electronics posts

According to a new survey by consumer electronics shopping Web site Retrevo, more individuals are doing their holiday shopping online than ever before and for most shoppers free shipping and coupon codes are an important part of the decision to buy gifts online.

The survey of 750 Retrevo users found that the number of individuals who will shop for electronics in-store dropped 6% from last year while the number of people who split their shopping between the online and offline, those who do it mostly online and those who do their shipping completely online all grew from 2008 to 2009.

When it comes to buying new technology like MP3 players, cameras and HDTV's; unless you know what you're looking for, finding exactly what you want can be a difficult task. One made no easier by the differing technologies and abbreviations that fill product descriptions these days, but thanks to TwelpForce, a virtual help desk on Twitter, you can get answers to all of life's electronic questions.

TwelpForce is made up of 2,100 Best Buy employees across the nation who take time to answer questions on Twitter about anything from HD video cameras and HDTV's to Xbox 360 headset recommendations. Thanks to the large number of Best Buy employees who answer TwelpForce questions, some even off the clock, responses are swift, smart and numerous.

College kids are opting to scale back their wardrobes and save their pennies for new gadgets, according to a study in today's WWD.

Students will have spent a projected $13 billion on electronics by the end of this year -- more than twice what they'll likely have spent on clothing and accessories: $5.77 billion.

There's suddenly buzz that Wal-Mart has declared war on electronics retailers Best Buy and Amazon, but why? Of course it has. Keeping up with and conquering the competition is what retailers do and few do it better than Wal-Mart. With Circuit City gone, there's a void to fill and even in a down market there's enough business to raise all boats. Heck, even Sears is seeing a bump in online traffic.

The Wall Street Journal paid a visit to the Bentonville, Ark. headquarters and scored some great face time with the executives in charge of the category, all to coincide with the announcement that Wal-Mart is rolling out new merchandising and expanding CE departments in 3,500 stores today. But is this a pointed initiative or a continuation of existing policy?

Best Buy has snapped up Circuit City's list of store cardholders and welcomed them to the fold. If you're on the list of cardholders who were invited to swap, Dan Ray, editor-in-chief of CreditCards.com, which wrote about the switcheroo, says take the new card and be grateful.

If you didn't get the invitation -- or if you decline to switch, and shut down your card -- chances are you'll take a punch to the ol' FICO score.

You say you never use that card anyway? That's part of the game, Ray says: FICO wants you to use 30% or less of your available credit. Having a store credit card or two in your wallet means you have available credit. When you or the credit-card issuer shuts a card down, your credit ratio changes. Having fewer credit cards means having less credit available, so your debt becomes a higher percentage of your available credit. And that reduces your score. Yes, they get you coming and going.

Amid all the depressing news about the lousy economy and even worse retail season I find one piece of news quite cheerful: not only have flat panel TV prices fallen enormously. They're on their way down further.

Writing for the New York Times recently Eric Taub points out that while salesmen say prices are as low as they can get (Shocking!), prices are due to dip further. (He also helpfully notes that springing for the higher resolution 1080p is pointless if you're getting a television that's 40 inches or less. Samsung told investors today in San Francisco that price wars are hurting its margins, so it's investing in a more expensive, faster-refreshing screen.

Black Friday has officially come to a close and numbers are already rolling in from various retail sources that show sales up as much as 7.2%. Retailers were correct in their assumption that many consumers would scale back holiday purchases, with many stores trending below last year's sales numbers. Despite the decline, many retailers did exceed their lowered expectations, several coming within a few hundred dollars of last year's sales.

Broken down by category; sales of electronics were down across the board, in fact 50% below last year at several large stores. Many other retail categories also came in lower than in previous years. Speaking anonymously, one manager voiced concerns that consumers did all of their holiday shopping on Black Friday, and that stores would see bleak December sales. Despite the lower sales overall, one area which did perform well according to our source was clothing; in fact, if clothing sales continue on their current trend, they will likely be higher than last year.

The movement away from electronics towards clothing may signal an early shift in the mindset of consumers as they do holiday shopping. A dress shirt given as a gift this year may be better received than a new mp3 player by many rational consumers. The shift towards clothing isn't new, retailers have already seen more consumers purchasing clothing on sale rather than purchasing a gift card in recent months.

With tow of the top three shopping days already behind us and many retailers still coming up short it may spell good news for consumers in the form of increased CyberMonday promotions on December 1. Still the overall lag in sales is troubling from an economic standpoint, as it may spell an end to many retail stores; costing jobs and tax revenue that many cities depend on.

Sure, the merchant you're buying that big LCD-screen television seems to be doing fine despite the economic downturn, but should you bet a great deal of money that it will still be around in a few years? Like CompUSA? That's what your doing if you buy an extended warranty, and last season 37% of those purchasing major appliances and electronics did, according to Consumer Reports. Store love it; they get to keep 50% or more of the premium, a much better margin than on the item itself.

Even the Consumer Electronics Association expects fewer of you to buy this option in 2008, and not just because you fear the company will go belly-up. Modern electronics are considerably more reliable, so many of us don't perceive a significant risk. The buying public is also showing a growing awareness that extended warranties are a bad bet; you're betting that the item will fail, while the seller is betting it won't. You're also betting that the cost of fixing the problem will be more than your warranty premium.

Face it: the company wouldn't sell the warranty unless the odds against catastrophic failure weren't in its favor.

This year, shoppers also needs to consider the dire outlook for companies such as Circuit City. If it goes down, will those warranties be honored? And while some companies sell programs that are actually run by a third party, this only muddies they question of whether or not it will be honored if the company goes under, or if the warranty provider goes bust. If it does, that warranty could be worth only the recycling value of the paper it's written on.

I've lost two cellphones to water, one from a washing machine, one from a wave. I gave up on having more nifty gadgets on my phone so I could get one of the rare waterproof phones on the market, the Casio G'Zone. I really like it, but it is a bit clunky.

Now there's a new product coming on the market that may allow me to get a phone like everyone else and still not worry about water exposure.

The Northwest Maritime Institute, which offers boating related classes at its campus south of Cape Cod, came up with Golden Shellback. The company cautiously call it a splash-proof coating, but then demonstrates it doing things like protecting a iPod Touch video in a bucket of water.

Golden Shellback Waterproof Coating from gCaptain.com on Vimeo.

The coating isn't simply a spray-on application. The clear waterproof polymer coats everything inside, too. So water can wash in and out of the phone or whatever and not hurt it. There are two big catches: it won't be out for a few months and it has to be professionally applied in a vacuum.

When you think of electronics, you don't normally think of the dollar store but I found five cool gadgets that impressed me, considering that each one was only a buck. Well, maybe I'm easy to impress. See what you think.

• Hand-held game system with eight different games. The games have blocky black and white graphics but it would serve to entertain a kid in the backseat of the car on a long trip and it's better than shelling out up to $130 for a Nintendo DS or $170 for a PSP.

• Folding travel clock/calculator with 16 different time zones. Okay, so our cell phones do everything but serve lunch but this is still a neat little gadget for a buck. It makes a great desk accessory.

Last week, CompUSA announced that it would be selling or closing all remaining stores in the United States. Consumers have been panicking, especially those who bought service plans for their computers. They were afraid they'd be left high and dry.

I am one of those consumers with a computer from CompUSA and I also purchased the TAP (Technology Assurance Plan.)

Rumors were flying about whether or not those plans would still be valid, and they are still valid and will be honored.

The plans are administered through Assurant Group (what CompUSA employees sometimes refer to as "the underwriter"). It does business under different names in different states, but the parent company is Assurant Group.