Crazy Eddie: The popular electronics chain that scammed America

https://thehustle.co/the-popular-electronics-chain-that-scammed-america/

by yarapavan • 4 years ago

285 170 4 years ago

If you just want to know, it's Crazy Eddie.

subpixel3• 4 years ago

The Crazy Eddie story is most interesting to me as a window into the highly insular and particularly successful Syrian Jewish diaspora.

the-dude6• 4 years ago

Guess who was of Syrian descent as well?

marklar423• 4 years ago

Who?

meatsauce• 4 years ago

My parents bought my first computer (Commodore 128 with printer) from a store in Queens. That singular act got me started down the road of programming and to some degree engineering.

I also believe they purchased an Apple IIe from them far earlier but I can't be certain.

I do remember when the PSU for the C128 failed, they gave us a new one no charge.

Oh the memories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml6S2yiuSWE

mwexler• 4 years ago

It's fun to see this story get rediscovered every 3-5 years. Electronics stores, like car dealerships, appeared to need showboating to stand out, and that appears to be the starter-drug for fraud in a surprising number of cases.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

mbg7212• 4 years ago

Who could possibly have guessed that a guy named "Crazy Eddie" might not be entirely honest??

skeeter2020• 4 years ago

surprised he didn't claim insanity; seems like a slam dunk.

jstarfish• 4 years ago

I can appreciate self-disclosure. With him identifying as such, you're either going to get an insane deal or shanked, and should not be surprised by either outcome.

"Honest Eddie," on the other hand-- stay away from that guy.

marginalia_nu3• 4 years ago

It's weird how this pattern repeats itself. Madman Muntz[1], who Crazy Eddie emulated, is an endlessly fascinating character as well. Less of a criminal, but still...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_Muntz

Inhibit• 4 years ago

Although I'd argue Muntz, becoming a verb, probably achieved what Crazy Eddie claimed to have done.

pmoriarty• 4 years ago

Also see this documentary on Muntz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deFlB2G0mH8

RicoElectrico• 4 years ago

Talk about showboating... there's one Polish electronics outlet that always aims for the most annoying advertisements and so is widely hated for that.

https://bezprawnik.pl/czy-media-expert-celowo-denerowal-ewel...

dehrmann• 4 years ago

Electronics stores, like car dealerships, appeared to need showboating to stand out

Reminds me of the themed Fry's Electronics stores.

irowe• 4 years ago

The space-station themed Fry’s store near Houston, TX recently closed. I only ever visited it in the twilight years where there was so little inventory in such a large footprint that it seemed like a front for something. The architecture and decor was definitely imaginative.

paulpauper• 4 years ago

The enduring legacy of Crazy Eddie is people writing articles about it on a recurring basis

lqet• 4 years ago

Strangely, Crazy Eddie’s fraudulent history gave it an advantage. To provide the illusion of quickly increasing profits ahead of the IPO, the Antars simply reduced the amount of cash they were skimming.

WrtCdEvrydy• 4 years ago

There was someone like this as well... a man who had a bookstore and invested all of their profit into expansion so when expansion was scaled back, they could easily report massive profits.

alephnan2• 4 years ago

Are you suggesting it is the Prime customers or the investors who are being scammed ?

I don’t think it’s fair to compare a growth company to this:

There was just one major problem... Crazy Eddie had been lying about its numbers since its inception

sleepdreamy• 4 years ago

Amazon is notorious for aggressively re-investing their profits which is why they're as massive as they are. They are constantly trying 30 different things at once.

"You must spend money to make it", this adage is true since the very inception of monetary value.

Not sure this is a great comparison.

throwawaycities3• 4 years ago

I heard about this, apparently the owner also devised a scheme that paid his employees so poorly he was able to get the federal government to subsidize his workers food using programs originally designed for the unemployed and disabled persons. To perfect his fraud he expanded his book store to include groceries so that he could profit on the government subsidies directly by having his employees buy their food from him.

kube-system• 4 years ago

With the slight difference that “investment activities” is a line on a cash flow statement, and “embezzlement activities” usually is not.

gmiller123456• 4 years ago

That's not really at all like the scam Crazy Eddie was doing. Reinvesting is perfectly legal, and so common any investor knows to look at revenue (and many other things), not just profits. In fact, I'd bet most investors would prefer profits be reinvested rather than paid out to investors, as the increase in the share price usually dwarfs the payout.

