Fun at Circuit City

by ccsucks

I was a manager at Circuit City.  Unfortunately, Circuit City and I parted ways (their decision), so I decided to write the following article for my friends at 2600... enjoy!

Price Tags

If it ends in ".99", it is "In Program."  (In other words, if it's not in stock, the associate can "special order" it from the main warehouse.)

If it ends in ".98", it is a sale price or Challenge the Competitor (CTC) has it on sale.

If it ends in ".97", it is "Open Box."  As a rule, avoid open box buys at Circuit City like the plague unless you get the chance to see the unit working for yourself.  Sales counselors usually don't test units that come back as Open Box, even though they re supposed to.  And never believe the story that "it just came off display."

If it ends in ".96", it is "Out of Program" (OOP).  (In other words, if it's not in stock, the associate will not be able to order more of these.)  This is a display that you may be able to purchase if there are none in stock at that store.  Same caveat emptor for Open Box, above, though!

If you see an Open Box with a .96 price on it, it was not reviewed by a sales manager and was "auto-priced" by the system.  You will definitely be able to get money off this price.

If it ends in ".95", it is "Going Out of Program" (GOOP).  (In other words, the associate may be able to order from the main warehouse, but probably not.)

This covers 99 percent of the price tags for store merchandise, but does not include pricing for any music software (CDs, tapes, DVD, etc.) or major appliance sales like "10% off," etc.

Telephone Fun

Pick up any phone on the floor.  Dial 9 to get an outside line.  Long distance lines are blocked, but you can social engineer the 4- to 6-digit code from a floor manager if you say you need to call your wife before you buy that big screen TV.  "But it's long distance!" you'll exclaim.  The sales manager, not wanting to lose a big screen TV sale, will gladly dial your wife's phone number and, after waiting for the tone, dial in the long distance code.

Each store has its own long distance code, but I can't tell you the number of times I've been able to stand in one part of the store while no one is standing around watching.

  • 0  - Front counter.  They will see extension you're calling from.
  • 0  - PA system on floor and in warehouse.
  • 150  - PA system in warehouse only (wait for beep).
  • 5510  - First North American National Bank (FNANB): Circuit City credit card.
  • 5560  - Circuit City headquarters.
  • 5570  - FNANB Customer Service
  • 5580  - Help Desk.  Social engineer a sales manager's name.

The help desk is generally a little more understanding with sales managers because they have not gone through as much computer system training as the operations staff.  The store number (4-digits) prints on the receipt or you can get it from the web site.

If you tell the help desk that DPS is down, they will ask you if you're by the CC-130.  Say "yes."  Tell them that there are no lights on the CC-130 at all.

If you're not the adventurous type, you can just hit 50, go over the PA system, and say "DPS is down."  That'll get the Ops staff running toward the CC-130 and calling the help desk themselves!

A Little Computer System Glossary

DPS:  Distributed Processing System (the "computer system").

CC130:  Main board in the general office behind the counter.

Wedge:  The main board under the register into which everything (monitor, thermal printer, scanner, check reader, etc.) is plugged.

Want to call any Circuit City across the country?  Dial 1-800-475-9515 and, after the tone, dial 333 and the four-digit store number.

Want to call the Loss Prevention Department?  The number is 1-800-353-2257.  I'll leave it to your imagination the information you can tell them!



As a store technician for Circuit City (who has now outsourced our jobs to ADT, an IBM partner) I can confirm that the last of these 
statements is true. The main sales system, the CC-130 is a 68030 motorola 50MHz VersaDOS based system with 128MB ( yes 128 MB ) of 
RAM and is written in pascal. The Magellan system is completely different (dual xeon with 10 or so hard drives), is written in java 
and is developed by HP with windows 2k server OS. The MAJOR downfall to the magellan POS system is that is completely dependant on 
the CC-130 POS server in every way (sales, inventory lookup, employee and customer data, you name it) so if the creaky old CC-130 
hardware decides to let its smoke out (and beleive me it does happen more than you might think) the store is completely helpless and 
I get called out on site until it's fixed (3 or 4 A.M.) The stores have recently started receiving the new linux terminals and IBM 
has been on site installing the new linux server equipment in a few of my stores. I can only say one thing: It is GLORIOUS. The 
terminal equipment seems very sturdy, has nice eye candy, and it is under warranty for 1 year from IBM. meaning I don't get to touch 
it :-( Look for the new system after the holidays (Jan or Feb 2006 for most stores) because all the old veteran employees might have
a tough time learning a completely different sales system before the day after thanksgiving ;-).

P.S. - RPOS stands for Retek Point of Sale from what I have read.
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