Is it just me, or does Circuit City have the worst DVD selection? (1 Viewer)

[Greg O' Connel]

Period. Including stores like Wal-Mart.
I live in a small town, and Circuit City is the only chain specialty electronics store around. The nearest Best Buy is 2 hours away. I would think that because of the products they sell, they would have a pretty good DVD selection. Anytime I'm looking for a title, I automatically head to CC, thinking I'll find it there easiest. I just realized today how many times I've been wrong. Just a few of the relatively mainstream titles that Circuit City (or at least my local CC) doesn't carry:
Citizen Kane
Dogma: Special Edition
Any Superbit titles
Any Criterion Collection films
And those are only the ones that I myself have been looking for, not including more obsecure films that I would expect to be hard to find. It seems that CC only carries the "big" DVD releases, as well as tons and tons of those $7 B films (you know, the ones that come in the thin, clear plastic jewel cases).I found Citizen Kane at Wal-Mart. Dogma: Special Edition at Target. Is it just my local CC that has the bad selection, or is the entire chain's selection more low-brow than freakin' Wal-Mart?
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[Blake Heinzeroth]

I posted a note about a week ago in the Bargains section about my last Circuit City experience. I was in there to buy five new releases. They had just one. The woman in charge of the department told me that Circuit City corporate is not sending out hardly any discs to the retail stores anymore because they want people to order from the web site. Therefore, she said, they won't have most of the new releases in the store anymore.
That's no way to run a B&M store!

 

[Greg O' Connel]

That's insane. Most people only order online if they're looking for a hard to find title, or if they find a great price. CC's website offers neither. I've never even thought to check out CC's website before. I just assumed that if the B&Ms don't carry it, the website doesn't either.
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[David Lambert]

The only Criterion release I've ever seen at Circuit City was Chasing Amy. And it was at MSRP.
Couldn't even find Armageddon, The Rock, Spartacus, etc. there.
Last week when I went to CC to try and find a copy of Dean Koontz's Servants of Twilight for my lovely wife, a big fan of that horror author. I entered the DVD section and saw a clerk behind the counter there I hadn't seen before. He looked right at me. I noted that no other customers were around. Could it be? Could a CC DVD section employee finally be about to say "Hi, how are you, can I help you today?". Could I actually be greeted and get customer service?
No. He quickly turned to his right, adjusted the levels on a boom box that never used to be there, and cranked the sound on his rap music.
I quickly looked for (and didn't find) my wife's title, so I left. Jesus.
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DAVE/Memphis

MORE TV ON DVD, PLEASE!
[Edited last by David Lambert on October 17, 2001 at 05:23 AM]

 

[KevinW]

My local CC used to be the place to go. They're selection was great!, until BB came to town. Now it's crap! All they carry anymore are the new releases and a sad supply of catalog titles. The only places I go anymore are BB and Wallyworld.

 

[SteveGon]

I will never go into CC again - their selection really is awful. Meanwhile, Best Buy is getting better - I've seen titles there that I thought I'd never see at a BB.
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-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

 

[Glenn Overholt]

No, its just you. I have no idea how many DVD's you have, but the longer that you stay in this hobby the harder getting more DVD's becomes. You know what is out there and the stores cannot accomodate everybody's tastes.
Glenn

 

[Alex S]

They are the worst.
I went there a few weeks ago, on the release date, to get The Mask Of Zorro SE. I couldn't find it anywhere, so I asked an employee where it was.
He never heard of it so he asked another guy who looked around for 1 minute and said we're out of them. I asked him how much it was and he said $50.00.
I just laughed and left the store.

 

[Michael Mathius]

It is easier to find dvd's at BB than at CC since it is better organized at BB. They are about a block away from each other so I usually go straight to BB. It's aalways a quick in and out at BB.ays
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3EMS Hometheater

 

[Brad_W]

It's not you. When I lived with my parents CC was the only place in town to buy DVDs within a 20-mile radius. I thought that was the best place to buy (a small number) of DVDs. Then I got married and moved to a mid-sized city about 150 miles away and was introduced to a plethora of other retailers that sold a better selection and larger quantity of DVDs. I mostly buy online now or go to Best Buy. It had been a couple of years since I went to CC and stopped there recently to check out their selection. What I noticed was this:
1. They had only two racks of DVDs in categories and a tiny one for new releases (needless to say, I was lamed out).
2. Their prices were higher (so I had to pay more for the little stock they had?)
3. The rest of their sales (Home Theater, furniture, and the like) were very limited.
4. The only thing they had a mildly good selection of was games (both pc and counsel).
I wonder if their poor dvd selection has anything to do with the fact that they and blockbuster (two infamous chains that don't taste great together... or seperate for that matter) created DIVX and tried to outsell DVD (failing miserably I might add) and because they failed, their contempt for DVD shows in their selection/quanity. [was that a run-on sentence?]
Well, regardless of what anyone else thinks, I for one stay away from CC because there is much more out there and disregard Blockbuster because my wife is a store manager at Hollywood Video while she's in college (free movies for rent and discounted dvd sales).
Just my thoughts.
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My Home Page http://www.geocities.com/masternix/DVD.html
My List O' DVDs:
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[Jon Bell]

