Goodbye - Border's Books & Music

[stypee]

I saw on the morning news that Border's Books & Music will be shutting ALL it's doors in September. They made an attempt on trying to get back on their feet by some kind of liquid asset thingy and I think selling the company.

Frankly I'm not surprised, they were always way over priced and they never had a very good selection of books, music or dvd. I think I was only impressed by their magazine section, they seemed to have some really hard to find film mags.

I feel bad for the 1400 employees that will be losing their jobs. Another tragedy is this messed up economy. Thanks Bush!

[Paul Kile]

In this case, I don't fully agree with your causality. The state of the economy is only a contributing factor to Border's demise. The root cause is Border's operation was LAME and couldn't hold a candle to Barnes and Noble for customer service.

Every time I would go into Borders I was amazed at the disorganized layout, the skimpy selections, and above all, the inattentiveness of the employees. It always took forever to attract their attention, and when I finally did, they acted like they were doing me a favor by interrupting their slack-jawed 20-something yammering to stoop to help an old Baby Boomer find his way to the aviation book section. And this wasn't limited to just one store, I had similar frustrations at stores in various places around the country.

So in some ways, a lousy economy every few years is good in that it winnows out the weaker players. So for the few employees who actually cared to do a good job at Borders (I never saw them, but they must be a few out there) I hope they find work. But for Border's Management who stood by and tolerated the overall mediocrity, good riddance!

[mkiker2089]

You can't judge a company by one store. My local Borders (yes I realize I'm comparing a book store to the book and music store) was great. They too are closing but they insist that the chain will survive. I have my doubts. I think the biggest problem was pricing. Borders and as far as I know Books-a-Million still see full retail as the price to charge where everyone else sets a much lower price actually based on how much they need to turn a profit.

Don't blame Bush solely for the economy. Obama's giving money away and increasing the debt are going to kill us. However we are straying.

[Andrew Forbes]

they acted like they were doing me a favor by interrupting their slack-jawed 20-something yammering to stoop to help an old Baby Boomer find his way to the aviation book section.

Replace "20-something" with "woman" and think about how that sentence reads. The employees who were a**holes happened to be in their twenties. The young don't hold a monopoly on bad service, just as old men don't make up the entire population of grumps with a fear of change.

[Andrew Forbes]

Obama's giving money away.

Can you blame him? The boss is away and he absolutely has to clear this entire inventory!

[stypee]

In this case, I don't fully agree with your causality. The state of the economy is only a contributing factor to Border's demise. The root cause is Border's operation was LAME and couldn't hold a candle to Barnes and Noble for customer service.

Every time I would go into Borders I was amazed at the disorganized layout, the skimpy selections, and above all, the inattentiveness of the employees. It always took forever to attract their attention, and when I finally did, they acted like they were doing me a favor by interrupting their slack-jawed 20-something yammering to stoop to help an old Baby Boomer find his way to the aviation book section. And this wasn't limited to just one store, I had similar frustrations at stores in various places around the country.

So in some ways, a lousy economy every few years is good in that it winnows out the weaker players. So for the few employees who actually cared to do a good job at Borders (I never saw them, but they must be a few out there) I hope they find work. But for Border's Management who stood by and tolerated the overall mediocrity, good riddance!

With all respect to you be an old dude, that was really douchey man, someone else mentioned you can't judge a store just because of a crappy experience in one. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that during your vast travels around the country you made frequent visits to Borders outlets and always got bad service. That's like blaming Ronald Mcdonald if you get a bad cheeseburger (insert 80's joke here), I think what you just carried the first bad experience over with you and it has since bothered you to just not like any of their outlets. Frankly, the mindless twenty year old's you speak of are getting paid shit and as someone who was a retail manager for quite a number of years and as equally underpaid, I understand their frusterations. Now I'm not personally attack my previous employees or even my own service as a matter of fact the stores I ran were always nominated number 1 in the district for customer service. My feeling is you really need to be more understanding of the people on the other end, it's going to be hell when they hit your age, they're not going to get the benefits you or I are entitled to, hell I may not even get them and I'm in my late thirties.

I mean no offense to you and I'm not slamming you on any level, it just bothers me when people blame a bad customer experience and slam the rest of that particular company for that instance. I can say from managing Blockbuster Video (and shortly after Kay-Bee Toys), all the bitching and moaning, all the threats and nonsense of the famous "never coming here again" remarks. Those people always ended up walking through the doors again shortly after and I've worked many a different store to stand by that fact.

