wanna know something really crappy?

[charliecron]

Hmm yeah I suppose they should pay the same to ship as we do.

 

China population : 1.371 billion
US. Population : 321.4 million

 

China's average annual wage was 56,360 yuan ($8,655) in 2014, and Goldman Sachs estimates that 387 million rural workers — half the working population — earn about $2,000 a year.

 

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that: U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939.

[SignGuy81]

The thing I believe that killed RadioShack was when they started doing cell phone contracts. That is what did it for me. Sure I could buy electronics cheaper online, but RadioShack was more convenient, and a lot of times I didn't want to wait when I needed something simple that I could just walk in and grab. Also I liked to look at all the neat stuff they had I was like a kid in a candy shop.

 

But when I had to start waiting in line behind people filling out cell phone contracts that was enough for me, that and the fact they started carrying less and less of the hobbyist electronics stuff and more of the consumer stuff along with the cell phones I just couldn't take it anymore and stopped going in.

[Gunstar]

Agree with previous posts about how much Radio Shack changed over the years. The stores in my area went from being places I loved to go in and browse, to somewhere I dreaded visiting to get the parts I needed.

Internet prices and availability helped me make the break, but in the end, Radio Shack did it to themselves. They probably tried to adapt to a changing world, but it was clearly a failure.

One issue I had, and still have with the one remaining RS location is that none of the employees have a clue about the items they are selling.

YES! For many of the later years I still used them, I'd walk in and they'd ask if I needed help, I'd say no thank you, but they were persistent. So then I'd say fine and describe what I was doing with my electronics project and I'd get glazed over blank stares. Eventually I just started saying, no, you can't help because you have no clue bout electronics. And if they said otherwise, I'd make them look like fools with simple (to me and most that actually know electronics) questions. And of course it just kept getting worse and worse with these lame-brain millennial's who never even learned to think for themselves.

[SignGuy81]

YES! For many of the later years I still used them, I'd walk in and they'd ask if I needed help, I'd say no thank you, but they were persistent. So then I'd say fine and describe what I was doing with my electronics project and I'd get glazed over blank stares. Eventually I just started saying, no, you can't help because you have no clue bout electronics. And if they said otherwise, I'd make them look like fools with simple (to me and most that actually know electronics) questions. And of course it just kept getting worse and worse with these lame-brain millennial's who never even learned to think for themselves.

 

I always hated going in any store and being stopped for help if I know what I'm looking for, mainly because I don't want to be rude and have to say no but there have been so many times I've went to stores and been told "we don't carry that" then a few minutes later find the exact same item sitting on a shelf in the store while pretending to look for a new item to not make the employee think that I think they don't know what they are talking about. So I always tell a store employee no thank you(and I hate when they are persistent) and look myself, and if I'm never asked for help I always look over really good in the store before I do ask an employee if they have the thing I'm looking for.

[toddtmw]

I don't know if this board (or this particular forum) has moderators, but if it does, I would like to request that this topic be moved to a more appropriate forum. I do not see how it is topical to Atari 8-bit computers. Radio Shack (as far as I know) never sold Atari 8-bit computers, and even if you accept the OP's claim that this is about more than Radio Shack, none of the sites referenced in the video (or the commercial Internet for that matter) existed while Atari was selling 8-bit computers.

 

I see no justification for this topic to be where it is.

[_The Doctor__]

radio shack sold Atari Parts, and sold plenty of equipment and generic parts use for the Atari... I bought 1200XL keyboards, chips and other pieces and parts through out the years... not to mention all kinds of solder stations, meters, and on and on... I understand you don't like people anymore because of the posts regarding Atarimax but really....

 

beyond that Shipping is a big part of the Atari community now... for everything... you name it we have to ship it . It is a part of almost every thing we do...

 

if some one wants to make it something else as seems the case... well it is what it is... you will see people quote income or such but then they'll fail to mention what it costs to buy items in the same location.... when you can eat rent buy for next to nothing for a number of things.... but that is not what should be.... how about those kind of posts be flagged instead... it's okay, just don't lash out wildly and hit the wrong people or targets...

[Keatah]

I see no justification for this topic to be where it is.

 

True enough. The topic seems to be about RadioShack and why it went downhill. I don't see anything Atari in it. Why not send a PM or a "Report" and ask it to be put in the general area.

