All-Star Tech Stores
Who's got the best prices, selection, sales help, and return policies among online and brick-and-mortar stores? We surveyed more than 5000 readers to find the best places to buy tech gear.Christopher Null
Christopher Null is a San Francisco-based technology writer.
Choosing the right product is only part of the headache when you're hunting for new tech gadgets or computer parts. Shoppers these days also face an almost overwhelming number of options in how and where to make a purchase: Buy the product offline and get it today, or buy it online and wait a few days? Go offline and pay sales tax, or go online and pay for shipping? Will a big store like Wal-Mart treat you worse than the little computer shop down the way? Is Amazon.com more trustworthy than a tiny Web outfit with unbelievable prices?
!["Now you have more [buying] choices....But you're making a more informed choice."--Mike Radway, financial services consultant, Portland, Oregon](http://images.pcworld.com//reviews/graphics/125505-2406p100-1b.jpg)
Photograph by Robbie McClaran
To get a picture of how buyers are making those choices and of which Web-based and real-world stores best meet their needs, we surveyed thousands of PC World readers and PCWorld.com visitors. We then conducted interviews with some of the surveyed shoppers, performed our own in-person tests at brick-and-mortar stores, and took multiple spins around the most popular online retailers.
In this article:
Readers' Top Picks
So where are the best places to shop? Topping our survey on the online front was NewEgg.com, with TigerDirect.com coming in a close second. Offline, results were more scattered, with Staples and Office Depot nabbing the highest marks from respondents for overall satisfaction and stores such as Fry's (a regional electronics chain) and Costco earning kudos in specific areas such as product selection, prices, and return policies.
Although most of the respondents we interviewed prefer to shop online, some are finding themselves swinging back toward offline retailers for a number of reasons. Shipping rates have been going up, for instance, and some Web vendors are sitting on orders for days before processing them. And many of these consumers simply want to support local businesses, or they don't want to wait a week to get an important part.
By and large, however, online still rules for our respondents. We talked to virtually no one who said they weren't shopping online more today than they were a few years ago. Product selection and price are key, and a lot of people understandably want to avoid the hard-sell tactics of pushier salespeople. Their preference is borne out by sales figures from stores with both an online and offline presence: Although brick-and-mortar still represents the bulk of sales for retailers such as Circuit City and Costco, those retailers say online sales are growing by 60 to 70 percent annually, while offline sales are growing by about 11 to 12 percent.
Some savvy readers told us that they like to combine online and offline shopping: They compare prices on the Web through shopping engines, then take those prices with them to their local stores. Although most offline stores don't honor online printouts as part of their price-matching guarantees, studying Web prices helps buyers determine whether purchasing a product online might be more cost-effective in the end--after all, despite concerns over shipping costs and merchant reliability, saving hundreds or thousands of dollars can be persuasive. The combination approach can also work the other way: You start at a brick-and-mortar retailer so you can try things out and decide what you want, then you go online to find the best deal.
We've taken the information respondents gave us and split our look at popular tech stores into five sections: product selection, price, product information, returns, and store/site design. In each category we've analyzed whether online or offline is doing a better job, and determined which store tops the others. Plus, we've unearthed a wealth of tips, tricks, and secrets to make your shopping experience as painless as possible.
Give Me Choices
When readers picked their top online stores for product selection, NewEgg came out on top, with TigerDirect and Amazon trailing closely; these stores also scored well on the immediate availability of products shoppers were looking for. When it came to shopping offline, the marks for product selection were considerably lower all around, but Fry's outpaced the rest of the pack by a mile and had good product availability, too; CompUSA (which also owns The Good Guys stores) and Circuit City took secondary honors in this noticeably weaker field.
Respondents overwhelmingly told us that they consider online retailers the better bet for a wide-ranging selection of goods--satisfaction with online stores' selection was twice that of brick-and-mortar stores. The logic is obvious: Stores in the real world have only so much shelf space, and that space is devoted to the products with the highest profit margins and the biggest customer demand. If you're looking for an obscure part or a lesser-known brand, you are more likely to find it on the Internet.
Offline stores have one major benefit over online ones: They let you physically touch the gear you're shopping for. This can be invaluable if you're comparison shopping and don't know exactly what model you want. Says Mike Radway, "If a product is a commodity (like flash memory) or something that's easy to understand, I purchase online. But if I'm trying to decide between one item or another, I always go to the store." (We did not have sufficient responses to rate the product-trial experiences for individual stores, but 88 percent of respondents gave stores positive marks overall.) Another plus for shopping offline is immediate availability. Online stores do generally tell you early on when they can ship a product to you, though: About 47 percent of respondents said they got a shipping estimate either on the product page or when they put an item in the shopping cart. However, 60 percent of CompUSA shoppers said they saw no shipping estimate at all, versus the average of 15 percent.