On a personal level, I'm in social security hell right now, because of the millions of people who take advantage of the system, I have to pay for their crimes. I came close to dying this past October, I know have heart disease and have a very bad recovery. I'm in no shape to return to work and have a myriad of doctors and drugs I need to take to stay alive, literally. I'm sure as a baby boomer you understand the insanity of social security, my point is, instead of griping about a crappy customer service experience and insisting that it's not the economies fault for the place going under, why not take a look at what's really going on? I had to spend down a big check the GOVERNMENT had issued me in back disablty payments because I didn't qualify for Medicaid. I now get $20 more a month from SSD which takes me over the amount your allowed to earn to get on Medicaid... That's 827.00 a month, 575 goes to rent.. figure out the rest.

Now if you excuse me, I'll get off my pedestal now and have a good piss on the guy that couldn't figure out why the cash register was broken. What idiots we hire these days... (yeah, that was sarcastic)

[stypee]

The above post had been edited and revised, I don't understand why the "edit" function isn't allowing ONE edit to go through.

[mkiker2089]

Not to totally derail this but I was told that I couldn't get medicaid because I don't have children. A single white male can die in the street because where I live they won't offer assistance under any circumstances. I looked up medicaids website and technically they are correct. It says in several places that it's for "families". Now the term family could be construed in many ways (I'm sure it's not a legal term for that reason) however the people where I live interpret that to mean you have to have underage children in your custody.

[stypee]

Not to totally derail this but I was told that I couldn't get medicaid because I don't have children. A single white male can die in the street because where I live they won't offer assistance under any circumstances. I looked up medicaids website and technically they are correct. It says in several places that it's for "families". Now the term family could be construed in many ways (I'm sure it's not a legal term for that reason) however the people where I live interpret that to mean you have to have underage children in your custody.

I was told THE EXACT SAME THING! I am also a single white male who doesn't have children and the social worker had told me not even to bother filling out the paperwork. Last month when I found my apartment, that money I got from the government was nearly gone. I went to social services with everything I had and sat down with a different social worker. She was really patient and spent over an hour with me, I couldn't believe how helpful she was.

Aside from the other stuff she helped me with, I "semi" have Medicaid now.. Here's how it works as far as I understand:

My situation is a little more complicated, when I was working I was buying into medicare (i had been on disablity and medicare/medicaid for a number of years) as an option, which I did. After I lost my job, I continued to buy into to Medicare however they only pay 80% of the medical bills, you need to get a second type of insurance to help with the rest. After MONTHS of confusion, phone calls and than MONTHS of having to sit on it, I finally got somewhere, again, it gets confusing.

There was a specific amount of money I had to owe in medical bills from my heart surgery, they also included my doctor visits and such here in NC. I had to find every hospital bill I could muster up, I've literally gotten to the point where I just throw them away and I actualyl regretted throwing some of them away.

Luckily I just toss my bills in the back of my car, I call it "the place where bills go to die", I kept running back and fourth to the office to my car, than everywhere else to get as many bills as possible. Some how, they managed to add enough money together, but now I had to WAIT..

Here's where it just gets all weird and confusing:

They backtracked medicaid, they will pay my medical expenses from January of this year until July 31st of this month, after that, I will NO LONGER HAVE MEDICAID. I had asked if I could appeal and the woman said "they followed all the rules and according to blah,blah, blah",- I kept trying to get some kind of hint how I could try to work this out, people out here are so dam by the books it gets to the point where its downright obnoxious.

I said "look, I understand you really can't tell me anything but please, be honest with me, just give me an idea of what I can do"

She had explained that it didn't look like my medical expenses would add up to as much as they did since I got out of the hospital and Medicaid wouldn't help pay the other 20 percent, she also said there was some other thing with medicare where the govenrment would pay for my part A or B but it somehow affect medicaid because I'd be getting more money in SSD every month. Again, more stupid crap.

I again said "look, just be honest, do you think its even worth filing an appeal"

She said, without saying it "Not to bother"

So here's what I have to do which is pretty nutty...

I start Cardiac Rehab tomorrow (I explained to the medicaid lady my bills were going to get WORSE the next few months), this is going to be 38 sessions, 3 days a week. I also have one doctor I have to see once a week, my cardiologist at least once a month or every other month, a neurologist, plus blood work every six weeks and a series of tests that would take up this entire message board, I probalby left other stuff out.

