Every Fry's I have been to in the last decade has felt like the store was already in the process of going out of business. That said, I will miss the place. Sometimes you just need a piece of electronics today and Fry's had a much wider selection than stores like Best Buy.
Very true. They also tried to serve so many different niches that it was often interesting to just walk around the store to see products I would never buy and often didn't even know existed.
No kidding, one day I needed simple DDR4 RAM to get a computer to boot. Didn't care the size, didn't care the speed. Most stores had nothing at all, I remember Best Buy had some older DDR3 (in 2020, and by older I mean I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was from the mid 2000s). Fry's didn't have anything I would have ordered online but they did have 2x16 GB DDR4.
I can confirm; at least for the Seattle area (Renton, WA) location it opened to much fanfare, but went downhill years ago.
Elaborating; this must have been around the start of the consignment era. Looking back that's clearly what the deal bins and such at the front of the store were. It was a lack of new parts in the higher end sections that I initially noticed.
