NCIX going bankrupt

[Mr.HappySilp]

Seems like NCIX is going to bankrupt. Is on their fourms, RFD and even reddit. Any inside scope>

[whitev70r]

NOOOOOO ... please say it isn't so.

[Verdasco]

there isn't any 100% proof that they are bankrupt. Just speculation based on their ontario locations being closed.


Their customer service is non existent in the stores.
Their prices is off the roof compared to amazon / newegg


They need to close all the stores, bring back the old location where it was "show the receipt, pick up the item and leave"

and have sales regularly.



Hope they crash and burn, those employees never price match in store, those fucks

[bcrdukes]

If it's worth anything, in Ontario, the competition is tougher. Canada Computers is their major competitor, and their customer experience/service is FAR more superior than NCIX's.

Having said that, I am going to speculate that they failed on the customer service/experience part. They treat their customers like crap, and they do not have optimized processes and/or tools for their employees to serve customers better. Nevermind going to the store to buy something. You still have to go up to a dumb computer, order the damn item, and then line up and wait for your stuff to be ready. No thanks.

[aalex]

i used to work at their warehouse

they like to hire people for their busy season then fire them during probation period

Originally Posted by Verdasco

there isn't any 100% proof that they are bankrupt. Just speculation based on their ontario locations being closed.


Their customer service is non existent in the stores.
Their prices is off the roof compared to amazon / newegg


They need to close all the stores, bring back the old location where it was "show the receipt, pick up the item and leave"

and have sales regularly.



Hope they crash and burn, those employees never price match in store, those fucks

[Jmac]

Used to go to their Kingsway location all the time when I lived in Burnaby.

NCIX used to always have the best prices.

[SpeedStars]

I think with regards to computer tech items, nothing beats Memory Express imo

[6793026]

In tight situations, if the biggest collector served the legal documents, I'm sure bankruptcy would have been the case. For now, there's no proof they are going bankrupt.

Are they going thru a tough time, sure they are, esp. when there are 4 threads with ex employees voicing their concerns.

1) Shedding all real estate... DUH... happens all the time, which is why they closed Toronto. All the "retail" stores are more like pick up locations. Real estate is expensive = close down.
2) Customer Service non-existent, of course...any department with zero or huge revenue generating purposes = laid off.
Think about it. Average ~$60k per employee (salary & benefits) X 50 employees. That's $3 million dollars a year!!!! just for employees... (don't get me started on 3.5% raises per yr on yearly raises for inflation)

as to aalex's comment... errrrr, it's holiday season, like any other retail during Xmas, blakc friday time period at the malls... people get laid off after the rush is over... pretty common practice.... (target, amazon, Best buy, Nordstrom etc)

*not an employee or ex-employee of NCIX

[Manic!]

They shut down there Youtube channel that had over a million subs. Also they seem to be out of a ton of stuff on there website.

[lowside67]

The idea of closing stores down in the fall is nuts and is certainly a surefire sign of severe financial stress. December is typically the strongest retail month of the year by a massive margin (hence "black Friday" = the day historically retailers would become profitable for the year) so to struggle through all the quiet season and miss out on the peak holiday business means they have so little cash they can't even stay open.

-Mark

[Great68]

Something's definately fucked,
I was trying to order some stuff for work on our corporate account, and the response that I got back from our sales rep was that they were undergoing some "restructuring" and that unfortunately it would be 4+ weeks to see my order.

Thanked him for letting me know, but couldn't wait that long. Ordered the stuff from Best Buy, got it in 4 days.

Pretty sad.

[Euro7r]

I only buy from Memory Express now. Never liked Ncix service from recents years.

[twitchyzero]

i wish it was Anitec on Kingsway that survived, and NCIX that sealed its fate

i remember when NCIX weekly sales still meant something...even if they've always included MIR into their price lmao

[rsx10]

I have to agree with everyone. I waited in line for 15 mins wanting to pay for something I had picked off the shelf. Not bad if it wasn't for me being the only customer in the store. 4 sales reps stood there talking in Chinese, talking socially and when they decided to end their conversation, they gave me attitude. I asked them a question about an SSD and he said "I don't know, google it" Enough said.

Memory Express has great customer service and price match anything they have in stock. I would recommend them to anyone.

[CorneringArtist]

^Should have asked him to do his fucking job.

[threezero]

Originally Posted by CorneringArtist

^Should have asked him to do his fucking job.

There is no need because he will have no job soon

[Ch28]

There's no official source, as NCIX is a privately owned company, so their financials are not made public.

However, NCIX does business with many distributors in Canada (basically all of them), and account managers talk to each other, and it's become "common knowledge" that NCIX is severely in debt to the various distributors, dating back to this past summer (I believe June was when it really started to hit the fan). As a result, the distributors are no longer providing NCIX with new stock.

Evidence of this issue is fairly abundant, as NUMEROUS people here, on other forums, and even on NCIX's forums, twitter, facebook, etc have complained about ordering something that should be very easy for NCIX to obtain (eg - Core i7-7700K), and NCIX not communicating with the customer for weeks at a time, ignoring emails, not answering phonecalls, etc.. when the customer threatens a chargeback (which costs NCIX $25, on top of losing the sale), NCIX will contact the customer and claim that the order has been delayed because of a 'stock shortage', even though the customer could go to literally ANY other store and purchase it no problem.