Mikeb85• 4 years ago

Except expanding the business itself is a perfectly valid way to use the business' profits. Amazon used 100% legal accounting measures.

akeck• 4 years ago

The full saga: https://whitecollarfraud.com/crazy-eddie/crazy-eddie-saga-ta...

alephnan2• 4 years ago

Crazy Eddie stores stayed open on holidays and Sundays, at a time when many retailers still followed a Chick-Fil-A schedule.

Wait. Retailers weren’t always open on Sunday?

Schiendelman• 4 years ago

Costco Business Center isn’t open on Sunday! I nearly found out the hard way yesterday.

onionisafruit• 4 years ago

From my memory opening on Sundays slowly became the norm through the late 80s and early 90s in Texas.

daniel-cussen3• 4 years ago

Yeah it's tied to the rise of rent and the fall of wages.

the-dude6• 4 years ago

In The Netherlands, opening times were strictly regulated by law up to 1984 : no openings on Sunday, weekdays not later than 18:00 and Saturday no later than 17:00.

This scheme was common up till the mid nineties. Since then it has been relaxed, but it is still regulated.

One of the reasons listed for the regulation is the protection of 'Mom & Pop' stores.

zozbot2342• 4 years ago

One of the reasons listed for the regulation is the protection of 'Mom & Pop' stores.

A silly motivation. Smaller-scale businesses on the "convenience store" model are more likely to provide extended opening hours than any large store operation. That's as close to "Mom & Pop" as it gets.

wongarsu• 4 years ago

Same thing in Germany. All shops are closed on Sundays and bank holidays, and while opening times on weekdays have been deregulated in most states, some - like Bavaria - still enforce opening times of no more than 6:00 to 20:00 or 6:00 to 22:00.

I'm generally a fan of longer opening times, but having a day where everyone but entertainment and hospitality has free time simultaneously seems very healthy for both families and society at large.

macintux• 4 years ago

When I was young, the only places open on Sundays were grocery stores and gas stations.

mleo• 4 years ago

We had one KMart open on Sundays. If we needed something on Sunday, that was the only place to go.

dljsjr2• 4 years ago

In the US a lot of places used to have so-called "Blue Laws" that restricted what you were allowed to do on a Sunday. Some places still have reduced versions that apply specifically to vices; e.g. where I live in FL, alcohol sales are restricted on Sundays to certain times.

It used to be heavily regulated in Canada (or at least Manitoba) until very recently as well, like some time in the last 20 years or so. I remember when Wal-Mart first entered Canada, they had a really hard time in some places because labor laws and blue laws prevented them from being open 24/7.

jeromegv• 4 years ago

Formerly very catholic Quebec still has one of those crazy laws.

During certain hours (such as, past 8PM on weekends), groceries are only allowed 4 employees. Which is almost impossible in those very large groceries. For many groceries, they just assume this is part of doing business, they would rather pay the fine than angering customers with long lines.

https://www.economie.gouv.qc.ca/bibliotheques/conformite/ouv...

dylan6042• 4 years ago

In the US a lot of places used to have so-called "Blue Laws"

Used to? Hell, in Texas, you cannot buy alcohol until after noon on Sundays. Still. Today, er, yesterday, but you get the point.

paul_f• 4 years ago

In New York, until 2006, liquor stores were closed on Sundays. Was quite common across the US

ascagnel_2• 4 years ago

In the US a lot of places used to have so-called "Blue Laws" that restricted what you were allowed to do on a Sunday. Some places still have reduced versions that apply specifically to vices; e.g. where I live in FL, alcohol sales are restricted on Sundays to certain times.

Blue laws around vices (specifically around the sale of alcohol) are still commonplace in the US.

However, Bergen County, NJ, still has the rare Sunday blue law that applies to everyday consumer goods -- you can purchase food and medicine on Sunday (and even alcohol after noon, per a state-wide vice blue law), but everything else is prohibited. If you visit a big-box store like a Costco or Walmart that sells both food and goods, large swaths of the store will be closed down on Sunday.

https://www.wnyc.org/story/assessing-bergen-countys-blue-law...

brimble• 4 years ago

No. In the distant past of the 1990s and earlier, lots of stuff was closed on Sundays. Get this: many gas stations used to close at night. Lots of grocery stores used to be closed by 9 or so on a week night, if they were even open that late, and earlier on the weekend. Even Wal Mart closed fairly early most days (IIRC they started rolling out the 24/7 thing to many stores—though I think still not all, even today—a while after they introduced the "super center")

actionfromafar• 4 years ago

Quel surprise... how could Walmart have known about Canadian laws beforehand. :-D

bsagdiyev• 4 years ago

Not all stores are 24 hours, moved to North Carolina and the Wal-Mart by us closes at 11pm I believe. That's weird to me since it seemed like all of them in California were 24 hours.

