<former CCity employee for 2 years>
I had a surprisingly pleasant encounter with them.
June 2006: Open Box 32" Tube TV - $199.99
We were already losing money on it, so to make our CA (the extended warranty) numbers look good, my boss told me that if I bought the $50 3-year warranty, he'd knock the price down to $149.99.
Got it home, used it for about a year. It started having problems, but since my brother was using it, and I wasn't home much, we never got around to using the warranty.
Finally, in December, the guy came out to fix it. He tried a few things, which didn't work.
Then, in January, he came out again, this time he ordered a part and said he'd be back in 2 weeks or so, to fix it for good.
Then the store went out of business, and the number was disconnected for awhile.
I finally called them again last week. The CityAdvantage warranties are backed up through an outside company, not through Circuit itself. So they're still good whether or not Circuit is bankrupt.
The people said they couldn't come and fix it, so instead offered a buyout - they'd refund the full purchase price of $149.99 (not the warranty, though)
So now I'm awaiting my $149.99 check
I have a bunch of CCity stuff I can drop on ebay - I have one or two of those DPS cards like in the auction (mine are the older style from like 2-3 years ago, yellowish orange instead of black), three red polo shirts, an authentic warehouse safety harness, a small commemorative plaque, and a keychain.
I worked with a lot of good people - many of whom went all out, working their hardest every day. Most of them either moved up the corporate ladder, or to greener pastures - school, non-retail work, etc. In general, the ones who stayed there for years were the ones with no educations, who kept the entry-level positions because it meant they could slack off and not get busted on it.
I knew a saleswoman who was shorter than the aisles. We had a cordless phone to take calls to the department, and she would pocket it, and keep walking around the aisles while chatting with her friends and her husband. She was hard to find, for customers and for managers.
Some of the managers were good, but a lot were biased, treating the employees they were friends with better than everyone else. I used to always get stuck working warehouse shifts alone, when most of the other people were assigned in pairs. When I asked about it, the manager said that it saves the company money. I worked harder than they did, so I could do the same amount of work as both of them combined, while only getting paid as much as one of them. I used to do an exhausting 13-hour shift every single Sunday. In at 8am, did pricetags and stocked product until 10am, then ran the warehouse on my own until it closed at 8pm, then clean up until 9pm. Sunday afternoon was always the busiest time, and I would be working nonstop. Occasionally, they would schedule someone to come in at 5pm to help close (which was dumb, because 12-5 was the busiest time, and that was when I could have used some help), and if I was really lucky, it would be this older dude who worked for Lockheed Martin during the week and did Circuit on nights and weekends for extra money, and sometimes he'd be like "You look terrible dude, go home and I'll cover for you", after seeing me with my messed up hair, soaked in sweat, and covered with "warehouse dust", because there wasn't air conditioning in the warehouse, and it was 90+ degrees in the summer.
On the plus side, I made a fortune (at least it seemed like it, I was doing 30+ hours a week at Circuit during high school, and making a few bucks an hour more than my friends), and the warehouse really improved my upper body strength
