Liquidation rip-offs

This is going to be short post… part of my New Years resolution to be more postive…  I’ll warn you, this one is just a rant.  Its just one of those things that irks me.  

We went to Circuit City this past weekend, again.  Its only the 3rd time we have been in the Myrtle Beach store since it announced its closing.  We were searching for a deal, which has been hard to find, even in their liquidation.  I finally bought something – I bought a new multi-function printer for home.  Our printer/scanner/copier at home is getting pretty long in the tooth and its ink finally dried up last week.  I’d heard that the printers at CC had finally been marked to 25% off.  The last time I went in, they were a pathetic 10% off – and that was off of some jacked up price that someone pulled from their nether regions.  Finally, at “25% off”, the price dropped to $10 below what NewEgg, Best Buy, Sam’s Club and everyone else has been selling this particular HP printer for…  

I realize this has been widely reported, from every news outlet in the country, but let me just say it.  Those prices at the liquidation sale (Goody’s Family Clothing, Circuit City) — They aren’t deals people – they are rip offs.  You could buy most to of the merchandise cheaper the day before the liquidation was announced.  I know its not really news, but its still a sad state of things.  

But I’m not sure what I’m more sad about – that people fall into the one-million-gazillon percent off syndrome where anything on sale is a great deal and I must buy 3 – or the corporate greed still exhuding from corporate America even during a liquidation.  Let me explain.  Put anything on sale, no matter how much you mark it up, and there are people who will buy it – because its a “great deal” or “it was on sale.”  Are we really that gulliable America?  Secondly, you’re a business that is failing.  You can’t make it on your own two feet.  You weren’t selling it at your “everyday low low price”, so why come in and raise prices just to “mark it down” to a price above your everyday low price…  It makes no sense.  How much does it cost a company like Circuit City to keep the lights on and pay employees, rather than simply do a true going-out-of-business, sell the merchandise at a real discount and wrap things up?  Its a dying cow, put it out of its misery…  I’m sure they’d make more money that way, but what do I know, right?