mbg7212• 4 years ago

Grocery stores often weren't, as recently as the 90s, at least in New England.

ricktdotorg• 4 years ago

shops in the UK are STILL restricted to six hours of trading on sundays, the law was last changed in 1994[1] and the number of hours that a shop may open on a sunday is determined by the shop's size.

there are some exemptions such as airport shops, petrol or motorway service stations, etc.

the main reason there are still legal restrictions on sunday trading are advocacy groups such as "Lord's Day Observance Society" and the "Keep Sunday Special" campaign.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Trading_Act_1994

Turing_Machine• 4 years ago

Some of the New York camera stores are closed on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to this day. I think there's even one or two that actually disable ordering from their web site on that day.

A state I lived in as a child allowed grocery stores, restaurants, and pharmacies to be open on Sunday, but not much else. Restaurants were also allowed to sell alcohol on Sunday, while liquor stores weren't. A local restaurant took advantage of this double loophole and put in a drive-through booze window that they only opened on Sunday.

52-6F-622• 4 years ago

People are acting like this is a relic of the past, and I'm surprised you're surprised. I live in a small-medium-sized Canadian town at the edge of the GTHA (not the hub of economic activity, but not exactly the boonies) and many shops are still closed on Sundays. To the extreme even—many only open for short hours (4-8) during the weekdays and a half-day Saturday. It's a relatively quiet place. We've wondered how some can stay in business. Given the area, our guess is wealthy families backing them. I don't think massive profit is their primary motivator, just involvement in the community. And social influence, I'm sure.

pythonaut_16• 4 years ago

Consider that for a lot of shops and restaurants demand might be inelastic over the course of the week. If everyone in town is closed on Sunday and consumers don't have convenient access to other options it's likely that demand will simply shift to other days, thus being closed on Sunday would reduce operating costs without significantly affecting revenues.

This is arguably a big factor for both Chick-fil-a and liquor stores that are prevented state-wide from opening on Sundays (in the US)

nunez3• 4 years ago

Yup. Can't buy electronics and clothes on Sundays in NJ b/c of Blue Laws. Garden State Plaza, one of the largest malls in NJ, is still closed on Sundays because of this.

ascagnel_2• 4 years ago

When I last lived in the area (pre-pandemic), Garden State Plaza itself would be open on Sundays (the mall has a bunch of restaurants and a movie theater), but most shops would be closed. And it extended beyond electronics and clothing -- most consumer goods would be unavailable on Sunday, and there was always a puzzling list of exceptions (for example, cosmetics could be sold, but paper notebooks could not).

jrockway• 4 years ago

Can you get Amazon same-day delivery there, or is that also restricted?

jedberg• 4 years ago

In the 90s in Manhattan, almost everything was closed on Sunday until the evening. When I asked our hotel receptionist about it, she said, "It's so everyone has enough time to read the New York Times Sunday Edition". I'd like think that's apocryphal but as a teen at the time I believed it.

It stood out to me because in California most everything was open on Sundays. So it seemed to be more of an East Coast thing.

astura2• 4 years ago

For many, many years they were prohibited from being open on Sundays due to so-called "blue laws" which were ubiquitous, at least where I live on the East Coast. They started to be repealed in the 1970s for general retail and the 2000s for alcohol. In some locations (a couple towns in New Jersey IIRC) blue laws are still on the books and stores are closed on Sundays.

When stores first started opening on Sundays it was usually for only limited hours. I remember everything shutting down around 4-5pm on Sundays when I was a kid. That's not really the case anymore. When I was a teenager in the late 90s I was paid $1 more an hour on Sundays.

This was published in the NY Times in 1986

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/nyregion/sunday-shopping-...

Similar changes are being felt throughout the region and indeed in most parts of the nation. Like New York, many other states in recent years have struck down legal restrictions that prohibited the sale of most goods on Sundays. The curbs, called blue laws, date from colonial New England, with the observance of the Sabbath being their main purpose.

mdorazio• 4 years ago

What's interesting to me is that he started with a successful business model that really did change the industry for the better in a few ways (better hours, better customer service, etc.). The greed and sociopathy turned that into fraud.

pjc502• 4 years ago

“We arrogantly committed our crimes simply because we could and we had no empathy whatsoever for our victims,” Sam E. Antar later wrote

Surprising moment of honesty there.