Of course, online shoppers have the benefit of accessing both general search engines and specialized shopping engines (or "shopping bots") like Froogle and PriceGrabber, which all but guarantee the widest product selection you can find. For uncommon items, such as an obscure camera battery, search engines can turn what might once have been a frustrating trip through the Yellow Pages into a relatively simple point-and-click affair. Many readers told us that they frequently ended up at small retailers for such hard-to-find items, thanks to the advice of shopping engines, and that in general these one-time purchases turned out just fine.
Another bonus of shopping bots is that such Web sites typically locate several sources for an item and point you to the best available price. Some engines also rate the trustworthiness of listed e-tailers, which can give you more confidence in a significant purchase. For more information on shopping engines, check out "Deal Finders" in our December 2005 issue.
For the occasions when shopping engines don't pan out in the search for an obscure component or accessory, surveyed readers recommended a straightforward solution: Just click over to the equipment vendor's Web site. Most manufacturers include a page on their site that lists retail outlets, both online and offline, where you can purchase their products. Sometimes the sites offer the information by region, as well: Simply type in your zip code, for example, and a list of nearby stores is revealed.
Bargain Buys
Large sites and stores scored high on our poll in offering customers the lowest prices. Costco.com, auction site eBay, NewEgg, Buy.com, and TigerDirect had the best online deals while most respondents got offline bargains at Fry's and at megastores like Sam's Club, Costco, and Wal-Mart. (Although eBay is often regarded as an auction site first, many merchants also use it as a base for conventional retail sales; eBay exerts some oversight on its merchants, too, which is why we included it here.)
Online or off, respondents said price was their most important consideration in choosing where to purchase a product. Readers had divergent opinions about how to find the best deal, however. Many said they began online with a Froogle search and then compared those prices with the tags at local stores. Because offline stores hold sales without much notice and on an unpredictable selection of items, many readers said that spending a little time checking a few brick-and-mortar shops was worth their while, particularly when shopping for big-ticket products. (This reporter, a dedicated online purchaser, found an amazing deal on a new PC by scouring the superstores during the course of researching this article, snagging a machine costing several hundred dollars less than a similarly configured rig online.)
In the absence of a big dads-and-grads sale, though, respondents overall said that online shopping netted slightly better prices. The why for that may simply come down to there being many more retailers fighting it out on the Internet than in the physical realm. Again, some readers we spoke with happened to find the best price on a product at a smaller Web-based retailer, and many noted that, though sometimes frustrating, buying from such out-of-the-way stores was usually worth it.
You do need to approach an unfamiliar online retailer with some caution, they advise, and, as always, you should be on the lookout for prices that appear too good to be true. Also, respondents warn of some shady dealers that tack on exorbitant handling fees or attempt to "upsell" you to more expensive models or accessories you don't need. If anything seems at all suspicious, leaving a lowball Web site and paying a little more money to receive service from another site that you can trust is the best idea.
Inform Me
Respondents weren't all that impressed with the information they could get about products, either online or off. Online edged ahead a bit with 30 percent of respondents giving the Web high marks for the buying information available, versus 24 percent of offline shoppers. Most sites and stores earned average ratings, with only NewEgg receiving an above-average score for the product information it put at shoppers' fingertips. On the other hand, several sites and stores disappointed with their below-average ratings in product information: Costco.com, Wal-Mart, CompUSA.com, BestBuy.com, Staples.com, and eBay.
Salespeople weren't much help in the brick-and-mortar world. Wal-Mart in particular received low scores for the product and category knowledge of its sales staff, and only Fry's managed to garner a high rating from more than 50 percent of its customers on its salespeople's knowledge of product categories.
Reader comments echo these results. Gail Robb, a Boise, Idaho, great-grandmother and the family computer pro, puts it politely, saying sales clerks are "really hit-and-miss. Some are really good and some don't know all that much." John Dear, an engineer in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, concurs. "Sometimes I feel like the salespeople are more of a hindrance than a help."
Online, a few sites offer easy, convenient ways to contact a customer representative for sales help. NewEgg, TigerDirect, Dell, and HP all had a majority of their shoppers praise the accessibility of live help. NewEgg and TigerDirect customers also awarded those sites high marks for the knowledgeability of the service representative they spoke with.