So I'm not going to make any payments on any of the 20 percent of bills I'm going to get, I need to bury myself more in debt which sounds insane and absurd but frankly, I couldn't pay a dam bill anyway.

I think by October I would probably have enough debt to pick up the phone and call social services to try to get back on Medicaid.... again. I was told I didn't have to go through the whole insane process, i just had to make a phone call, i don't know what exactly that means but thats what I'm going to do.

I was also told by the social worker that when I was told "because your a single white male without a kid or pregnant girlfirined they wont help you", this was discrimination and they have to allow you to do whatever is possible to help.

It really feels like you are never going to get anywhere and it takes a very long time, you have to fight like hell. I even got extra help paying my insane prescription drug costs, just from batteling the system, I can assure you, to an extent, you will get some help. it's a frusterating pain in the ass but some things do work out.

Feel free to send me a P/M if I can be of any assistance to you, believe me, I understand your frusterations.

[Steve T Power]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

[stypee]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

This bother's me Steve, I thought it was supposed to me you and I fighting the man.

You sicken me!

[Steve T Power]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

This bother's me Steve, I thought it was supposed to me you and I fighting the man.

You sicken me!

I sicken myself.

[Bryan Pope]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

This bother's me Steve, I thought it was supposed to me you and I fighting the man.

You sicken me!

I sicken myself.

Steve, our local Hastings Books & Video is blessed to have at least a few employees who are obviously as passonate about movies as you are, and they are FANTASTIC. It's a pleasure patronizing their store, and I tip my hat to them (and to you). But that's for my movie needs.

As for books, it took me nearly 38 years to realize what a wonderful resource a local library is (I'm a slow learner, what can I say?). I haven't darkened the doorstep of a bookstore in ages.

[Steve T Power]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

This bother's me Steve, I thought it was supposed to me you and I fighting the man.

You sicken me!

I sicken myself.

Steve, our local Hastings Books & Video is blessed to have at least a few employees who are obviously as passonate about movies as you are, and they are FANTASTIC. It's a pleasure patronizing their store, and I tip my hat to them (and to you). But that's for my movie needs.

As for books, it took me nearly 38 years to realize what a wonderful resource a local library is (I'm a slow learner, what can I say?). I haven't darkened the doorstep of a bookstore in ages.

Oh our customers love us. I'm at work on a Friday afternoon- I started at noon when I unlocked the door, and I won't leave until close at 11pm, but I wouldn't have it any other way - Friday nights are GREAT fun. I tell everyone we hire - Don't put on that phony smile or corporate attitude, be "Friendly" not polite, be honest, and never dismiss anyone unless they dismiss you first. It's worked pretty well for us in a shrinking market, and now that our chief competition is gone, things have been downright crazy

[mkiker2089]

I got the email this morning. All Borders will be closing. It's official. Bookstore, online, etc.. Border in total is liquidating. My local store has already liquidated and had a scheduled time to close. Since the new book store is in a different spot I wonder if they'll stay open a few more months to help clear out the warehouse?

[stypee]

I used to hate walking into a Jumbo Video store because the customer service was so shitty... now I'm invested in one and run the damn thing... go figure...

This bother's me Steve, I thought it was supposed to me you and I fighting the man.

You sicken me!

I sicken myself.

Steve, our local Hastings Books & Video is blessed to have at least a few employees who are obviously as passonate about movies as you are, and they are FANTASTIC. It's a pleasure patronizing their store, and I tip my hat to them (and to you). But that's for my movie needs.

As for books, it took me nearly 38 years to realize what a wonderful resource a local library is (I'm a slow learner, what can I say?). I haven't darkened the doorstep of a bookstore in ages.

Oh our customers love us. I'm at work on a Friday afternoon- I started at noon when I unlocked the door, and I won't leave until close at 11pm, but I wouldn't have it any other way - Friday nights are GREAT fun. I tell everyone we hire - Don't put on that phony smile or corporate attitude, be "Friendly" not polite, be honest, and never dismiss anyone unless they dismiss you first. It's worked pretty well for us in a shrinking market, and now that our chief competition is gone, things have been downright crazy

Is their porn Steve, do your stores carry porn? Canadian porn is hot.... eh?