CompUSA — only for small parts, not systems

Several years ago, I had a problem similar to the one reported by Ed Morrissey with a Toshiba laptop bought at CompUSA. The Professor notes similar problems with the chain reported by other people and wonders if this suggests that CompUSA is in trouble.
This is nothing new. I think it is endemic to the system (some of Ed’s commenters note having similar or worse problems with Best Buy, Circuit City, etc). I quit buying whole computers from anyone but Dell back in 2001. In fact I just bought another one from them today for Sally. Other than my laptop, though, I tend to build my own with parts procured locally, because I really don’t like the bundling that Dell does. If I could buy the machine with nothing but the OS, I’d be a lot happier. As it is I will have to remove a bunch of useless software and install a bunch of useful software when Sally’s machine arrives…
And I’ll make the point that I do buy parts from CompUSA locally. But I still hold a grudge about the six weeks it took them to fix my laptop under warranty (hard drive blew…how hard is this? and why couldn’t it have been repaired locally?) and the fact that they lost my power supply and actually expected me to leave the store without one because they didn’t have any in stock. Ha. Ha. Ha. I stood my ground at the service desk until they ran and pulled one, still warm, off of a display model.
The next time the hard drive blew, I’d already traded the machine to my father-in-law for their old Dodge minivan. He had an old Compaq that he’d replaced the HD in but which had later failed some other way, so he took the HD out of the Compaq and put it in the Toshiba. Voila…and it’s still working (they use it in their RoadTrek for navigation when they travel).
But as far as I’m concerned, to paraphrase the line from the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “CompUSA?” “The Devil.” “Well, that was pretty much a gimme.”