RadioShack’s whole collecting-your-personal-data nonsense is old news, but it’s not just for purchases anymore. When Pete tried to take back some potentiometers he’d paid for the day before with cash, the clerk refused to give him any sort of refund—even a store credit—without Pete’s physical address.
The clerk told Pete it was for loss prevention. Wait, what? Pete had the parts in his hand, and the receipt that showed he’d paid cash for the parts the day before. You mean there’s no way RadioShack can track its purchases more precisely than matching up mailing addresses of anyone who walks into the store?
Here’s Pete’s email:
Dear Consumerist,
I have been avoiding RadioShack for ages ever since they started asking you for your street address and phone number just to sell you something. Once they stopped that practice, I reluctantly began returning to buy the odd piece for my electronics projects when I ran out of something and didn’t want to wait for an order to be shipped from on-line retailers. At any rate, I was out running errands the other weekend and saw a RadioShack, remembering that I needed a couple of potentiometers for an amplifier I was working on, I stopped to make my purchase. Wading through the overly “helpful” employees I found the electronic components area. But, I couldn’t remember the exact values of the potentiometers I needed so I grabbed all they had, paid with cash and was on my way.
I went back the following day to return the un-opened potentiometers that I did not need – receipt in hand. The process went smoothly until the clerk asked for my street address. I told him that I prefer not to give that information out. They claimed that it was for “loss prevention purposes”. I say “they” because another cashier came over, presumably for moral support to his co-worker. I told them to make an address up – no dice, claiming the “system” “will kick you out”. I tried to explain that I have the receipt and the un-opened parts and that I paid with cash so they would have no way of knowing that I was the person who originally purchased them anyway, no luck. I tried for store credit, same result.
I suppose, I could have made up an address, or even given them my real one but i didn’t feel like it. I shouldn’t have to be put through a personal information wringer to complete a legitimate transaction that happens every day at normal stores. I felt like I was being accused of theft or had to in some way, justify my actions.
I will say that the employees weren’t rude and they were just carrying out what they were trained to do. In the end, I took the ~$10 worth of potentiometers home with me, where they sit waiting for a new project.
Is this normal business practice, or is it time for RadioShack to get with the times for its data mining?
(Photo: Brave New Films)
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Like CamilleR said, it’s something we have to do. It’s designed so random employees can’t just ring up a bunch of fake returns and pocket the money. Employees have been caught when corporate did follow-ups on suspicious receipts by contacting the supposed name and address taken.
@GothGirl: Indeed. I was told the address requirement for returns was to make sure we were returning it to an actual customer.
@Lucky225: Wrong. It’s listed at all the terminals in the store, next to the notices about accepting checks. Asking for names and addresses for batteries/regular purchases was for marketing, which they found out didn’t do so well with customers, so they scrapped it. They still like us to catch the info when we can, but it’s not pushed as much.
@LibertyReign: Sad to say, employees tend to be a little inept about this. It’s not just the random fake name and address that gets them caught, but a string of returns with suspicious information.
@Buran: Store associates don’t make the rules. We just explain them. If you don’t like it, I invite you, or anyone, to contact corporate. I tell people this all the time, but few listen or act on it. Nothing will get changed if customers don’t complain. They listen to the customers more often than they do to us.
@avsfan123: Not any more. Didn’t go over well with consumers.
@ellastar: I’ve been in numerous radio shacks and never seen these rules posted. Sorry.
I will continue to give Radio Shack a fake address, like it or not.
My company was exhibiting at a trade show and the exhibit hall “required” my social security number to work our booth. When I refused they told me I couldn’t register without it. I gave them 123-45-6789 and they told me that that wasn’t real. I told them to prove to me that it wasn’t. They didn’t bother me after that.
I use (817) 415-3011, and 300 RadioShack Circle, Fort Worth, Texas 76102. Its RadioShack Corporate.
One option is to give a foreign address. Deliver it as sincerely as you can. It may encourage them to give up, when it doesn’t fit the fields.
