This weekend, I was in a Circuit City store because I needed to buy an inexpensive mp3 player.  Similar to their competitors, the players were locked in a glass case.  The items neatly displayed with prices did not match the boxes I could see in the case and I wanted to find out the prices of what I suspected were the less expensive items.

While I was looking for help, a salesman came along with another customer.  He unlocked the case and pulled out a box for the customer.  I told him that I, too, wanted help in the case.  He asked me to wait a minute, locked the case, and walked away with the customer.   As he was returning to me, someone asked him for his set of keys and he gave them away.  He then turned to me, heard my question, and told me he had to get keys.  He again walked away.  When he returned with the keys and took out the boxes in question, they were not marked with a price.  He again walked away, ultimately returning to tell me the price of a Sansa 1MB player....$10 more than I had recently paid elsewhere.

On reflection, I realized that several things have changed.  My local Circuit City used to be big, but not big box size.  I used to shop in the old store frequently and almost always found the staff to be attentive and have strong technical knowledge about the products.  It's just reached my consciousness that since they've moved to the big box store, the model has changed.  Now, I'm often talking to sales persons who don't seem to be assigned to any particular part of the store and don't seem to know the products.  

And, the salesmen, like the one I encountered Saturday, don't appear to have much customer service training.  With the smallest amount of thought, the salesman would not have given up his keys while returning to meet me at a locked case.  In a perfect world, he would have let me state my question before walking away the first time...I might have had a simple yes/no question for which I wasn't willing to wait five minutes.  And, he would have had at least a rough idea of the cost of the items.

I see that Circuit City's sales are down and that this has been attributed to the downturn in the housing market, reduced consumer spending, and competition from Best Buy.  But, in my experience, Best Buy isn't consistently cheaper.  Could it be that the stiff competition arises from better trained customer service?