Circuit City

From its humble beginnings in 1949, when Samuel Wurtzel opened Ward’s – Richmond, Virginia’s first retail television store, to its current position as one of the largest consumer electronics chains in North America, Circuit City has always been committed to making consumers lives easier by providing them with quality, leading edge technology and solutions. Circuit City is one of the leading retailers of top quality home video electronics, offering an enormous selection from Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, LG, Syntax Olevia and many others. Circuit City also offers a wide selection of home and portable audio products, including headphones from Sennheiser, Ultimate Ears, JVC, Coby, Bose, Sony, Logitech, and Shure.

The website is well organized and set-up, but there are too many similar sounding items to do a general search. If you want to find a specific product, you really need to type in the brand and model number to avoid looking through many more selections. It took just two clicks to locate the Shure headphones that we were looking for. This proved to be consistent across all of the various categories and brands. The site offers thousands of products, so Circuit City deserves some recognition for its search feature, which locates products very quickly and most importantly, the one you are looking for, as long as you are specific in your query. We tried specific products using only the model name/number and while we did receive multiple entries, the correct product was the first product listing each time. Circuit City offers ‘free shipping’ on portable electronics and headphones over $24. Their 24/24 Pickup Guarantee is a great selling point, but proved to be irrelevant in our case, as none of the models we would have purchased were available in-store for pickup. The site allows you to track your purchase and shipment. When it comes to returns and refunds, Circuit City has a strict return policy, which requires a RA # (Return Authorization number) and it must be done within 10 days for portable audio and headphones. The customer is also responsible for all shipping and insurance charges, unless otherwise indicated. Defective items will be repaired or exchanged at their discretion for the same or the manufacturer’s equivalent model only. Circuit City does email out notices about discounts, rebate offers, and open box items, and does offer online sales coupons at select times such as holiday sales.

Our experience shopping online was generally positive. We did receive “free shipping” and the shipment came within two days. We were disappointed to discover that many popular, expensive headphones were out of stock. Circuit City seems to have ample stock of the inexpensive models, but never enough inventories of the better quality ones. Nevertheless, the online store is a safe, efficient, and worthwhile place to shop if you are looking for a great deal on premium headphones.