This is not the first time I’ve bitched about these ass clowns. Tonight was one of the more benign aggravations they’ve thrust upon me, but it still makes the list as to why the place bugs the shit out of me.
Normally I avoid the place like a sandpaper glove hand-job and would just order my parts off Ebay for 3 cents including shipping from someone in Hong Kong (how do they do that? )
But I wanted to finish the project I was working on, and the particular part I needed wasn’t to be found at any other store, so I begrudgingly went into the local Radio Shit store. I knew I was going to get fucking irritated and they did not disappoint.
First, the connectors I needed were over priced @ $6.89 each (I needed 4 of them). Then it takes the dunce forever to get her register on, Turns the key, enters her code…nothing. This goes on for 3 cycles of attempts. Then she asks for my zip code. I thought they were going to stop that bullshit?
Then the connectors rang up at $7.49. When I pointed at the little sign stating $6.89 I was told the price had gone up and someone forgot to change the sign.
Tough shit! I’m not paying 60 cents more each (even more than that when you consider the higher price raises the sales tax) for a part that is already overpriced.
Then when she “fixed” the price they still rang up for $6.99 instead of the $6.89. When I pointed that out I got a shrug and a “what’s a dime?”
IT’S MY DIME, STINKY BRITCHES!!!:mad:
This is a company whose stock prices have dropped through the floor. If “piss off your customers” is their business plan I can see why.
The last time I went into a RS I asked for a breadboard and they told me to check Bed Bath & Beyond. I shit you not. I have not been in one since that moment 15 years ago.
I experienced pretty much the same thing as the OP once when I went to a Radio Shack a few years back and I finally said at the cash register, “Sorry. On principle I cannot bring myself pay such a ridiculous price for this thing. It might only encourage you to stay in business. You should be ashamed of yourselves.” I left them with the cash register drawer open.
They’re trying to refashion themselves as a mobile phone store, hoping to take advantage of high-margin, over-priced sales of cheap accessories.
With more and more people shopping around online I just don’t see how this can continue to work out for them! And malls have their own T-Mobile/Verizon/whatever stores anyway to sell overpriced accessories. I used to buy replacement cordless phone batteries from them, before cordless phones all took regular rechargeable batteries, and that’s it. There can’t be THAT many people who need a USB-to-micro-USB cord RIGHT NOW and Best Buy is closed but RadioShack is open and it’s worth spending 5x the regular price. Weird.
But that place has been there forever. And all the employees seem to take about 30 minutes of breaks every hour, because there just isn’t shit to do. It is hard to figure.
Maybe once very other year I find myself needing something from RadioShack. I was overjoyed recently to find my latest item on Amazon. My goal in life is to never enter a RadioShack again.
Radio Shack: “Such a thing is not made, and even if it was, we don’t carry it. You need to buy a desktop computer and one of our sound cards to do what you want to do. And it still won’t work.”
Best Buy: “Plug it into the microphone jack right here.” (Points at the speaker jack and drools.) “But it won’t work. You can’t do what you want to do.”
Guitar Center: “We have exactly what you’re looking for, in two different models.”
I’m buying all of my batteries at Guitar Center from now on.
Sad thing is, 25 or 30 years ago you could not stump Radio Shack on anything. You could go in wanting to feed the audio from a WWII era wire recorder into a Maytag drier, and the clerk would hand you a cable with two alligator clips on one end, a volume knob in the middle, and a big suction cup on the other and tell you step by step how to attach it. And it would only cost $1.53.
And then around 10 years ago when it was sort of in between, you sometimes had staff who knew what they were talking about (and thus worth listening to), and sometimes didn’t.
Story 1 - 15 years ago (back when it was still called Radio Shack in Canada)
A local RS had a MIDI interface I was interested in. In addition to having four sets of MIDI ports it also had a couple of ¼-inch phono jacks. One was labeled SMTPE.
I asked the guy, “What’s SMPTE”?
Without missing a beat, he looks me straight in the eye and says, “synchronous multi-phasic transmission emitter”. I felt dumb and said “oh”
I later learned the abbreviation stands for “Society of Motion Picture Technicians and Engineers” and the jack was for keeping multiple devices in synch via an electronic “click track” of sorts.
Story 2 - one month ago (Radio Shack is now called The Source)
Prominently displayed in the middle of the store is kiosk a kind of thing showing a small-business phone solution/system. I’ve been considering upgrading some of my VOIP phones and was surprised a mall retailer would have something. So I asked, “I presume this is a SIP phone?” He didn’t know what “SIP” meant - no surprise, but here’s the kicker:
“I can’t sell you that phone.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t sell it. It’s from Bell (his ID’s lanyard is festooned with Bell™).”
I only go to Radio Shack if I need something right now and can’t afford to wait for mail order. Otherwise, I’ll order from Amazon.com, as you suggested. Newegg and Monoprice.com are also good, with really low prices.
My college was a nerd school and all of my friends were electrical engineering majors and major geeks. They were such frequent customers of the local Radio Shack store that they were greeted personally by name and bought all sorts of obscure electronic parts for various school and personal projects. And yes, the store clerks were very knowledgeable and helpful. But this was in the late 1980s.
(For example, the TV belonged to one roommate. He thought that everyone else played the TV audio too loud, so he added an electronic circuit to limit the volume. They, of course, discovered this, and added another circuit to disable his. The trick was their mod magnetically attached to the side of the TV, so they could remove it when he was around.)
Yep, I definitely know that when I was a cashier, prices were completely within my control and I took great glee in arbitrarily altering them for no reason other than to piss the customer off. I also had access to pricing sheets so I would be able to instantly tell when random thingamajig was mispriced on the shelf and then choose not to take care of it, preferring instead to be yelled at by an irate customer because that’s always fun and never embarrassing or demeaning.
Inner Stickler, I know what you are saying, and he shouldn’t have taken it out on the cashier, (I was one once too) but the fact is Radio Shack really does suck that hard. You don’t just get blank stares. If you’re a woman you get complete and utter condescension. “Oh, you don’t want those headphones. These are much better.” Yeah and like twenty dollars more! And god forbid you might actually not know what you are talking about, the condescension comes out in droves!
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