On another note, though, many retailers request this info when taking an item back for a refund/credit/exchange, so that if they later find something is awry with the product, they can track you down. Hannaford does this, also, just to name one.
@Gorky: Actually, the law says that they don’t even have to take back defective items unless the defect was intentionally hidden by the seller. All purchases are final unless the seller has agreed to a return, however conditional it is.
Fred Meyer requires picture ID with returns, even if it’s paid for with a credit card and you have receipts.
celticgina: damn you! LOL
I worked at that godforsaken place for a year and had to deal with angry consumers with regard to addresses that I simply stopped asking and would always make up an address on returns unless I recognized the buyer. I eventually had the lowest percentage of names and addresses in the entire district (managers get a printout every week) and was threatened that I’d lose my job if I didn’t shape up. Thankfully I know lots of zip code/city matches so I could make up very plausible addresses. I also quit about two weeks later anyway.
A few months later they gave up on the name & address on purchase policy. Blah.
Don’t get me started on the rest of the crap they wanted us “sales associates” to do. I always refused, more or less. For example, I regularly told customers to buy the cheap cables rather than the $25 cables, and had lots of customers who always came to me as a result. But you can’t retain a job there while maintaining any integrity, so people like me are forced out.
Oh, and I would regularly have to fix the display A/V systems since nobody had a damned clue how to hook things up. I used the cheap cables, of course, and things always looked great. RS sells crap anyway. This was around 2001, for the record.
Oh, and I didn’t make it clear: the system -does not- accept returns without name and address. This was true at least when I worked there.
Giving a bogus address is much better than having to show ID.
There’s a huge loss prevention industry that sits behind these requests for your data. Return data gets filtered into your dossier, which companies can then access, for a fee, to see if you are or will be a “good” customer, then reserve the right not to serve you, or to serve you with a lower tier of service.
There are legitimate reasons for some of this (habitual returners, or return fraudsters), but it’s gotten way out of hand from the consumers’ perspective.
@Imaginary_Friend:
I really have to take issue with this ‘statistic’:
# On average, Americans spend 8 months opening junk mail in the course of their lives.
If you lived 80 years, that accounts for 12 minutes a day every day for your entire life. I barely spend 12 seconds a day looking at junk mail, I can’t imagine spending 60 times that amount on junk mail.
@Flyinace2000: The customer database is no longer store specific. It’s centralized in Fort Worth and is accessed by phone numbers.
To clear up something else, this is verbatim from the FRONT of an RS receipt: “Your name, address, and the original sales receipt are required for all refunds. Sales and returns are subject to the terms and conditions identified on the back.”
Most of the time, the salesperson taking your information doesn’t really want to. They’re just doing what they’ve been told is their job. They really won’t care if you make one up.
@GothGirl: When I worked at RS, most of the big losses were due to employee theft or an employee was instrumental in allowing outsiders to rip the store off. I believe that most theft at the retail level is usually an inside operation, so its just not a problem with Radio Shack, Target or any other place that requires a phone number or address to return something.
@Gorky: Despite the rumors, there was never a list of “serial returners” when I worked at RS, though there were times I wish there was. Most of the folks I worked with got pretty good at spotting these people though and avoided them like the plague, usually having a manager ring them up since the manager didn’t make a commission. Generally any time someone bought a radar detector, FRS Radios (this was when they still went for $40 a pop) or one of the telephone recording devices/portable cassette recorders, there was about a 90% return rate on those items at some stores. Oddly enough, the one store I had the biggest problem with people “renting” things was in one of the more affluent areas in our district.
As other former RS employees have chimed in, if someone refused to give a name and address, we just made something up. Since our name/address % didn’t count dupes, and would actually flag an address after it popped up more than a few times in a week, we probably had a dozen or so addresses in the system that were completely bogus or were for other businesses/government offices in the area. Or we’d just choose one at random. The only downside to the customer was if they came back to make a return and refused to give their name at a minimum, it was an absolute PITA to look up a past transaction. We couldn’t search past maybe two weeks in the computer. After that, we had to go sifting through the daily report(s) if someone wanted more than store credit.