The fraud is a distinctly pre-21st century one, relying as it does on handling large amounts of cash while operating parallel books. Then pivoting to stock fraud to take in a bigger pie from investors.

jefftk• 4 years ago

Is it that surprising, given that he was testifying against his estranged son in exchange for leniency?

scrozier• 4 years ago

I was struck by the same line. No real reason to add the part about "no empathy." And it seems like something very close to empathy to understand that one had no empathy....

mbreese• 4 years ago

They probably had no empathy at the time, but after years of reflection and a criminal plea, finding empathy (or something very close to it) is possible.

cannonpalms• 4 years ago

At the time of that statement being written, he had taken a plea deal in exchange for testifying against his son.

mritchie712• 4 years ago

It was likely written for him and he agreed to sign or say it

rsynnott4• 4 years ago

The fraud is a distinctly pre-21st century one, relying as it does on handling large amounts of cash while operating parallel books. Then pivoting to stock fraud to take in a bigger pie from investors.

I mean, I'm not sure that either of these have exactly gone out of fashion.

lotsofpulp2• 4 years ago

It is much harder with electronic payment systems forcing accurate accounting.

pjc502• 4 years ago

These days you have a lot more EPOS systems and a vast majority of cashless transactions, especially for high value goods.

fuzzfactor2• 4 years ago

handling large amounts of cash while operating parallel books. Then pivoting to stock fraud to take in a bigger pie from investors.

They were pretty advanced at this in the 19th century already.

fuzzfactor2• 4 years ago

Moments of honesty are always rare when predatory activity is the prevailing attitude.

Sooner or later you end up with an Enron, Madoff, or even a Theranos.

jhallenworld• 4 years ago

It's Christmas in August!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmF2lCXV8lQ

I remember the bait and switch was big with these stores. The stuff they advertised was not in stock, but they tried to sell you what they did have.

I'm surprised they didn't discover what Sir Alan Sugar had: that you could make more money on house branded stuff made in Hong Kong.

quercusa• 4 years ago

The NYC camera stores were famous for this: "That Nikon lens is out of stock but we've got a Zeus lens for the same price and it's actually a better lens".

technofiend• 4 years ago

This was also lampooned in Adam Sandler's movie Zohan, with electronic store employees proclaiming everything had "Sony guts!".

CSactuary• 4 years ago

Posted on slashdot 13 hours before this…

mechanical_bear• 4 years ago

Is there a point to that comment? Many of us don’t follow slashdot.

seattle_spring2• 4 years ago

Good thing it was posted here then, otherwise I never would have seen it.

I've never, ever understood people pointing out "reposts" like it's some kind of shameful dirty act.

ipaddr• 4 years ago

Shameful? No, informative. I haven't checked out slashdot for awhile it is good to know I'm not missing anything.

TomVDB• 4 years ago

Slashdot still exists?

nunez3• 4 years ago

lol sure does, though they're usually a few days behind

carrja99• 4 years ago

Not gonna lie... thought this was going to be about Radio Shack's rebranding as a crypto scheme.

Guess that will be an article for next year.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

This is a good story to compare and contrast with the 2008 subprime fraud cases, for example 'Crazy Lloyd Blankfein' of Goldman Sachs.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-open-criminal-probe-of-gol...

"Goldman Sachs to Pay Record $550 Million to Settle SEC Charges Related to Subprime Mortgage CDO, CBS 2010"

The amount of fraud committed was far greater than that, and there were no criminal charges involving jail time for any of the culprits. Kind of like doing armed robbery at a bank, getting away with $100K, then being fined $50k for the crime with no jail time. A profitable business model in other words.

johnebgd• 4 years ago

Banksters really got away with a lot in the States.

Iceland at least held theirs accountable.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iceland-has-jailed-26-b...

okboomer9• 4 years ago

Never hear anyone suggesting we start charging people who lied on their loan applications even though it was rampant.

People frequently would say they were going to make $X/yr where that number came from the amount of money they expected the home to go up, not actual income on a W2. Banks were selling the loans so they often didn't care to get real documentation of income either.

lupire• 4 years ago

were going to make

That's a documented risk the lender knew about and encouraged.

not2b3• 4 years ago

I've often seen this take, but what it misses is that at the height of the liar loan boom, those loan applications with the lies were often filled in by the loan originator, knowing it was a lie, and they would then sell that loan off as soon as it was issued. The borrower often didn't even know what was on the form.

