Bargain shopping for computers at Radio Shack

[MHaensel]

From what I hear, Tandy Radio Shack (TRS) had bargaining room when people started to actually spend money.

 

My neighbor arranged some kind of bundle deal around 1984, for a TRS-80 Model IV, a shelf full of brown-binder software, Orchestra-90, a Realistic stereo amplifier with speakers, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. He literally went from "no computer" to "complete super-deluxe setup" overnight! I have a hunch he walked into a store, said he was willing to spend about $2500, and started bargaining from there.

 

For people who had experience back in the day, did you ever bargain for a good deal on computers/peripherals at Radio Shack? Did they give discounts for bundles?

[jhd]

Honestly, I remember them being rather more expensive than other places -- especially by the late-1980s when they were selling PC clone hardware. Of course they had the advantage of having stock on hand rather than mail-order or some small, local outfit that did not keep (much) inventory. 

 

 

[Keatah]

I was always getting thrown out of computer stores BITD. So not much bargaining happened.

 

[jwse30]

When I worked there, there was a clearance list, and in July or August that list would get pretty huge. Naturally not everything would get a new price tag immediately. Sometimes customers (and sales reps) would be surprised when I price rang up for much less than the price tag said. That was about the only haggling we were authorized to do, and we had to know what products this applied to to make it look like we were giving the customer a great deal (just for them, of course!).

 

Of course, not all RS stores were corporate owned. The franchise stores may have had a bit more wiggle room than the corporate stores did, especially if the owner felt he was going to be left holding a bunch of obsolete merchandise.

 

J White

[82-T/A]

On 8/7/2021 at 8:02 AM, jwse30 said:

When I worked there, there was a clearance list, and in July or August that list would get pretty huge. Naturally not everything would get a new price tag immediately. Sometimes customers (and sales reps) would be surprised when I price rang up for much less than the price tag said. That was about the only haggling we were authorized to do, and we had to know what products this applied to to make it look like we were giving the customer a great deal (just for them, of course!).

 

Of course, not all RS stores were corporate owned. The franchise stores may have had a bit more wiggle room than the corporate stores did, especially if the owner felt he was going to be left holding a bunch of obsolete merchandise.

 

J White

 

 

We had something similar at CompUSA too. When we'd run the SKUs on the system, there was also the "Cost" price, and the "Customer" price.

 

I remember being able to buy Sim City 2000 CD in 1996 for $0.25. They shipped us an entire crate of that game for us to basically make pure profit on (we sold it for $24.99 each). This was done by Maxis on the agreement we would buy SIMS at full price when it came out ($54.99).