The shopping experience at walk-in electronics stores “sucks,” according to a keynote speech at the recent Consumer Electronics Association conference in New York.

No, that messenger wasn’t me or someone else from Consumer Reports, talking about how our Ratings of places to buy computers and other major electronics items reveal that satisfaction with brick-and-mortar stores lags behind that for online retailers.

Instead, the observation came from someone with firsthand knowledge of electronics retailing: The relatively-new owner of CompUSA’s stores and Web site and of the TigerDirect.com and newly-relaunched CircuitCity.com Web sites, too. Read the rest of this entry »