They thought they could get away with it because they believed real estate could only go up, so if the borrower defaulted the lender could get the house and still make money.

rconti• 4 years ago

You're not wrong, but I always wonder why this is a reply when suggesting we charge and prosecute the bankers. To create an equivalency? To change the subject? Why?

heavenlyblue• 4 years ago

Never hear anyone suggesting we start charging people who lied on their loan applications even though it was rampant.

Loan industry operates on “victim blaming” philosophy. If you give money to someone who could not afford the loan you are on the hook. That’s reasonable.

ryanmarsh• 4 years ago

It's because these loans usually don't make it through underwriting. Most of the time they don't even make it past the originators desk. Banks have no incentive to prosecute people who "forget" to mention there's a lien on their house. Also, who is to prosecute in cases where documentation of income isn't required? For instance, if I say I make $200k/yr because my boss told me I'd make that much in this new sales job am I lying if it turns out I won't make that much and documentation wasn't required?

People have such a school-house view of how the world works.

jkaptur• 4 years ago

This is the context of that story, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs_controversies#20...

I think one important difference is that the story in the OP is fraud directly against individual retail investors (and the government, to be fair), whereas the Goldman story is a conflict between two hedge funds and an investment bank.

That seems important for the subtext of what you're saying.

rdiddly• 4 years ago

New York by 1987 seemed to have a jam-packed little hole in the wall electronics store in every block. Suddenly now I wonder if they were jumping on the Crazy Eddie bandwagon.

bitwize• 4 years ago

My dad bought me my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, from Crazy Eddie's when I was 5. When people ask me how I got started programming, I tell them the story of the VIC-20 from Crazy Eddie's, often having to explain what Crazy Eddie's was if the questioner is a millennial or younger. The chain and especially the commercials were part of the cultural landscape especially in the northeast, and were even parodied in television and movies.

CPLX• 4 years ago

The decision to do an IPO for a company that was literally not paying payroll taxes and keeping profits in suitcases just has to go down as one of the worst criminal decisions in recorded history.

Like without the IPO I would suspect they could have gone on for many many years basically skimming and scamming the government, maybe with some eventual consequences and fines but most likely being able to pay their way out of it.

toss1• 4 years ago

>But Zinn immediately discovered $45m of listed inventory was missing.

Living in Manhattan in 1983, when the cable installers came to hookup service, they offered us brand new TVs at about half the price of Crazy Eddie's stores - from what little I could find out, it seems they'd been recruited by Eddie's warehouse workers to push fell-off-the-truck / out-the-backdoor sales of Eddie's inventory.

I'd bet that there were a lot of the appointments that bit on that offer. I was not surprised to see Eddie's rapidly declining in the following year. You just can't survive with truckloads of your inventory going missing every day...

And reading about how he paid employees 'off the books', no surprise they were also freelancing off the poorly controlled inventory flow.

fishtacos• 4 years ago

Surprised to see Systemax/TigerDirect and the Fiorentino brothers, who were convicted of embezzlement, security fraud and tax evasion, wasn't mentioned. Perhaps because they didn't outright scam customers. (although I do think they with run-by-night 0-support AV crapware we bundled with everything we could as a value-added service, or pointless "optimization" services that did absolutely nothing).

Don't have much to add here beyond the fact that I worked there in the 2012-2013 strech and a little beyond. Run about as spartan as could be, no LP but millions of dollars worth of equipment that were there ripe for theft and fraud with nearly zero oversight. (fraud was rampant in the store - can honestly say I never engaged, but I was offered the opportunity multiple times).

par• 4 years ago

TigerDirect! That really takes me back. I used to love skimming their catalogs.

smm11• 4 years ago

The 80s have not left us, to this day.

seattle_spring2• 4 years ago

Reminds me of Dell Schanze and Totally Awesome Computers [1] in Utah.

[1] https://www.ksl.com/article/260958/a-look-at-super-dell-scha...

rsynnott4• 4 years ago

Hrm. So is Crazy Eddie in "The Mote in God's Eye" a reference to this, or are they both a reference to some prior thing?

Metacelsus• 4 years ago

I was wondering about this too.

rsynnott4• 4 years ago

Actually, I think there almost must be an earlier common origin. The chain started in 1971 in New York. The book was published in 1974, so probably written in 1973 if not earlier. Neither Niven nor Pournelle lived in New York or anywhere near New York, so it's unlikely to be inspired by the store (unless it became so instantly culturally relevant that everyone knew about it within a year or so, which seems unlikely)...