[Keatah]

radio shack sold Atari Parts, and sold plenty of equipment and generic parts use for the Atari... I bought 1200XL keyboards, chips and other pieces and parts through out the years... not to mention all kinds of solder stations, meters, and on and on... I understand you don't like people anymore because of the posts regarding Atarimax but really....

 

I never knew they sold Atari specific parts aside from the "generic" common stuff that would also work in all other micros. Parts like the 74LS series, or resistors or connectors. None of it was Atari specific.

 

Maybe some of it could be mail ordered by special request, but I don't recall ever seeing a 1200XL keyboard hanging in baggie in the store next to McDonalds..

[Keatah]

YES! For many of the later years I still used them, I'd walk in and they'd ask if I needed help, I'd say no thank you, but they were persistent. So then I'd say fine and describe what I was doing with my electronics project and I'd get glazed over blank stares. Eventually I just started saying, no, you can't help because you have no clue bout electronics. And if they said otherwise, I'd make them look like fools with simple (to me and most that actually know electronics) questions. And of course it just kept getting worse and worse with these lame-brain millennial's who never even learned to think for themselves.

 

You got that straight, slim! So many of the retail stores around here are full of lame-brainers.

 

 

I always hated going in any store and being stopped for help if I know what I'm looking for, mainly because I don't want to be rude and have to say no but there have been so many times I've went to stores and been told "we don't carry that" then a few minutes later find the exact same item sitting on a shelf in the store while pretending to look for a new item to not make the employee think that I think they don't know what they are talking about. So I always tell a store employee no thank you(and I hate when they are persistent) and look myself, and if I'm never asked for help I always look over really good in the store before I do ask an employee if they have the thing I'm looking for.

 

I always expect to be asked if I need help. I'm not interested in wasting time or scouting the entire store. They are paid money, let them retrieve the product for me. That's why they're there. They know the store better than I do.

[SignGuy81]

 

They know the store better than I do.

 

Like I said before you would not believe how many times I've asked if a store had something, was told no by a worker int he store, but they had it anyway.

Edited May 21, 2017 by SignGuy81

[_The Doctor__]

Our local Radio Shack was full of Ham Radio people, computer nerds, project junkies... always had stuff for the Atari, Tandy, CoCo, etc etc.... You could get lost in engineering talk, hack mods, you name it.... they new where everything was and what to do with it.... recent years same place... all cell phones and kids who could care less... and who knew even less.... face in a smart phone.... it's over there somewhere maybe...

[toddtmw]

The Radio Shacks in our area (at least when I was in high school and college in the 80's) were filled with people that were clueless. I would fix people's electronics, set up their computers or stereos or other technical things. They would say, "You should work at Radio Shack" and my response was always, "I'm over-qualified to work at Radio Shack." Back then, things were easier. Computers could be repaired and when you opened the hood of a car, you could actually see through to the ground below. I replaced the cam in a '72 Monte Carlo and I stood IN the engine compartment and removed the cam without removing the radiator.

 

My favorite example of Radio Shack staff cluelessness was when I went there one time with a guy, named Jerry, that lived in my neighborhood. Jerry taught me a lot about cars (when I met him, he was building a 1929 Gazelle Replicar on the frame of a Pinto in his garage), computers (He bought an Atari 800 and later a 1200XL to run a mailing list for a local Right to Life group) and elecronics (He held several patents, including one for a computer controlled hole measuring device called SoftMIc).

 

Anyway, in the Dayon (Ohio) area, they built a new highway, I-675, as a bypass for I-75 around Dayton. The highway went through a field that was adjacent to his back yard, and the noise was noticable, but he did not qualify for a sound wall because they said it wasn't loud enough on his property. So, we went to radio Shack to get a Sound Level Meter to check it for himself.

 

We walk in, and immediately, someone comes up and asks if they can help.

 

Jerry, "Yes, I'd like to buy a sound level meter."

"We don't have anything like that."

"You have them in your catalog."

 

He gets a catalog and Jerry opens it and shows the listing for "Sound Level Meter". The Radio Shack guy was like, "Oh, one of THOSE." Jerry was like, "What would you call it." He turned to me and said, "I could have really made it hard for him and asked for a dB meter."

 

Anyway, I did spend a lot of time at Radio Shack, and I always felt like they should have been more on the pulse of current electronics, while still keeping their roots, but more and more everytime I went in there, it was just a terrible experince. It got to the point, where my Wife was like, "Why do you even try to go there, every time you end up not getting what you want."