If you're a rank novice when it comes to a specific product category--say, in choosing among an LCD, plasma, or rear-projection HDTV--most respondents recommend you do research online. Start with trustworthy sources and then branch out to category-specific review sites for additional detail. Many lesser-known sources have loads of information that might be impossible to obtain elsewhere. For example, several readers mentioned Steve's Digicams as an invaluable source for camera details.
If these sources together can't supply the info you want on a product category, it probably doesn't exist. Still, some online retailers do a decent job of providing detailed info for prospective buyers. Top-rated NewEgg, for instance, supplies a plethora of product photographs--often showing every angle of each model--plus complete spec sheets and extensive user-written product reviews. Another nice feature: its "compatible products" link, which lets shoppers find appropriate accessories without a lot of searching.
For buying offline, Mike Radway offers one strategy for success: He prints out professional and user reviews from a variety of online stores, then takes them along with him to brick-and-mortar shops when he wants to make a purchase. This way he can compare what a sales clerk tells him with real-world experiences.
Happy Returns?
Having to return equipment is never fun, especially if the device is not performing as expected. Fortunately, only about 59 percent of offline shoppers and just 24 percent of online buyers surveyed had to return purchases (we had so few responses for most online sites that we could not rate individual stores). Of those people who did return items, the majority had a positive experience: 58 percent online and 63 percent offline gave their stores good marks on this score. Costco and Staples stood out with above-average ratings for the ease of returns.
In general respondents said that the larger the retailer, the easier returning items was, though online returns did bring extra concerns. Says Radway, "With online the biggest thing to worry about is the hidden fees for returns, or those [sites] that make it impossible to talk to a live human being when I have a problem."
Engineer John Dear has a similar take on returns. "It's a little more of a hassle to deal with returns online," he notes. "You just have to get in a new mindset, like making sure you keep the packaging for a couple of weeks before throwing it out."
Overwhelmingly, when respondents did return products, the returns were accepted and few people had to pay a restocking fee, even at stores that claimed to charge one. This was one area where NewEgg customers fared worse than those of other online retailers: Nearly 19 percent of NewEgg shoppers we surveyed had to pay a restocking fee, versus the average of 10 percent for online buyers. Brick-and-mortar customers had it even better: Only 3 percent of them said they were required to pay such fees.
While most readers had positive experiences returning merchandise to a retailer, nearly everyone we spoke with had at least one horror story--typically an experience so bad, it turned the reader away from that particular store for good, though it might not have been representative of the store's policies overall.
Radway, for example, says a bad return with eCost.com (not rated on our survey) has kept him from visiting that site much. He says he couldn't return a nonfunctioning thumb drive to eCost, nor could he return it directly to the maker--he had to place a new order for the same product and then return the defective drive for credit. During that time, the rebate period for the product expired. "I will still buy from them," he says, "but I'm much more cautious."
Photograph by Steve Labadessa
In contrast, Laura Manning, a LAN administrator in Santa Barbara, California, speaks well of her Buy.com return experiences. A recent camera return "was handled quickly and professionally, via e-mail and phone. Their customer service people were native English speakers, easy to understand, and empowered to take quick action," she notes.
It's important to remember that not only can you have a different return experience at different retailers, but your experience may vary among stores within the same chain or even with sales clerks at the same store. Although chain-store policies should be identical in every location across the country, the helpfulness of the staff at a particular store can have a huge impact on your happiness during a return. This is one slight advantage for online shopping, as you're likelier to get the same service from a site over the long run.
Lay of the (Shopping) Land
While the readers we surveyed generally could find their way around stores both online and in the real world, there's definitely room for improvement, especially over on the brick-and-mortar side. Our respondents were happier with Web site design than they were with physical store design by more than a two-to-one margin (47 percent positive versus 18 percent). Staples, OfficeMax, and Office Depot scored above-average marks for their physical store design, while NewEgg and TigerDirect fared best among the online retailers for the layout of their Web sites.
Every online shopper has a favorite Web site, and certain design decisions draw rabid fans. While many people love the easy navigation of larger sites such as NewEgg and TigerDirect, Gail Robb points to a tiny online outlet called Cost Central, which she likes for its no-nonsense, index-style layout that makes navigation a breeze.
Although the majority of our survey respondents (52 percent) strongly agreed that comparing products on sites was easy, only 32 percent of Costco.com users felt that way, compared with 73 percent of NewEgg customers. NewEgg and Amazon earned the highest marks for the ease of searching for and finding products, while CompUSA.com and BestBuy.com fared the worst.
