would sometimes stop in at a Fry&#x27;s just to walk around and see if there was anything new and interesting. I&#x27;d leave empty-handed as often as not, but it was fun just to experience the place, and you never knew who you might see there.<p>One time I ran into Linus Torvalds at the Campbell Fry&#x27;s and we compared notes on whatever it was we were both buying.<p>The worst part of shopping at Fry&#x27;s - other than the returned items - was the salespeople who would try to make you follow them to their computer so they could print you a &quot;quote&quot;. I am guilty of sometimes throwing these quotes away as I walked to the cash register, just because I was annoyed by this. Why waste my time printing a &quot;quote&quot; for the exact same price listed on the shelf tag when you didn&#x27;t even help me pick out the item? At least give me a percent or two off the price in return for the hassle.<p>One time I was shopping for a case for a compact camera. The salesman hovered over me offering to help me find a case from the rack in front of me, until I said, &quot;Look, I brought my camera to see how it fits in different cases and find one I like. I don&#x27;t need any help.&quot; When he saw that I&#x27;d picked one out, he snatched the $20 case out of my hand: &quot;I need to print you a quote!&quot; He wrapped the quote around the case and put tape all over it so I wouldn&#x27;t be tempted to toss it. That one time I didn&#x27;t have the heart to throw away the quote and deny him his 20 cent commission.<p>But if I knew the exact item I wanted to pick up, I would wait until there was no salesperson in sight of the aisle, do a quick walk-by pickup, and make a beeline for the cash register.<p>The other bad thing was the person at the store exit with the pink pen who had to &quot;check your receipt.&quot; I played along with this for years like everyone else, until I read that there was absolutely no legal requirement to wait for them to check your receipt. You&#x27;d paid for your goods, you now owned them, and you were free to go.<p>So the next time there was a long line waiting for the exit checker at the Campbell store, I just smiled and nodded with my item and receipt visible and walked on by. A few people in line looked shocked, but the checker ignored me - as he was trained to do - and told the next customer in line &quot;I need to check your receipt.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t think it was just online shopping that did Fry&#x27;s in. They did themselves in with these shoddy business practices.<p>And their website! I did occasionally buy something online for store pickup. That was pretty convenient if I knew the exact item I wanted. But if I had to search for anything... Forget it! They had the worst search algorithm ever. I think it just &quot;or&#x27;ed&quot; all the words, so if you searched for, say, &quot;netgear cable modem&quot;, it would list all the products that included <i>any</i> of those words, without giving any priority to an actual Netgear cable modem.<p>My last visit to a Fry&#x27;s was the Sunnyvale store in 2019. I had a store credit for about $10, and I was in the neighborhood and figured I ought to stop in to buy something and use up the store credit. I found a USB extension cable that I could use that was marked at $10.99, so I figured that would do.<p>When I got to the register (the only one out of 20 that was staffed, because there were only a few customers in the store), it turned out that the cable was on sale for $7.99. Even with tax this was less than my store credit. I guess they could have given me another store credit slip, but the cashier asked for a manager to approve a cash refund. This angry looking manager walked up, scowling at the cashier and me all the way, and approved the refund of a buck and change.<p>Despite all of this, I will miss Fry&#x27;s. At one time there was no other place like it.