There are advantages and disadvantages. They've never been very price competitive for sure, especially on non store-brand items.
One decent thing is that on their own brands, they are the repair drop off point for in and out of warranty repairs (warning:no receipt, no warranty). On many in-warranty items (store pay's for the repair), like cordless phones for example, the store cost to get a new one from the warehouse is much less than a repair charge that the store lays out. So a SMART manager (good luck since I left
) will hand you a new one and scrap the broken one and save themselves money and bonus.
Even the veteran managers when I was a newbie manager didnt take advantage of their P&L allowances for simple things like that.
Their stock was just downgraded to JUNK status yesterday, which is too bad because I have a few hundred shares, lmao.