Micro Center ... am I missing something?!

[jrau]

I'm buying parts for a PC and I thought that visiting a Micro Center was the way to save money. From what I can tell from their website there are really few savings to be had ... they focus on CPU pricing and not much else.

Are the actual in-store prices a lot cheaper than what you get on the website after selecting a specific store?

 

[smorizio]

with retail shopping there a few things anyone needs to know..first off ads and coupons are what called loss leaders..same goes for food at a restaurant...the prices are under priced by a few dollars to get s person into the store...once there there going to buy more then just the cpu...so they make it up on the papers and cables and ink or other parts of the pc...or try sell extended warranties...(all called spifs). I try and not buy on who got the lowest prices...that can come back and burn a builder if he got jumps through hoops for a refund or a return. micro center return when i last was in there was 30 days on everything no real question asked and the do price match. if micro center was not a 40 min drive for min into boston i would do all my shopping there. I been a little soured now of newegg...there not very customer friendly anymore. a few weeks ago a friend had a laptop that was having a hard drive that was failing...i went on new egg and i thought i had ordered the right usb cable for a data cable but i made a mistake on ordering it..took me 20 min to find the cancel the order button...then keep on saying there packing the order at 12am on a sat. also in fine print if they get to a part in packing they can cancel the order with out a restocking fee. also took them 3 days to do a refund on a part that was never shipped. I also had issues with small cable vendors that sell cables online..i thought i had order the right extender cable for my last build..did not know from the web page where i ordered the cable that 8 pin pci and 8 pin eps cables are not the same..found out when i asked someone on asus rog forum. as the package had tracking i called the vendor 800 number the next day and said the wrong part was shipped..wanted them to call the package back and ship me on a new sales slip the right part and then refund me when they got the cable back..
they said i had to return it on my dime that the could not recall the package even though it was still two days from my home.
needs to say i did a charge back and refused the cable. wont order any cables from that company..any of use that worked in retail know customers make errors..the ones that try and fix there issues nicly are the once you want to help not stonewall.
all the cable store had to do to make me happy was send the right cable (on a new sales order) and then refund me in a few days when the other cable got back.

 

[JefferyD90]

I think TigerDirect has the most competitive prices overall. Plus they typically offer free shipping, and have the best return policy EVA!

 

[dudewitbow]

I think TigerDirect has the most competitive prices overall. Plus they typically offer free shipping, and have the best return policy EVA!

i would agree only to some extent. tigerdirect imo has the best prices mostly involving rebates(especially gpus) and weird 1 item sales that pop up in and out at times. Newegg imo offers the most competitive prices in general for parts(outside of california, tenesee and NJ, the taxed states)

 

[jrau]

Best answer selected by jrau.

 

[jrau]

So I was thinking all along that I was going for a Celeron G540 until MicroCenter started selling the Pentium for $50. I was going for an H77 board that had all the connections I need for $65.

Then I was doing awesome scoring deals on parts (plus rebates on top of that) so I thought maybe a little better CPU would be a good idea and I see newegg with i3 CPUs for just over $100.

So now I'm thinking H77 and i3 for $165. I walk in to the MicroCenter and the guy tells me I can buy the i5-2500K for $150 and I get HD3000 graphics. I'm thinking that is more than I want to go but it comes with $50 off a z77 mobo. So I get a ASRock pro3 board and the i5 for $195 ... way better than I was thinking for $30 more.

Funny thing ... two days later the monitor on my list (last thing to buy) comes up at $50 off.

Life is good!