 

I am lucky that I have a Micro Center near my house. They actually have a pretty decent Arduino and robotics section and that has partially filled the void left by Radio Shack.

[accousticguitar]

 

I was thinking the same thing as I read this.

 

And also, doesn't Radio Shcek GET most of its stuff from China? So, can't it use that loophole to save shipping costs when it ships items to its stores?

 

Finally, I've ordered things from China. It's SLOOOW. I've always been willing to pay more to get it faster. *THAT* is what Amazon does better than most. It gets stuff out their door and to YOUR door better than almost anyone. I've reached the point now, where I'm buying more and more stuff from them rather than running to the store. If I don't need it *RIGHT NOW!*, I wait 2 days and save the trip. This includes most of what Radio Shack used to sell. IMHO, Amazon is a bigger threat to Brick and Mortar than cheap shipping from China.

 

Todd

My experience has been that Amazon is slower than China. Way slower.

[toddtmw]

Wow. I just ordered 4 six-packs of Mad Tree PshcHOPathy beer from them and it will be here in less than an hour. Earlier, I ordered some electronic components and they will be here tomorrow. (Could have gotten them today, a Sunday, if I had ordered them earlier...)

 

Most of the stuff I order from China takes at least a week and I have to go to the post office to pick it up so I can sign for it. Maybe it's because Amazon has a pretty big distribution site in Northern Kentucky, near my house. I am also a Prime member, though, so things that cannot be delivered same day or next day do get here in at most 2 days.

[DavidMil]

The shame of this is that you KNOW who USPS is going to look at to make up for their looses (HINT: it won't be the government)...

 

DavidMil

[kenjennings]

When I built the CheapTalk voice synthesizer from magazine directions in the 1980s the RS store in my neighborhood was like an electronics grocery store. There were aisles, many aisles. The store had little shopping carts. Everything I needed, and piles of things I didn't even know about.

 

And then it became a crappy R/C toy and cell phone store. Parts became one wall panel filled with earbuds and video cables.

[TPA5]

RadioShack got killed for many of the same reasons other stores, not just electronics retailers, have gone the way of the Dodo: bad business. A few wrong decisions here, a different direction over there, and after a decade or two the damage is done. The internet is a thing. Buying from China is cheaper. Tough sob story, but it's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

Also...

 

 

I've just been thinking about how WWW is 666 and how the 'mark of the beast, or the number of his name' seems a lot like this. I'm not throwing this out there for crazy christian reasons, just the obvious correlation between the two things. It says "None may buy or sell or trade who does not have the mark of the beast or the number of his name".

 

SO. If, all of the sudden, you can't seem to buy, sell, or trade you may have lost the mark somehow!?

 

I mean that all of our information is through one giant, readily observable and harvestable pipeline... THE INTERNET!

 

I can't really rely on a phone, letter, catalogs, or EVEN STORES! YES I WAS GETTING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS...

 

All STORES must GO! People are probably realizing this as cutting out the greasy middle man would seem to be the biggest benefit of said INTERNET.

 

It's not really to help you talk to each other, or watch ho's, or meet a statistically possible mate, or mate.

 

IT'S TO CORRAL YOU so that if you piss even the slightest ball hair of one of them off they can make it like you don't exist.

 

You can't just get a new phone number, move away, change some little detail here or there.

 

ALL STORES will be RADIO SHACK unless it's a FOOD STORE, and you will need GAS and a CAR to reach one of those, while little drone's that watch and

hear everything all the time constantly drop off little boxes of pizza, beer, packages from Amazon rats (by now being slowly replaced by robot 'rats').

 

I loved Radio Shack. I didn't care that it was grossly inflated pricing as I didn't have to seek things out online to find any reasonable prices like now.

 

It makes me want to live in a cave with a naked woman and drink water from a stream and bath down stream and fork mash and eat grains, fruits, vegetables. Flip off weird metal god birds that shit frozen cubes into the ocean.

 

Video games would be tickling her feet to see the different miniscule facial twitches and nose flares.

 

 

 

What the fuck dude.

[accousticguitar]

Wow. I just ordered 4 six-packs of Mad Tree PshcHOPathy beer from them and it will be here in less than an hour. Earlier, I ordered some electronic components and they will be here tomorrow. (Could have gotten them today, a Sunday, if I had ordered them earlier...)