Circuit City has the absolute worst customer service of any store I have ever been to. I bought three (relatively) big ticket items there-- cel phone in 1994, camcorder in 1997 and DVD player in 1997. After the third one, I vowed to never shop there again, no matter how good their sales are. I won't even look at their fliers in the Sunday paper. I truly believe they have a company training session for new employees entitled "So You Want to be an Obnoxious Asshole-- Circuit City is the Place for You!".

 

[Anthony_J]

I'll have to agree with you on that one. I've watched their selection get worse and worse since BB opened in our area about 3 or 4 years ago.
They have a really inconsistent selection of movies. Mainly old titles that have been in inventory forever because all of the home theaterites go to BB for their purchases. This can be a plus, because if I'm looking for a movie that I can't find at another B&M, chances are this CC will still have it. As for new releases, it looks like they're only getting 15-20 of each disc on the street date. I think our local Borders is amassing a better selection than CC.
I was in CC last week to look for TPM and I noticed that they had the Godfather set stickered at $99.99. Unreal. I drove two minutes to BB and saved 30 bucks.
It all comes full circle - The Wiz used to be the best in our area, then CC knocked them off. Now BB is killing CC. I wonder who's going to kill BB as the dominant B&M? Either way, most consumers are getting better selections at better prices so I'm happy.

 

[Brad_W]

B&M?

Pardon my ignorance, but what does B&M stand for?

 

[paul_v]

I'm so glad I live 5 minutes from a Fry's =) They have close to every DVD in print at the Fry's here in Dallas. My jaw dropped the first time I saw their selection.
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[MickeS]

Brad, B&M = brick and mortar, in other words a regular store, as opposed to a website.
I agree about CC's DVD selection. I went there last night for the first time in over a year, to buy "The Phantom Menace", and their selection was pitiful. They had TPM, of course, but other than that they had only two double-sided displays with DVD's. It wasn't even very well-known titles, mostly cheap horror and action titles, and some children's titles.
They had a decent selection last time I went there (last year, to buy Terminator 2), so I don't know what might have happened.
/Mike

 

[Marty M]

They also have a very lame selection for Cds also. I went in to see what their price was for Band of Brothers soundtrack. They don't carry the soundtrack and it wasn't even in a binder that lists all the most recent releases. To make matters worse the sales clerk had never heard od the show.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

The Circuit City(s) in my area is roughly equal in selection to our Best Buy(s), that is to say not great for the more discriminating buyer, but certainly better than Wal-Mart! I can't believe your Circuit City is worse than a Wal-Mart. Maybe your Wal-marts are a lot better than ours, because ours are on par with K-Mart: only a couple shelves, mostly hits and cheapo releases.

 

[Tina_H_V]

Me, I only buy at Circut City if there is A) a sale going on and B) it offers up the best deal locally.
Otherwise, I make my DVD pickups in other places besides CC.
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[Rob Tomlin]

Nearly a year ago, I thought CC had a pretty decent selection of DVD's. I dont know what happened. I went in a couple weeks ago to pick up Cape Fear (they had the best advertised price) and I could not believe how small the DVD section was. And Cape Fear wasnt even out on the shelf. An employee had to go in the back to see if it came in (this was around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday). He brought out a box of DVD's that included Cape Fear and Total Recall SE. They only had 5 copies of each title!!!
I remember the good old days when CC and BB were having what appeared to be DVD price wars! I even picked up U-571 at CC the day it was released for $14.99!!! Those days are over, Im afraid. In fact, BB's DVD prices have DEFINITELY gone up. There average non-sale price for a DVD use to be around $20, now it is about $23.
I wish CC had a better selection and tried harder to compete with BB, as this would help keep the prices of DVD's down.

 

[Greg O' Connel]

Heh. I made this thread yesterday, and I found out today that Best Buy is in the planning stages to locate to my town. It'll probably be a year or so before they actually open, but at least then I'll hopefully have a better selection of DVDs to browse. One of the two probably won't last too long, since I don't think my town is big enough for the both of them. Literally.
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