I mean, maybe it's coincidence and they both just came up with the same name, but that also doesn't seem likely.

janandonly• 4 years ago

I never knew that the role of “Crazy Eddie” in the series The First Wave [1] was in fact based on a electronics chainstore…

[1]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160277/

marginalia_nu3• 4 years ago

Oh man, I loved that show. Late 1990s Canadian sci-fi is just the perfect blend of cheesy and interesting.

erichurkman• 4 years ago

So was Crazy Earnie's Emporium [0] from Brave Little Toaster!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glJgOtyM8k

frankfrankfrank2• 4 years ago

It's kind of interesting how every single time that some kind of fraud damages the system, not only is there no effort to fix or revert back to an undamaged version, but the damage is simply allowed to grow and fester as copy-cat fraudster corporate types latch onto the barrier that was breached.

It's literally every single time. Internet "bubble", housing "bubble", "Affordable Care Act" fraud, and the mountain of other frauds committed before and since; including all the various "recovery act" type of Government fraud where the same class of people who commit the fraud and cause the damage, are then the primary beneficiaries being rewarded with billions, approaching trillions now. And that's without even touching on the murderous fraud of the type like the deliberate fraud of the Iraq war.

Just look at the common complaints today regarding work-life, wages, and even supposed staff shortages (the claims of which themselves are fraudulent); they all are directly linked to things like this guy knocking yet another section of the wall out through Sunday workdays that was then never reverted/rolled-back even after the fraud was revealed. Is Chick-fil-A really just a fluke in how efficient and happy it's employees are in spite of the fact that they shut down on Sundays? I sure don't ever think so.

at-fates-hands2• 4 years ago

> It's kind of interesting how every single time that some kind of fraud damages the system, not only is there no effort to fix or revert back to an undamaged version

Enron

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002

The bill was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, and WorldCom. These scandals cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of affected companies collapsed, and shook public confidence in the US securities markets.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal#Sarbanes-Oxley_A...

frankfrankfrank2• 4 years ago

Sorry to break it to you. SOX has effectively been neutered, defanged, and amputated into little more than a male work type of grift to enrich people itself.

bhartzer• 4 years ago

I remember Crazy Eddie's very well. I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I still have the portable Sony Discman I got there for $100. I mowed a lot of lawns in order to save up for that Sony Discman from Crazy Eddie's.

fortran77• 4 years ago

Their former CFO has an active twitter account and is fun to follow.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 4 years ago

"If it seems odd that a purveyor of VCRs and stereos could make investors swoon, remember that this was the 1980s, and people were getting pumped about cellular phones that were roughly the size of microwaves."

That is not how I remember it. To insinuate VCRs and stereos should not have been sought after in the 1980's is silly. Most people had no interest in a cellular phone. They wanted TVs. The author's comment begs the question, "Was Mark Dent in NYC buying electronics in the 1980s."

Crazy Eddie defrauded investors but generally, as I remember it, they were honest toward their customers. To be trutthful, I was not much of a Crazy Eddie customer. I only bought from them a few times. I chose to buy from their competitors, other electronics dealers in NYC with "low, low" prices and price guarantees. Like Crazy Eddie, these shops focused on volume.

Anyone remember places like 6th Ave electronics. Prices were published, in their newspaper ads. In theory one could take one of these ads to Crazy Eddie if that was one's preference for where to shop. Apparently 6th Ave imploded even faster than Crazy Eddie. There is a Wikipedia page devoted to the subject.^1

To some perhaps these places felt like they were being run by "hustlers". As a customer, I never found them to be dishonest, they were just barebones operations. No salesmanship, no BS. The price is low, the stock is here, take it or leave it. The educated consumer was their best customer.

However I see marked differences with how people today use the word "hustle", e.g., this website. Today, customers are the target of "tech" company deception and investors are the enablers. It is unlikely these 1980s era electronics shops had wealthy investors backing them like "tech" companies have today. They had to make money in the present to stay in business. Their employee salaries were paid from revenues or loans, not investment rounds. If they failed to make money, eventually they went bankrupt. They had skin in the game.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Avenue_Electronics

StanislavPetrov• 4 years ago

As a kid who grew up in New York, I'll never forget those commercials.

The prices are insane!

They actually had decent prices and merchandise. There definitely wasn't any apparent fraud or malfeasance on the consumer level.

blacklion• 4 years ago

Scammed America? Looks like, scammed investors. As far as I understand, clients of this electronic chain were not scammed at all, they get all goods they payed for.

Crazy Eddie: The popular electronics chain that scammed America

Related Stories