 

Most of the stuff I order from China takes at least a week and I have to go to the post office to pick it up so I can sign for it. Maybe it's because Amazon has a pretty big distribution site in Northern Kentucky, near my house. I am also a Prime member, though, so things that cannot be delivered same day or next day do get here in at most 2 days.

China takes about a week. Amazon takes 2-4 weeks. I'm not a prime member obviously.

[Keatah]

I'm a little non-plussed by amazon. Non-prime shipping can take a long time to consider using them as a full-blown replacement for local retail.

 

I tend to dislike their fluctuating prices. At times they're no better than newegg or any other internet store. Have to use a tracker to ensure I'm not buying at the highest.

[gargoyle]

My experience has been that Amazon is slower than China. Way slower.

 

Depends on who you really buy from when you shop Amazon. If they ship from their warehouses, it is fast, if they use a third party (and a lot of them maybe drop shipping from China) it may take as long as direct shipping from China.

[+remowilliams]

Who Killed RadioShack?

Radioshack.


My favorite modern Radio Shack moment - walking in while talking on my iphone and wearing a blackberry visible on my hip and then being asked if they could interest me in a cell phone.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Internet killed the Radio Shack... ahaaaa, the radio-shaa-a-a-ack...

 

Next: Alibaba kills Amazon.

[zzip]

Maybe some of it could be mail ordered by special request, but I don't recall ever seeing a 1200XL keyboard hanging in baggie in the store next to McDonalds..

LOL, I could just see Radio Shack having a sleeve of these hanging in the same dusty corner since 1982.

 

 

Jerry, "Yes, I'd like to buy a sound level meter."

"We don't have anything like that."

"You have them in your catalog."

 

He gets a catalog and Jerry opens it and shows the listing for "Sound Level Meter". The Radio Shack guy was like, "Oh, one of THOSE." Jerry was like, "What would you call it." He turned to me and said, "I could have really made it hard for him and asked for a dB meter."

 

Anyway, I did spend a lot of time at Radio Shack, and I always felt like they should have been more on the pulse of current electronics, while still keeping their roots, but more and more everytime I went in there, it was just a terrible experince. It got to the point, where my Wife was like, "Why do you even try to go there, every time you end up not getting what you want."

Reminds of when portable CD players were fairly new and they'd skip at the slightest vibration. My friend, being a tech geek, heard about new CD players that would preload and buffer the music so that if the disc physically skipped, the music wasn't interrupted. So we go to Radio Shack and he was looking for one. He spent 5-10 minutes trying to describe this feature to the sales guy and getting weird, puzzled looks in return, until finally the sales guy goes "Oh! You mean 'Digital Anti-Skip'?!" My friends was like 'uh yeah, that'

[zzip]

When I built the CheapTalk voice synthesizer from magazine directions in the 1980s the RS store in my neighborhood was like an electronics grocery store. There were aisles, many aisles. The store had little shopping carts. Everything I needed, and piles of things I didn't even know about.

 

And then it became a crappy R/C toy and cell phone store. Parts became one wall panel filled with earbuds and video cables.

In their boom years, they were very much a electronic hobbyist store, and yet were successful enough to expand everywhere, even the highest-rent malls.. let that sink in second, because it's unthinkable today! The old mall across the street from the high-rent mall probably had a Radio Shack too, and the strip mall down the road, so it's not like the hobbyist had to flock to the busy mall to shop there, they had options. And despite that, those mall stores stayed for decades, indicating they didn't make a mistake opening them only to close them in a few years because they couldn't justify the rent. I guess for a hobbyist store, it was pretty mainstream.

 

I don't know if that hobbyist market was killed off by computers or whatever, and they had to shift to more mainstream consumer oriented stuff, or if RS just did that to pursue bigger profits and it backfired. They were now selling stuff you could get everywhere else, instead of the unique stuff that made them.

[+mytek]

The thing I find fascinating concerning shipping something now days is if you think back a few years you'll probably remember as gas prices were rising up to meet $5+ a gallon, we were told that shipping companies needed to raise the price to ship something to compensate for this. But then the gas prices dropped, and have been hovering between $2.25 to $2.85 for the last couple of years with the fluctuation being determined by what season it was (Winter being the lowest, Summer being the highest). So logic would have it that when the gas prices came back down, so should have the cost to ship something. Is this what happened? I'll let you answer that.

 

- Michael