In navigating your way around online sites, Dear says it all comes down to practice. "It's all about where you get comfortable," he says. "You just have to get used to where things are. Once you know what you're looking for, it's usually not too hard to find anything." Manning agrees; she shops primarily at Dell, Buy.com, and TigerDirect, because she's familiar with the way those particular sites operate. "These ones work for me, so I'm sticking with them!" she says.
Online definitely trumps brick-and-mortar in another aspect: atmosphere. Manning notes that the loud and oppressive noise that fills electronics merchants like Circuit City and Fry's--which are also busy hawking expensive sound systems and television sets--is what sends her to the Web instead: "If I'm shopping for computer components, I don't want to hear stereos blasting."
In our survey noise level and checkout speed came up needing improvement in general. Just 43 percent of readers strongly agreed that checkout lines moved quickly; 57 percent agreed that stores' noise level was not a problem. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Fry's had the biggest problems with noise according to our survey respondents; shoppers at Sam's Club and Wal-Mart gave those stores low marks for speedy checkout.
Worse, though, were buyer impressions of store layouts and the signs meant to guide them to the right products. Just 39 percent strongly agreed that store signs made locating products easy, and only 45 percent strongly agreed that store layout helped them find their way around as they shopped. Costco got the lowest marks for its in-store signs while CompUSA received the worst layout scores.
Overall, technology shopping is improving, both online and offline, and the breadth of choices means that you're likely to find what you want and to get a good price for it. The best advice comes straight from our surveyed readers: Buy things you understand very well online, but consider a local store when you want to see the gear in action before you pull the trigger. And remember: Whether you shop online or off, the deals are out there--all you have to do is hunt them down!
When Buying Used Gear Makes Sense
Illustration by Chip Taylor
Refurbished, returned, repaired, and discontinued merchandise can be a bonanza if you don't mind getting slightly older or somewhat beaten-up gear, as long as you remember some caveats.
Many retailers sell used equipment right alongside new products. The sites of Best Buy and CompUSA, for example, offer links to "outlet" stores where used gear sells at deep discounts. Amazon even integrates used products, sold by individuals or third-party stores, directly into its regular listings. This gives you an easy way to see the price differential, without wasting a single click.
But should you buy refurbished gear?
The first big mystery in used merchandise is always "What happened to it?" And many retailers don't disclose whether a product was returned due to damage or simply because the buyer didn't want it. Offline stores almost always have "as-is" merchandise for sale, too. Typically these are models that were displayed on the showroom floor. But how much abuse have they suffered over the course of three or more months on the shelf? The bottom line is, you have no way to really know what you're getting in these cases.
CompUSA president and COO Tony Weiss notes that refurbs at his stores come from one of two sources: Merchandise returned directly to CompUSA, or merchandise returned to a manufacturer. In both cases, he stresses, the company does not resell items that have been damaged in any way, meaning all items were returned in working order and so did not need repairs before resale.
This leads to the second big issue: the warranty. Many refurbished items are sold sans warranty or with a very short one, often a 90-day guarantee. If at all possible, try to get a refurbished product that includes a manufacturer's warranty, too. Regardless, recognize that you're taking a risk--even if it's a small one--and set expectations accordingly.
Most of the readers in our survey reported that they rarely, if ever, buy used products. Boise, Idaho, resident Gail Robb is typical: She bought used gear only once, a peripheral for a Sony PDA that had been discontinued. Whether they simply enjoy the thrill of being the first to boot up a PC or, like Portland, Oregon, consultant Mike Radway, they can't accept the risk of a "mission-critical" device crashing on them, most users tend to avoid buying used gear whenever possible. Still, says CompUSA's Weiss, refurbished gear can be a great deal. "Historically, refurbished items are sold at a 10 to 30 percent discount versus new," he says. "By considering refurbished, something you couldn't previously afford might now fit in your budget."
For more information on shopping for used and refurbished equipment, check out Dan Tynan's "Four Simple Rules for Buying Used Gear" in the March issue.
Rebates Get Easier to Collect
Illustration by Chip Taylor
Frequently stores entice you inside with a low advertised price, and then when you're there you realize that the "$100 off!" promise is actually a mail-in rebate, one that you probably won't receive until you've celebrated another birthday or two.
Historically, retailers have loved rebates, because only a slim proportion of buyers ever bother to file the necessary paperwork to collect their funds. Due to procrastination, forgetfulness, and the effort required, anywhere from 40 to 95 percent of shoppers don't file their rebate forms (the percentage varies depending on the amount of the rebate). You can't blame those consumers: Rebate paperwork can seem as complex as filing your taxes, and once you arrive home with your brand new digital camera, a mere $20 hardly seems worth the trouble.
