10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

[bkfount]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

TMOBILE is just a matter of time. Don't have the infrastructure to keep up with the new faster networks coming out on the big boys, don't have the income nor resources to expand their own.

They are living on borrowed time, their best bet is to hope one of the others buys them out.

no one is going to buy T-Mobile. They're a subsidiary of a German telecom, that apparently does quite well in Europe. Getting into the US is gravy for them, and I would imagine Sprint is in worse shape right now.

T-Mobile doesn't even have plans to roll out 4G, as they're going with HSPA+. It will allow them to get 4g speeds with current 3g technology, and some sites have shown that it can provide speeds better than what competitors are calling 4g.

http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=376

[kodiak]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Radio Shack has been rumored to be bought up for several months. None of these on the list surprise me. Here is one not on the list but living on borrowed time. Gamestop. They have also been mentioned as a possible buyout target, especially with a current price around 18-20 a share. That might change when their rewards program goes national though. But the stock did not see a big increase when Q1 results were posted and the CFO left for WalMart a couple months ago and they just named a new CEO, someone who is supposed to have a plan for the digital market. Time will tell but I think they are living on borrowed time.

[dickey1331]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Im sad to see Zales on the list. I really like them and thats where I get all my jewelry. Just bought a ring there for my girlfriend this past week and they had all kinds of sales.

[ODogg]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

As a former employee of T-Mobile it doesn't surprise me that they are going to go under. Their philosophy of business was (is) all wrong. They harbored the mistaken belief that their greatest asset was not their network, not their engineers and not their phones. They believed their greatest asset was (is) their store front employees and customer service reps. Now granted I agree those are important areas but not over their network and the people who create it, nor the phones.

Let's look at the big two players, AT&T and Verizon Wireless (who I work for). AT&T focuses on technology and phones while growing their network (albeit not fast enough for most folks tastes). Verizon Wireless focuses on technology and their network while still trying to better their phones (albeit not fast enough for those who want iphone on VZW). Neither company has ever made their customer service reps the top priority for the company.

When I worked for T-Mobile, while it was brief (6 months) I realized they were not doing well when they made us pay for our own phones. I'd never seen that before as an engineer in the telecom world. They did give a 10% discount but that's absurd comparative to other carriers. In every telecom company I've worked for (Qwest, Level 3, Broadwing and now Verizon Wireless) all engineers are assigned phones and there is no bill for them.

Granted the point here isn't htat I minded paying for a phone so much but that it spoke to me that the company must be pretty hurting when they're nickel and diming their engineers in that manner. So yeah goodbye T-Mobile. You were too dumb for your own good. No eulogies here!

[ODogg]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Oh and how is that T-Mobile idea of putting customer service reps #1 as our priority working out? Well let's just say it's not working out so great http://opinionatedmarketers.com/2008...rt-bankruptcy/

[MassNole]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Don't (didn't) they also pay out the *** for Catherine Zeta Jones?

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Yeah they did to attract male customers. Didn't work that well though. So they had Jesse James for a while and now they using Charles Barkley, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard.

Fav 5 calling plan gave them a boost for a little while, but then when the big 2 offered unlimited calling to people on their network, that blew t-mobile out the water.

T-mobile might not get bought out, but in the US market they definitely going to partner up with another US carrier to survive.

[ODogg]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

When they bought the company I worked for, Suncom, they promised the founder and CEO they'd not do mass layoffs and they'd give the people at Suncom opportunities within the company and get them jobs. As soon as that contract was inked though what did they do? Mass layoffs. And every position any of us applied for we were told we were not qualified for. I applied for my own job and was told I didn't have the necessary qualifications despite doing it for 5 years, LOL.

So what they did to Suncom I hope another larger carrier does to them. I hope Sprint buys them and then pretty much guts them. They would only want them to expand their network anyways. After all that is what T-Mobile wanted Suncom for, to put down a network footprint in the Carolinas that they did not have access to. What comes around goes around it seems, for sure at least in this industry.

[KG]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Here's a little anecdote about Blockbuster.

I prefer renting games to buying ones that I'm sure to return and lose money on. So when my local Hollywood video closed, I found myself with one option. Blockbuster. I went in there, saw that they charge nine dollars for a five day rental, turned around, and don't plan on returning. Instead I went to Gamefly, who charge 16 dollars a month. That means, I can rent any combination of games (one at a time) for 30 days. That would cost $54 if I was using Blockbuster.

I can't think of anyone who would actually pay that much for a 5 day rental. As for movies, Netflix has them beat.

Like I said previously, I'm baffled as to how they are still alive.

Not only that but BB makes you put down a credit card (at least where I live). Who wants to go through all that mess.

[DaveDQ]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

One of the funniest things to me was when my great Aunt Anita (she's in her 80's) was at my parents house and I heard the T-Mobile jingle ring. I then see her pull her phone out so casually. It was so funny to me.

[bkfount]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

So what they did to Suncom I hope another larger carrier does to them. I hope Sprint buys them and then pretty much guts them. They would only want them to expand their network anyways. After all that is what T-Mobile wanted Suncom for, to put down a network footprint in the Carolinas that they did not have access to. What comes around goes around it seems, for sure at least in this industry.

that's business though...

Even if they were in the position to buy t-mobile, Sprint would be stupid to do so right now. T-mobile is GSM pushing hspa+ and Sprint uses CDMA and is moving to a wimax network. I guess merging with Nextel's incompatible iDENN network, which they still have, wasn't enough fun for them.

T-Mobile's parent company also wasn't too hot on the idea of merging with Sprint for the same reasons above. It would probably be far more attractive to do if both got with the program and went with LTE.

[MassNole]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Blockbuster Files for Bankruptcy - Stores will remain open

Beginning of the end? It is so sad to think if Blockbuster had just made a couple of basic decisions about their future that they'd be sitting pretty and NetFlix and Redbox would be dead or much smaller. Gotta love idiots with MBA's and no common sense.

[DaveDQ]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Blockbuster Files for Bankruptcy - Stores will remain open

Beginning of the end? It is so sad to think if Blockbuster had just made a couple of basic decisions about their future that they'd be sitting pretty and NetFlix and Redbox would be dead or much smaller. Gotta love idiots with MBA's and no common sense.

You have to wonder if they were just arrogant about what Netflix was doing or if they just failed to properly carry out a competitive feature. I think thought that this is a healthy manifestation of capitalism. There is not intention to get political with that comment, but consider one company (BB) and how they made an impact with video rental and then a competitor (NF) with forward thinking takes a risk and creates direct competition with BB.

Netflix put together a great system that is reliable and beneficial. Blockbuster just couldn't keep up.

[elgreazy1]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

I was doing some research and alot of it was BB's fault. The creator of Netflix was an angry ex-BB customer who started it up, built the company, even attempted to sell Netflix to BB - who declined in order to partner with an Enron-based subsidiary - but BB refused. It all was bad business moves.

In other news, I'm running over to a BB today to pick up some games and movies on the cheap if possible.

[MassNole]

Re: 10 businesses in danger of closing in 2011

Which is pathetic for their Board of Directors and company higher ups. BB had an infrastructure in place to have destroyed NetFlix in its infancy had they adopted a model similar to NetFlix and GameFly but combining the two. I know a site called GamesandFlix (something like that) did eventually but they didn't have the necessary capital to make it work (if they're still around I am shocked, their service was appalling). IIRC it also took BB a while to transition to DVDs, so I guess they had a history of incredibly stupid business decisions.