Tag Archives: Circuit City

TigerDirect Coming To An Ex-CompUSA Location Near You

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Systemax, owners of TigerDirect.com, have acquired the brand, trademark, e-commerce business, and as many as 16 retail stores from the soon to be (thankfully!) dead CompUSA. Does this mean we could be seeing some TigerDirect stores poping up in the near future?

Will it be enough to take on BestBuy, Circuit City, or Frys? One thing is for sure, they’ll have to try hard to be half as bad as CompUSA. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, though I doubt the 16 locations would include Knoxville.

Source: eWeek 

Frontier, Vonage, SunRocket, Phone

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This is kind of a rambling rant against Frontier and Vonage….

For months now, I’ve been giving thought to switching my home phone from my current provider, Frontier, to an VoIP service like Vonage. I currently have two numbers with Frontier, one is dedicated voice and the other is fax. Neither line gets much usage… maybe a combined 20 minutes a month for local calling, and rarely is there any long distance. Now when you throw in all the fees and taxes, I’m shelling out around $83.00 per month for a phone service I don’t use a whole lot. – That’s almost a grand a year… a grand that could go toward a new computer, house furnishings, or something else.

I’m sure by now everyone has seen the Vonage commercials on TV. They’ve got an annoying jingle that you just can’t mistake. If you haven’t seen it on TV, then you may have walked past a display set up in BestBuy, Circuit City, or another electronic store. It’s all over the place here in Knoxville. They offer VoIP service for about $25 per month. Not bad.

But that’s the problem. All the advertising on TV and in local stores, yet Vonage is not available in Knoxville as one would expect. It’s very misleading and borderlines false advertising.

You see, you can buy and use the Vonage service in Knoxville, but you will not be able to get a phone number with the 865 area code. Because VoIP service isn’t like traditional land lines, you can use VoIP service with virtually any area code. This means someone in Maine could have a California area code that would ring at their house in Maine. This is something that is great for businesses, but not so useful for the average Joe.

Currently Vonage only offers the following TN area codes:

  • 615
  • 731
  • 901
  • 931

That’s basically all of middle Tennessee and Memphis. I’m sorry, but a Nashville or Memphis number is next to useless for me. Now granted, most VoIP services don’t have long distance fees so if I had a Nashville number and wanted to call the Knoxville area, I wouldn’t have a problem. Though what if someone in Knoxville wanted to call me? It’d be long distance for them. Friends, family, co-workers, even my next door neighbor would be charged. Doesn’t make much since, does it? — Though, on the bright side, I guess it would keep people from calling and bothering you, eh? :p

While Vonage may be the largest and most recognized VoIP provider it isn’t the only one. In fact, because Vonage has been unable to offer the 865 area code, I’m giving much thought to trying another company, SunRocket. You may have seen their advertising banners on websites all over the place.

They offer service for $200 per year. And the best part about it, the service is available with an 865 area code. I’m still looking into the company and the service, but it may well end up being who I go with. If anyone out there has experience with SunRocket, please let me know! I’d love to hear what you think.