wanna know something really crappy?

[_The Doctor__]

[Starman]

I'm not sure I buy into this. For one thing, RS's web site was garbage. Second, they started asking for personal info just to buy batteries. That was annoying. Also, while I understand how people buy online nowadays (like with DVD Empire years ago), I'd rather go to my local store.

 

Maybe China had a part in this, but I think it was a shift in interest in what RS carried.

[_The Doctor__]

It isn't just about radio shack (the main example given)..... and it's absolutely true about the postage..... and that we loose a dollar or more for everything that is carried from those designations. It was meant to help someone is a country that has little to no economy and instead helps the third or fourth largest in the world..... It's pure numbers any actuary runs.

 

At least Radio Shack asked or pestered you... I have done enough business to know Chinese vendors outright sell your information and share without any protections to you the customer...

Edited May 20, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[Keatah]

Well whatever the reason.. I'm just plain 'ol slapp-happy to get an exact official genuine replacement part for pennies on the dollar.

It would have cost me nearly $12.00 to get it through the factory distribution center in the U.S.

 

But through ebay and e-packet from china, I got the official part for a bit under $2.00. And it isn't counterfeit either. So yeh, if someone wants to pay me the the difference, sure. If not I'm all for the savings for my pocketbook.

 

I can only imagine the cost if RS custom-ordered it for me! Screw that..

[_The Doctor__]

eventually you won't get any epacket,, the usps can only absorb so much.... I was waiting for the save so much money argument... it only bothers a person when it hurts them directly.... and by the time it hurts them indirectly and they realize it they'll blame someone or something else...

Edited May 20, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[Keatah]

That's ok. If someone wants to subsidize my purchases and pay the difference, great. Till then I'm happy to get my part for $1.87 instead of $12.00. And I thank the gubbament for making it happen. If it goes away I'll find another solution or do without.

[_The Doctor__]

yeah it's great when you try to ship something back over or sell something and ship it over... wonderful isn't it.... what can you say....

[Keatah]

I wouldn't bother shipping anything that far. Nor would I buy something expensive in case I needed to. I'll stick with amazon and let them deal with a defect in a product. Just gimme a new one and I'll be happy.

 

If those options aren't available to me then no big deal. I'll just do without.Not my problem if the ghubberment doesn't support me conducting beneficial activities for society.

 

Anyways, in the end, there's no benefit to me to overpay. Simplistic? Sure. Does it help my bottom line. You bet.

[phaeron]

In my area, Radio Shack stores had pretty much mostly become cell phone stores, and pretty bad ones at that. The one time I went in there for what I remembered them for -- batteries -- they wanted $5 for a single, common CR2032 battery. Before that, the last time I visited one was over a decade ago for a 1/8" mic to stereo RCA cable. Well, I only need one of those, no one else I know of needs one, and if we did at this point we'd just get it on Amazon. Pretty much everything you could get from Radio Shack there was a better place to go to.

[_The Doctor__]

oh forget it, it's not about radio shack only.... and honestly if people can't see what's wrong about the shipping situation then that explains why things are unfolding the way they are... just blame some political party or some socio-economic group.... but it really rests with very unfair circumstances that people are happy to take advantage of...

It should cost the same to ship in either direction... especially for equal tier economies... it is what it is I feel somewhat sad for the future... can't wait for the next march or protest over wages, jobs, and other bs.... penny wise dollar foolish...

Edited May 20, 2017 by _The Doctor__

[Papa]

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.

[Gunstar]

In my area, Radio Shack stores had pretty much mostly become cell phone stores, and pretty bad ones at that. The one time I went in there for what I remembered them for -- batteries -- they wanted $5 for a single, common CR2032 battery. Before that, the last time I visited one was over a decade ago for a 1/8" mic to stereo RCA cable. Well, I only need one of those, no one else I know of needs one, and if we did at this point we'd just get it on Amazon. Pretty much everything you could get from Radio Shack there was a better place to go to.

My experience was RS started going down hill after the turn of the century and, without yet looking at the video above, it's because they abandoned being an electronics and components store and became just a cell phone store. I'd much rather walk into a Radio Shack to by my components, etc., but they just kept reducing inventory until there was nothing left for the hobbyist. Just a cell-phone store. They did themselves in, IMHO. Haven't shopped there for a decade since this trend started.

