The one near me has the absolute worst employees. Most of the time I go in there I see an employee outside smoking, and whoever is inside is just sitting back texting. They also have no idea about anything they sell.
I once made the mistake of asking them for a 6’ RCA cable, which is something any electronics store in the past 50 years should have. They said they didn’t know what it was, and instead tried to sell me on upgrading my cell phone. After I refused, they offered me insurance on my current phone.
When I asked for a soldering iron that heats up to at least 750F, they said to just look at every one on the shelf until I found one. Almost everything they sell is stuff you can find both cheaper and higher quality somewhere else, and the other stores don’t try to force you to buy lots of useless stuff.
You’re not the first person to wonder about that. I can’t imagine that they sell electronics parts in enough volume to turn a profit for a nationwide chain (especially since, as you said, they’re hardly the easiest to find, cheapest, or most reliable source). They seem to have gone into cell phones and cell phone accessories over the last decade, but that isn’t a reasonable answer either.
I recently bought batteries there. They were the only store around that carried the particular odd size I needed.
Nobody really knows how it has survived till now…but it apparently won’t be in business for long…
Recent thread more or less on topic Radio Shack closing many stores. Are experimenters obsolete? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
I thought the same thing last week. I needed Cat5 plug ends (the little plastic plugs at the end of computer wire). I had bought some at The Home Despot a week earlier but needed about five more. Radio Shack is next to Sams Club so I thought I would pop over and get some. They had none. The counter person (I refuse to call her a sales person) looked it up on the computer and said they sell 100-packs over the internet, but don’t sell them in stores. How the hell is it that Home Depot and Lowes both have electronic plugs but Radio Shack does not? Crazy, and I ended up going out of my way back to Home Depot.
As the OP said, I didn’t see much that you couldn’t find elsewhere much cheaper. It looked to me like RS is now a cell phone store.
Resistors, diodes, capacitors, thin gauge wire, circuit mounting boards, etc… I buy online now (on the very few occasions I need any of that), and other, more normal consumer things I can find at several different local stores, including the big boxes.
In high school, late 70s early 80s, I used to work at one on weekends. I made a ton of spiffs on stereo equipment and had lots of fun selling it. One thing I disliked then and now was the “Give me your entire contact info before I sell you 28 cents worth of stuff” check out procedure. We would get reprimands if we didn’t have a certain percentage of receipts with completed info.
Lots of RC cars, too, I think.
The one close to us closed recently. It’s now a fish store.
Somewhere in Radio Shack’s archives is a pile of receipts showing my address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington D.C.
That’s the White House, for those who don’t know.
I needed a 12v, CT power transformer.
The Radio Shack salesguy did not know what it was, and they had no transformers in the store.
Every time I have been in a Radio Shack it seems to be 'The place where people with shitty credit ratings but a handful of cash can get a cell phone. At least twice I’ve seen their employees telling customers that they need to deposit hundreds of dollars to get or restart a cell phone.
I don’t know how that happens when a Virgin Mobile phone costs like $20 and is pay as you go.
Obama would like you to collect your stack of Radio Shack catalogs and fliers, please.
That’s the same address I used.
Where will I purchase a transistor radio when they close? I still use one during baseball season.
Lafayette Electronics.
Oh.
Some Chinese company on Ebay.
Any AM/FM radio made in the past 30+ years is a transistor radio.
30? Try closer to 60.
The consensus answer to “How is Radio Shack still in business?” seems to be that they had enough of a $$ cushion to keep them in business until now, but they’ve just about drained it, and it’s just a matter of months before the whole chain goes bust. Their stock is currently trading for about 80¢ a share. That’s right - eighty cents a share.
Radio Shack has made more than 50% of its profit from cell phone sales and accessories for quite some time. As for knowing anything about the other products, RS has always maintained a proud tradition of hiring completely ignorant sales people, so that they knew only what they were trained and told. (This goes back to the 1980s, when a good friend who managed a Radio Shack told me he* could not* - would not be allowed to - hire me [for seasonal overload sales] because I knew too much.)
I also worked with RS central in Texas on several projects and the pre-Apple, navel-gazing, smugly self-satisfied “nothing else exists” 'tude went all the way to the top. They *are *as seriously strange and head-up-ass as you might imagine.