Further evidence of NCIX's imminent demise (at least as a retail storefront operation) is the fact that they have gone through several rounds of layoffs over the past few months, reducing their staff from hundreds before the summer to, from what I can tell, a few staff per location today. They've also closed all of their stores outside of BC except for one in Ontario, and they've attempted to close several stores in BC (but were unable to get out of their leases, so they have kept them open thus far to function as clearance centres). They've also put up for sale their warehouse property.

Exact figures of how much debt NCIX is in, how long they've been in debt, etc, are going to be impossible to find out, because those details are of course confidential and only NCIX (and I guess NCIX's bank) knows exactly how deep they are. I've heard rumours of anything from $2m - $20m+.

[twitchyzero]

reason: below cost

[LP700-4]

I was at NCIX on Kingsway on monday and the place looked so sad. One staff sitting on their phone at the counter when we walked in and an otherwise empty store.

[6793026]

Originally Posted by Ch28

Exact figures of how much debt NCIX is in, how long they've been in debt, etc, are going to be impossible to find out, because those details are of course confidential and only NCIX (and I guess NCIX's bank) knows exactly how deep they are. I've heard rumours of anything from $2m - $20m+.

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

reason: below cost

When one company slips, they lose their purchasing power and it goes down from there. Even if their debts are paid off, the clients won't come back. Really sad. The rumors 2-20 Million is not even close...

The reason it's below cost because vendors provide MAJOR back ends to subsidize the front end. 11+ yrs ago, the biggest check my teammate gave to a local BC company was $400,000 (from 1 vendor).

[bobbinka]

They were good back when it was just the one location, but then it was all downhill after.
They were dead to me the moment MemoryExpress showed up.

If you search "How long until NCIX goes belly up? Bankruptcy imminent?" on reddit, there's an ex-employee sharing some info

[Vansterdam]

I heard memory express is owned by the same company or owners as ncix ?

Ncix went downhill for me when they moved their Aberdeen location and switched the retail stores on W Broadway

[Mr.HappySilp]

I also think customer purchasing decision. People still buy gaming PC but not as much as before. PS4, Xbox one, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo classic and of course there are cell phones games and ipads and tablets. Also people just don't care as much as building a custom PC anymore.

I still remember when I was picking up parts for my gaming PC at NCIX 5+ years ago I would see a lot of people lining up asking the sales questions and most of them are just looking for a regular PC that's good enough for general use. I guess back then Best Buy PC were still expensive and the quality of the big brand computer just suck. Over the years price for a regular PC have gone down and the quality of those big brand pre build computer isn't actually too bad. People have also been going to laptops and hybrids(laptops with touchscreen or you can disconnect the keyboard and turn it into a table think microsoft surface) more and more. For those purchase people would rather deal with a big store (IE Best Buy, Apple store because big box store seems to better when it comes to warranty). I know I won't be getting a desktop when the current one broke, I will just get a laptop, I hardly play games and I rather have the option to carry the laptop with me.

Also is their website. NCIX list too many specs. If you look at the ads from Best Buy is very simple and clean just list the basic specs. NCIX list way many details and it really confuse some people. They could just list the more important things and for a more technical customer they could askt he sales rep or list the details elsewhere in the ad.

For small upgrades (RAM, new SSD, new Video card etc etc) customers can easily go online and search for the lowest price and if your price isn't the lowest you aren't going to get that sale. Is so easy to pick the cheapest option and have it ship at no cost. That's one of the issue with NCIX. Their price isn't the cheapest, they charge for shipping, their customer service sucks. So why bother.

[Ferra]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

If it's worth anything, in Ontario, the competition is tougher. Canada Computers is their major competitor, and their customer experience/service is FAR more superior than NCIX's.

Having said that, I am going to speculate that they failed on the customer service/experience part. They treat their customers like crap, and they do not have optimized processes and/or tools for their employees to serve customers better. Nevermind going to the store to buy something. You still have to go up to a dumb computer, order the damn item, and then line up and wait for your stuff to be ready. No thanks.

Hell no

It is like comparing a shit and a turd, but canadacomputers definitely have worse customer service than NCIX from my experience. (i live in ON and buy from both regularly)

Their website is shitter and harder to navigate, prices tends to be higher than NCIX, and generally less items on sales and updates.

twice I placed online order for instore pickup from canadacomputers. (They are on my way home, but I do that to lock on a sale price when I dont' have time to go there before sales ends)
One time it took them 4 days to tell me my item is ready (even tho it is in-stock at the store), 2nd time it took them a week to tell me they have no stock at the store, and 3 weeks before they tell me they got the stock transferred from another store.

Last time I tried, they also refused to price match newegg. (They wanted to add shipping cost on, even tho newegg now offers free pickup here in toronto)

All the staffs are pretty apathetic. (Same could be said for most computers store tho)

TBH, I thought NCIX is doing better than canadacomputers here in terms of sales and popularity.

[bcrdukes]

I'm back and forth between Vancouver and Toronto, and the Canada Computers stores I go to have no issues. Most of my colleagues have had good experiences with CC. Just because they have a shittier website (in your opinion) doesn't mean people won't buy from them. At the very least, I can walk in, and walk up and down the aisles and find what I want. Not sure which store you're going to.