- Home Office-level idiocy, negligence, and greed across the board.
- No more transfer of items between stores (fired all the truck drivers).
- 1 Non-retail location already closed (Product Repair, now even broken items will be sold), rumors for that location specifically include embezzling and the same blind stupidity that is systemic in every other aspect of the company.
- ZERO reliable or truthful communication with employees or customers, "push the lie until the customers come back", resulting predictably in utter loss of trust by customers. The employees got the message and stopped caring a long time ago.
- Most who are sticking with the stores are just long-timers holding on for unemployment, once the franchise finally properly drops off the earth.
- Dept managers suffered multiple demotions with same or more responsibilities, most quit.
- Departments formerly separate (computers/components and Audio & Video/Entertainment/Appliances lumped together, including salesmen.
- Contract with personal communication company severely downgraded without notice, eliminating the majority of the store from using them, in the middle of a shift, people picked largely at random, from part-timers to supervisors.
- Reports of the vastly-diminished amount of incoming stock being only the cheapest and worst of the available products, as HOME OFFICE is reportedly REFUSING to pay for the higher-quality and more expensive things they ordered, as they arrive at port, in the apparent hope that the cheap stuff will move faster and bring them more money.
- Their in-house software and their website was reputedly made by a member or friend of the Fry family, and as such, he hasn't seen the need to update any of it since the late 90's or early 2000's, the very newest versions of their software, and many if not all of their employee-use computers scattered through the stores, still run on versions of Windows 7, many of which are noticeably unlicensed...
- Visits from Home Office personnel are feared, as most of them tend to aggressively or passive aggressively push the party line. Generally bullying behavior as opposed to actual talent or professionalism or anything helpful. Pushing the garbage that falls on them onto the people below them.
- Multiple stories from employees and CUSTOMERS, of the owner RANDY FRY being an incompetent quick-tempered bully who seems not to know how to pay bills on time, whether its contractors for store maintenance or vendors and distributors (Lost contract with LG, reportedly settled afterward for significantly larger amount).
This company has been run into the ground, shamefully, by a bunch of incompetent and reality-disconnected fools and their cronies.
At store-level, most people (including the store managers) are just trying to hold the Big Broken Thing together and maintain their sanity.
Have sympathy, be polite. You don't want to stand in their shoes.
SUPPOSEDLY, they've paid their bills and can now start bringing in more stock for the holiday season, that's been the rumor for some time.
BUT, the customer base is GONE, and will not return. A literal fraction of the number of customers seen this time last year, much less the year before. MAYBE as much as 1/10th.
As are the majority of the employees, following cutting most of the full-timers to part time, then scheduling them for a fraction of their earlier worktime, or ZERO hours outright, to push them to quit and save Fry's the trouble.
For at least a short period, many remaining full-timers were scheduled for the MINIMUM legal amount of hours.
The list goes on and on and on . . .
THIS IS NOT because of Amazon or trade tariffs.
It may have been quickened by them, but as soon as there was an alternative, Fry's began to die.
This niche market can survive even in this day and age, especially considering the lack of brick and mortar store competition.
BUT only if run by somebody with at least SOME business sense, decency, honesty, integrity, and grasp of social and psychological principles.
Yes, strangely enough, if your shelves empty and the quality of the store continuously and rapidly deteriorates, people will notice, especially if you make sure to never acknowledge or admit it, or blatantly lie to their face when asked.
Customer trust is broken. They will not go back, and they should not.
Every dollar you do not give to Fry's moves the whole flaming sewage-laden trainwreck closer to the cliff of its inevitable conclusion.
Boycott them, please.
Fry's Electronics and its incompetent leadership and systemically abusive attitudes have nothing left but to be stripped for useful parts and laid to rest, so something better can take its place and its people can move on to greener pastures.