[Gunstar]

Now that I have watched the video, I agree,that yes, the free shipping from China was certainly part of the issue, at least with online sales, but that doesn't account for people like me who would rather take the trip to town and buy what I need directly from RS to get it that day, and shipping doesn't even come into the picture. I stopped buying from Radio Shack not because I could get cheap Chinese crap for less, I'll pay more for quality American made any day of the week, but because they dropped their main customer base of do-it-yourselfer's, like me, because I'd walk into an RS looking for electronic components and only find cell phones and batteries, and they weren't even cell-phones you could just buy and use with any service, you had to get the contract with Sprint or whatever. They went down because they lost sight of who they were and who their customers were, plain and simple. Shoddy management from the top for many, many years killed RS. Period.

[Bryan]

I stopped buying from Radio Shack not because I could get cheap Chinese crap for less, I'll pay more for quality American made any day of the week, but because they dropped their main customer base of do-it-yourselfer's, like me, because I'd walk into an RS looking for electronic components and only find cell phones and batteries, and they weren't even cell-phones you could just buy and use with any service, you had to get the contract with Sprint or whatever. They went down because they lost sight of who they were and who their customers were, plain and simple. Shoddy management from the top for many, many years killed RS. Period.

Yep.

 

Radio Shack's business model was to be a friend to the hobbyist so they'd come back for the big ticket items later. At some point their business model became to merely tolerate the hobbyist whose crap was taking up valuable cell-phone space. They thought they were cool enough to survive without loyalty.

[gozar]

If the free shipping from China was really the problem, why didn't Radio Shack open up a distributor there and ship out from China? Use the US distributor when someone is really to get a part quickly, but use China for free shipping.

[toddtmw]

If the free shipping from China was really the problem, why didn't Radio Shack open up a distributor there and ship out from China? Use the US distributor when someone is really to get a part quickly, but use China for free shipping.

 

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

[ricortes]

Doomed! Old enough that I remember when Radio Shack was the equivalent of Starbuck's but w/o the coffee and for the nerds. Sheesh! I remember standing there drooling when they came out with the TRS-80. Their MS DOS clones were slightly incompatible with IBMs because they were better. Built in sound and better graphics, build quality second to none. Of course before all this, they rode the CB craze, shortwave, et al.

 

Then they became the anti technology store. Very uncool to be caught dead in the place. It wasn't that things were not happening, it is just they weren't happening at Radio Shack. I mean the whole Arduino thing should have been done by RS. Ditto for the other stuff we commonly talk about here like the ARM platform, Bluetooth, ESP8266, USB to serial, WiFi, and on and on. Even during the Stereo phenomena back in the 70s, you could count on RS crappy stuff at least working out of the box. Much better QC then other sellers.

 

So they got into cellphones after the market was saturated. So they do an online venture that is crap. They could have done something like say, free pick up at the store?

 

Tack on the personal stories we could add and their hiring practices, doomed!

[toddtmw]

The name and address thing is what really annoyed me about RS (I know, this thread isn't ABOUT RS, but still...).

 

I had a friend who worked at RS when he was in college in the late 80's. He never asked for name and address and then at the end of his shift (or between customers) he would randomly pull names and addresses out of the phone book (remember phone books?) and put them on the top of his receipt book so he wouldn't get in trouble.

 

-Todd

[Starman]

I'm in the same boat as Gunstar. I never even knew cheaper parts from China existed. I just went to the store which was 1/2 a mile away.

[Keatah]

RadioShack's in-store selections became less thought provoking over the years. Eventually it became a cellphone store and that's when I quit going. Believe me, I wasn't interested in 8 different styles of cases for a phone I didn't know existed.

 

But in the 70's and 80's it was a great place to wander around in. Checking out all the discrete parts, the cool tools, the project kits and books. When that went away, so did I.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Keatah

[Starman]

This is true. RS used to be the place where you could find parts to be creative. Not since the (maybe) mid-90s was it like that.

[RodLightning]

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.

[Bryan]

A couple other things, I worked there in the late '80s and RS corporate came down hard on people who tried to offer technical assistance. They were very afraid of being sued so you weren't allowed to touch anything a customer brought in. No more changing batteries and fuses and whatnot. The 2nd thing was that damn name and address thing. I guess they were planning on spamming their way to prosperity. I got anxiety about it after a while because people would slam their part down on the counter and shout, "CASH!" That had as much to do with their loss of image as anything.

[19Echo]

 

I went a day or two before the store closed and spent around 140 dollars. The receipt was about a mile long since they still had to scan everything and it took about 3 hours but I saved 4000 dollars. Mainly got capisitors, diodes, resistors, breakout boards, soldering supplies etc....... this is just a small sample of what I got. really don't know what im going to do with all the surplus, maybe open an ebay store lol.....

[Bryan]

Come on down to 19EchoShack!