There's good news on the rebate front, however. In light of increasing customer frustration with the rebate process and with deadbeat rebate companies (most vendors outsource rebate processing to a third party), retailers are cleaning up their act. For starters, the miles-long paper trail has finally moved online for many stores, including CompUSA and Costco. Instead of filling out a ream of forms and snail-mailing them to Dubuque with UPC codes dissected from the packaging, now you can simply enter information from your receipt on a section of the company's Web site. Such online services make it simple to track the money you're owed and to determine exactly when you can expect a check.
Other companies are getting out of rebates altogether. Best Buy, for example, no longer offers mail-in rebates on any computer products, and has set a goal of eliminating all rebates throughout the store by 2008. The catch: The policy applies only to Best Buy's own rebate offers, not to those from product vendors.
Still, many stores remain addicted to rebates, and you'll continue to see the offers. If you don't like the idea of your money sitting in limbo for weeks on end, check out no-rebates-allowed deal sites such as AntiRebate.com, which lists genuinely discounted items daily.
Getting Good Info Before You Buy
When you're in the market for a new PC or gadget, naturally you want to get the most information you can about it before you hand over your money. Product information Web sites are a great resource any time you're planning on getting a big-ticket item. First, they show you every detail you might want about a product category or a specific device, often providing links to spec sheets and technical data that won't fit in printed reviews, such as the frequency response range of a speaker or whether a cable will be long enough to meet your needs. Second, and more important, they help you set your price expectations when you're ready to pull out your credit card. Finally, they can present similar products you might not have considered, so you'll be able to see whether your "perfect" digital camera has been one-upped lately.
When you're looking for user reviews, a good first stop is the venerable ConsumerReview.com, which has a good selection of user-written reviews of consumer electronics, PCs, and even automobiles. ConsumerReview will often have dozens of evaluations for a product when major comparison sites and retailers have none at all. Epinions.com, which pays users to write reviews, is a decent second choice for user commentary, though the site has faded in usefulness over the last couple of years as fewer users rate products and those that do have tended to provide more spec sheets and less analysis of the gear in their write-ups. A promising alternative is the relatively new AskAnOwner.com, which lets you poll people who have hands-on experience with products you're interested in.
For quick advice, check out ConsumerSearch.com, which digests reviews from 18 expert sources (with categories covering everything from routers to juicers to moisturizers), presenting amalgamated top picks on a single, easy-to-understand page. And PC World is not a bad source for expert product reviews, either. (Just a suggestion.)
Once you've settled on a product to buy, you should spend a bit of time scouring the Web for the best price. Even if you plan to make the purchase in person, this way you'll know how much you should expect to pay, and whether you're getting ripped off. (For big-ticket items like HDTVs, it's not uncommon to see retail prices ranging from $2000 to $5000 for the exact same product.)
Google's Froogle service has become a sophisticated comparison shopping engine that takes a lot of the pain out of punching in model numbers on site after site. Good old PriceGrabber is also useful, but generally feels less thorough. (Full disclosure: PriceGrabber links to PC World reviews, and powers PCWorld.com's price-comparison engine, Product Finder.) Finally, be sure to make a quick check at eBay to see what new or like-new products are selling for: Even if you expect to buy your gear at retail, you'll know what you can sell it for if you decide you don't like it after all.
Brick-and-Mortar Survey Results: No Store Excels in All Areas
Office Depot and Staples stand out for overall satisfaction in this uneven group, and Staples gets further praise for its store design and its product return experience. Product selection and store design proved to be problem areas for many rated stores.
| Office Depot | |||||||
| Staples | |||||||
| Fry's | |||||||
| OfficeMax | |||||||
| Circuit City | |||||||
| Costco | n/a | ||||||
| Sam's Club | n/a | n/a | |||||
| Best Buy | |||||||
| CompUSA/Good Guys | |||||||
| Wal-Mart | |||||||
Online-Store Survey Results: Newegg.com Proves a Winner Across the Board
Newegg--our top overall site--and TigerDirect stand out from the pack, while BestBuy.com earns the dubious distinction of below-average ratings in all categories; CompUSA.com and Staples.com round out the bottom of this group.
| NewEgg.com | |||||||
| TigerDirect.com | |||||||
| Amazon.com | |||||||
| Buy.com | |||||||
| Dell.com | |||||||
| HP.com | n/a | ||||||
| eBay.com | |||||||
| CircuitCity.com | |||||||
| Costco.com | n/a | ||||||
| CompUSA.com/GoodGuys.com | n/a | ||||||
| Staples.com | n/a | ||||||
| BestBuy.com | |||||||