McKay's Mebane — Local services in Mebane

TL;DR: Avoid McKay’s if you are looking for functional working items. Items should NOT be assumed working when purchasing from this business. Overhead is their focus NOT customer service or functional merchandise. Buy NEW from a reputable vendor and get a warranty.

My experience in dealing with McKay's goes as follows. Have been in the store almost a dozen times.There is a large variety of items to purchase. I have made about a dozen purchases of equipment from their parts/repair section with no problems as I know the items are broken and will need parts or repair.

The problem is that McKay's does not fully test the items before they get put up for sale. If you have a problem, sure, bring it back. But how many times can you purchase and return something before it is not worth your time to even go there. Items should NOT be assumed working when purchasing from this business.

On 2-16-2025 12:33 PM ID: 1243147. I purchased a used Xbox controller. Got home. Went to use the controller only to discover that analog controls are drifting. Fortunately, there is testing software to test the functionality of the controllers. I was able to diagnose it with faulty internal joystick potentiometer assemblies. No worries. This is a common issue with these controllers. Double check my receipt and a return will be accepted.

On 2-18-2025 at 10:13 AM ID:1244632. I take the controller and receipt to the store with an intent to swap for a functional controller. Only difference is this time I brought my laptop into the store to test other controllers that I am interested in. Go into the store and have no issue with the return. The employees were helpful in refunding my money with no issue. After completing the return I go over to the showcases to purchase another controller. I rang the bell and a different employee came from the back to assist. I tell the employee I want to purchase a Xbox controller. He pulls the red bin of Xbox controllers out of the showcase. In the plastic bin are eight used controllers. I pull the first controller I'm interested in and there is no battery door. There is a price tag of $45 on it. So I plugged the first controller into my laptop and I'm immediately able to diagnose it with faulty internal joystick potentiometer assemblies. So I grab a second controller and I plug it into my laptop to test. It also fails with faulty internal joystick potentiometer assemblies. Third controller selected. Plug it into the laptop, no response. Inspect the USB-C port on the controller and it is chipped and broken. At this point the employee behind the counter assisting is starting to get annoyed, making suggestions like, could my cable be bad. I point out it worked to diagnose the other controllers so maybe the businesses diagnosing skills are sub-par to absent. After asking multiple times. Are items tested before they are put out? I am told they're tested as much as we can. “We have thousands of items come into the store a day and don't have time to fully test them all.”

I have now selected a fourth controller with a $35 price tag. This is the first out of five controllers to work properly. For reference, this is 75% of the controllers in the red bin of what is marketed as working controllers, don't work. I told the employee I'll take the working controller and that I want a battery door. Employee said doors can't be swapped on controllers. Everything is priced as it appears. Again. This is 75% of the controllers in the red bin not working. The employee is now even more annoyed by my presence. I say maybe I’ll just go buy a new controller that won't have problems. He says, maybe you should. I grab my laptop and cable. Thank the employees that assisted me with the return. Then leave.

I took my business down the street to Walmart. Luckily Walamrt had NEW controllers on sale for $44.50. Lesson learned. Avoid McKay’s if you are looking for functional...

I went on a Sunday 05/19/2024 and here's what I found.

Here's what I did like about the new store. It's very pretty. Lots of natural light, a ton of baskets (thank God) extremely high ceilings, interesting epoxy style floors, lots of room to breathe and move about and great organization. Love the new indoor outdoor drop off car port, similar to a newer Goodwill except more room and that's it for the things I like.

Comparing a store that just opened to a store that has been up and running for years is unfair, but I have to be honest, given I drove for 2 hours to go there for the first time at this location. I kept in mind how new the store was but I had no idea what I was really in for. I came for the movies and was very disappointed in their lack of new product that I have come to expect at Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Also the shelves for movies were in complete disarray. Although most movies were in alphabetical order they were laying on their sides or completely fallen over and was just overall messy on the shelves. Also even though movies were organized into categories or genre they were not as organized as Winston-Salem or Greensboro had them. They used to have a Criterion Collection section that is missing in action at this location. Also the New Arrivals Shelf is mostly comprised of DVDs and very few Blu-rays or 4K movies were to be found. Again I came 30 minutes after they opened on a Sunday. Also the back shelves of the movies where they keep Disney is right next to video games and that aisle is extremely cramped because you've got 10 people looking at games and 3 or 4 people looking at Disney movies and everyone is in very close proximity to one another is this MASSIVE store.

Also there were no employees on the floor to question if I was looking for something. I did see every once in awhile a person stocking shelves with new merch but as soon as their cart was empty, they retreated to the back. And while we're on the subject, every employee there that day was NOT happy to be there. No one was smiling and it showed.

As if I didn't have more to say, I would like to also mention that for the size of this building the Men's & Women's bathroom are very tiny and not easily found from across the store. Women's bathroom has only two stalls and on that day, had a line to get in. The Men's bathroom has just one urinal and a stall. And my GF told me that when the Men's bathroom door is swung open you can see someone at the urinal in the men's bathroom if you are waiting in line for the women's bathroom.

On the subject of trade-ins, I took in about 230 movies, mostly DVD but mixed with TV Seasons. I got back 122 of them and I was given either $28 Cash or $107 in Store Credit. That is not a great ratio.

Lastly, I swear, there are 3 bike racks out front and I can't for the life of me see how anyone will be pedaling to this location anytime soon because there isn't a sidewalk that runs all the way from the road you turn onto after Sheetz before the turn into McKay's.

Gonna give it another try in another 2 months and revisit after the...

I'll preface this review by stating my displeasure that McKay's elected to move out of Greensboro, and as a Greensboro-area resident I believe their choice to move was not due to an inability to find a better building in the city; rather, I believe it was a move to draw customers from the Triangle area while still being "accessible" to Triad residents. I visited today because a friend of mine was curious to see the new place and invited me to join him. Aside from the new building, nothing much has changed with the operation. At its core, McKay's is nothing more than a pawn shop for books, music, movies and electronic gear, a place for people to sell their junk at a huge loss and other people to buy it at a huge profit for the store. The house always wins. Bookworms will love this place. Vinyl fans, myself included, most likely will not. The problem is that the pricing is just all over the place, as is the quality. Ratty copies of records that were pressed and sold in the millions when they were new are priced comically high. "Bee Gees Greatest", a two-record set in average condition, was on the shelf for $36, as an example. It sold over 2 million copies so it's not rare. It's a $10 album at most. A used, recent reissue copy of Led Zeppelin's "Presence" was on the shelf for $26. It can be bought new for this price. I did buy four records today which were oddly not expensive (each was less than $10). Upon adding them to my Discogs collection I found they were priced in line with Discogs' "median" values--pricing which, in my opinion, is only occasionally accurate and frequently optimistic. Perhaps that's why the overall pricing is out of touch with reality. I found multiple copies of titles in the racks that should be going for $10 or less priced $25 or higher. They will be there for a while. The records I bought were also dirty-just about every other used record shop I've been to will at least clean records that aren't in the bargain bins, and these titles were not. And they stick their stupid pricing labels right on the album covers (no, they don't go to the trouble of sticking the albums in clear sleeves...why spend a few pennies more to display and protect them properly?), so when you remove them, there's a good chance part of the cover's going to go with them. The used vinyl situation here is almost as bad as Remember When in Greensboro, whose offerings are famously overpriced and lorded over by an owner who keeps them in sleeves, but tapes them shut so you can't inspect them. At least at McKay's, you can look at the actual vinyl before you buy them. This store had charm and character in Greensboro. Now, it's gotten the Best Buy treatment--not an improvement, in this shopper's opinion. I...