Hosfelt Electronics just isn’t what it used to be….

If Mr. Hosfelt were no longer with us I’d say he would be spinning in his grave. But as far as I know he is alive, well, and retired. Hosfelt Electronics is a shadow of it’s former self. Is this another case of children of a founder running the business in to the ground?

Today was not my first trip there in the last year but the results seem to get worse each time. I was ignored by the woman behind the glass for at least 15 minutes, which is a real change from the way they used to practically jump you as soon as you walked in the door. I finally decided to fill out the order form myself using the only catalog I could find which was without an index or a cover. After I filled out the order form, I finally got the attention of the woman behind the glass and was greeted with “oh are you ready now?” After I gave he my order form she advised me they “discontinued” their mini din connectors (which was the reason I stopped in today in the first place) and they haven’t had PL-259’s “in quite some time”. Half of the items I wanted were “discontinued” or out.

The store was full of mostly junk, maybe they should consider a name change to Hosfelt Junk Electronics. Maybe even “discontinue” using the word electronics in their name completely. They haven’t put out a catalog in years. It’s been all down hill, figuratively and literately since they moved downtown. It took nearly two years from when they closed the “show room” on Sunset Blvd until they open this pitiful excuse on 3rd street. Now I know paper catalogs may be old hat to some of you out there and E commence sites are the thing, even I prefer them. But the Hosfelt website is terrible it’s not even close to any other electronics dealer on the web. If you didn’t know better just by looking at their website you would think they were out of business. Most items on the site are listed “out of stock” or “temp out”. So I guess If you can’t make it to their showroom you can have a similar experience on their website.

The only redeeming quality to this visit was that a cat had a litter of kittens in the alley behind the building and they were letting them live in the store. The mother cat is extremely friendly and sat in my lap twice and since I’m a cat person this didn’t bother me. Now some of you may know that Universal Radio near Columbus, Ohio has cats in their store, well Hosfelt is defiantly not Universal radio, not even close.

I’ve been a customer and fan of Hosfelt Electronics for about the last 15 years, it saddens and sickens me to see what has become of it.

More pictures from my visit are now on flikr

This entry was posted on September 17, 2008 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.