@barty:
That’s because RatShack sells Rocky Mountain Radar(RMR), biggest scam on radar detectors in the world, and cobra which is prolly the 2nd worst radar detector in the world. Then these 18 year old kids get popped and don’t even get an alert, or if they do it’s right when the cop is in view. Then these kids who think RDs are a license to speed get pissed and return it to pay for their speeding ticket. FRS radios suck, advertised as if they’re CBs, go as far as 49mhz kid walkie talkies, and the recording devices suck, way too much hum, no audio isolation. And then ratshack wonders why they have a high return rate.
@cristiana: Some people open their junk mail on the can and use it when they’re done; it probably takes them a little longer.
[environment.about.com]
I work at a retail store that requires an address and phone number for all cash returns, store credits, and returns without a receipt. The reason is to prevent fraudulent returns. I’ve seen cash receipts that looked legit, but weren’t. When I got the chance to research the original transactions (I suspected fraud for other reasons), they were not what was printed on the physical receipt. There’s no time in the moment to do this, plus we can’t accuse anyone of being part of a crime ring that has stolen receipt tape and a printer, so all I could do was process the returns, collect all the data I could, and file an LP report.
Criminals ruin things for everyone else, and you should always read the return policy.
Here’s the solution:
If the sales reciept is the only posting of the return policy, the policy wasn’t in plain view at the time of the purchase.
Take the store to small claims court, ask for the amount of the purchase in damages, and then the remainder of the 3000/5000 dollar limit in punitive damages.
Then, explain to the judge that if the return policy had been posted in plain sight, you would have shopped elsewhere.
You can’t print a policy on a store reciept, since a customer doesn’t get to see the policy until AFTER the sale has been made.
@Lucky225: This was when they sold Whistler and Bel clones actually. I left RS for another job in 1999. People returned the stuff because they really didn’t *need* it in the first place. They were going on a trip, didn’t want to keep it afterwards, and returned it, typically at a store at their destination. We’d only know about these when they showed up on the weekly chargeback reports. The recording devices actually worked quite well, we just got them back after someone finished monitoring their spouse’s or child’s phone conversations.
@barty:
Oh haha, the ratshack branded RadioShack Detectors, I remember getting one for $19 when the FCC told them to piss off cus it didn’t comply with part 15. That thing sucked on reception too. After 6 speeding tickets in Arkansas I switched to a real detector, Escort Passport SRX with Laser Shifters. Haven’t got a ticket since, and the thing keeps me alert when driving. As for the recording devices, my friend uses rat shack recording devices, but he has a ground loop isolator as well to get the hum out, with a ground loop isolator, they are actually okay. I liked the ones that record only when the phone is picked up, I found a way to defeat them though by attaching a resistor to the phone line — came in handy when my friend’s dad started recording his conversations and kept the equipment in a locked room, I gave him a phone cord with the resistor attached and he’d just plug his phone in that way when he had his convo’s on the D.L., and let unimportant calls get recorded, it was great.
This is true. I am a current RadioShack employee and we always ask for name/address during returns. The computer system will demand input for name and address. I find it irritating that they would send people away without trying to bypass the issue. The company is supposed to be based on exceptional customer service (at least that’s what I thought), and I’m certain that customer service is providing the customer with what they WANT. At our store it is possible to enter the store address and phone number if a customer refuses. I don’t know if other stores follow the same procedure, but we would never send a customer away like that. Looking at the big picture: Is it really worth losing business over petty names and addresses? I do agree that it’s a poor policy and most definitely intrusive. It’s time for a change.
I’ve been in situations where a no-need-to-know business insists on having your address. When I’ve refused to give it, whoever I’m dealing with just inputs a phony one.