I have nothing but good luck with my orders from CircuitCity.com!
Written: Feb 03 '04
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Overall
CircuitCity.com is a good website designed for online electronics superstore shopping. The site is well organized with a good search engine as well as a good checkout system. The site is comparable with my favorites, Bestbuy.com and Newegg.com, but their shipping options and delivery time are a little less desirable and more on par with CompUSA.com.
Why do I utilize CircuitCity.com?
I utilize CircuitCity.com to buy computer parts and electronics at good prices after rebate. I usually stop by CompUSA.com, BestBuy.com, and Circuitcity.com early Sunday morning and check out their weekly ads. I utilize their strong buying power and partnerships with computer parts and electronics manufacturers to get great deals on what I need. I have only bought 5 items from CircuitCity.com in the past half year, mostly due to the fact that they have not been getting as strong of deals in their store in comparison to the other superstores.
Site Layout
The CircuitCity.com site is very similar in layout to most other electronic superstores online sites. The front page is in red and white, very similar to the color scheme of the stores and their commercials that I am sure you have viewed on the television. The front page has an assortment of specials for the day or week. There is also four tabs across the top to take you to different departments as desired, and they are:
Electronics
Games
Movies
Music
Along the left hand side of the screen there is also an outline of what sort of products you can access on the site, and clicking on the words will take you to a new page with those products. There are also tabs to take you directly to My Cart, My Account, Store Locator, Rebates, Gift Cards and the Weekly Ad.(this is where I go each Sunday).
At the bottom of the page are links that will let you contact CircuitCity.com, look at their Automatic Price Protection policy, understand their privacy policy, and sign up for a Circuit City credit card.
Overall I like the layout of this site, and really enjoy the search engine. It is very intuitive to find products by narrowing your search through the department tabs, utilizing the outline setup along the side, or by simply inputting search terms into the engine at the top of the page.
Weekly Advertisement
This weekend I decided to look through the weekly ads of BestBuy.com, CompUSA.com, and CircuitCity.com to see what I could find. The only item of interest at the prices listed was an ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card for $199 with $50 in mail in rebates. I wanted to buy one of these to compare it to my eVGA.com 5900SE that I had recently purchased and installed in one of my computer systems. I am currently building a system for a customer, and if the card was good enough I could put it in this system. If not, I can always sell it on Ebay for a probable profit after benchmaring and checking it out, right?
I clicked on the “add to cart” button, and then went quickly through entering my username and password. I already have an account obviously, so I did not need to sign up this time. It is fairly intuitive process to sign up for the first time, though.
The computer came up with the nearest store for me to pick up my item and stated that it was available. Unfortunately, that is over 200 miles away and in a neighboring state that has a sales tax. I wanted to have them send it to my house and therefore avoid trip costs and sales tax, but the site stated that the card was OUT OF STOCK for delivery!
However, there is a great feature of this site by which you can have them automatically generate an email to you when the item is back in stock, thereby keeping you from having to check back frequently. I clicked on that link and went about my business.
The next day I received an email stating the item was in stock, so I proceeded to my cart to buy the card.
Ordering page
I proceeded to checkout after ensuring that the item was priced correctly and that the rebates were for the purchase date in question. The checkout screen will automatically bring up your address and credit card information, if you have entered it in the past and asked the site to remember it. The site will ask you for the CID number on the back of the credit cards to protect you from identity theft. Many sites are going to this…
After you enter all information and press Yes to confirm the order, it brings up a page with your order confirmation number attached. Remember to print this page in case something was entered incorrectly! A confirmation email is then sent to the supplied email address. This is very quick, so if you do not see it within five minutes I would consider something wrong! Another email will follow, typically a day or two after this, stating that the package has shipped. This email also gives you the tracking number so you can see online where your package is at any given time.
Shipping(and Handling)
Right now CircuitCity.com has free shipping on everything in the store. For most items they will use UPS standard ground, which will take between 3 and 6 days to arrive at your house. In my case, it generally takes one day to process the order and another four days to get the package at my house. This is coming from Southern California to Eastern Montana. Compare this to Newegg.com which also has free shipping, ships out the same day in most cases, and uses FedEx to get the package to my door in two days, and you can see why I only use CircuitCity.com in cases where they have great rebates that I cannot pass up!
As I stated above, CircuitCity.com uses UPS, so you can:
1. Go to your order status screen and get the tracking number
2. Open another window to UPS.com manually
3. Enter the country you are in and hit the go button
4. Click on tracking
5. Enter your tracking number, agree to their benign terms, and click track
6. And FINALLY see the status of your package
In comparison, I really like the fact that CompUSA.com does all of this behind the scenes and you can access the tracking info right on the order page. Even Newegg.com has a one click button that automatically opens another screen with your tracking information right there. By far, CircuitCity.com’s tracking engine is the most annoying and non-customer friendly!
All of my packages from CircuitCity.com have been shipped securely and safely. The packages always have several air packs in them to keep the sensitive electronics from bouncing around and breaking. The boxes are taped together well and have never come apart. I have never had to return a product, although that is very simple to do from what I can tell from the RMA site.
Automatic Price Protection Policy
Something worth mentioning is the Automatic Price Protection policy. Rather than write it all out, I will steal from the website:
”Auto Price Protection
Circuit City's Price Match Plus Guarantees
As a benefit of selecting our Express Pickup option you will automatically receive the lower of our website price on your day of purchase or the in-store price (at your selected store) on the day of pickup. The difference will automatically be refunded to your original pay type. It's that simple!
We go a step further, you also get our 30-day Price Match Plus Guarantee after receiving your purchase.
To take advantage our "Automatic Low Price", you must choose the in-store Express Pickup option. Circuit City's Price Match Plus Guarantee, however, applies to all purchases made from circuitcity.com or our stores.
Online Price Match Plus Guarantee
Nothing's worse than paying too much. That's why we do everything in our power to make sure you don't pay a penny more than you should for anything you buy at Circuit City. If you've seen a lower advertised price from a local store with the same item in stock, we want to know about it. Bring it to our attention, and we'll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference. Even after your Circuit City purchase, if you see a lower advertised price (including our own sale prices) within 30 days, we'll refund 110% of the difference.
Our policy applies only to advertised prices. It does not apply to special offers or promotions, including rebates, free-with-purchase offers and special financing.
Unfortunately, we are not able to provide price matches online, so please visit the closest Circuit City store in order to take advantage of our Price Match Plus Guarantee.”
I have never had a chance to use this, as almost everything I have ever bought from CircuitCity.com had a rebate on it, and if I found a better price, it was due to a rebate at another store. If, however, you are not into the rebates and want piece of mind in your purchase, this is nice to know that it is available.
The Final Word
CircuitCity.com is a very well set up website with great (ZERO)shipping prices and average delivery times. If you find a good price on the site with rebates and want to get it, I would recommend doing so. I have never had an issue with anything I have ordered from this site. They have come around with free shipping in the past few months, thus making it competitive(but not better!) with Bestbuy.com and Newegg.com.
Other online store reviews you may find interesting:
Newegg.com
BestBuy.com
CompUSA.com
OldNavy.com
I hope this review helps you, and please leave me feedback ratings or comments!
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Several computer components over the past year.
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