Looks like it was Pre-owned.

Thread over.

@Charles Zhang:
I'd tell RS to kiss my pre-puce.

lol, retail managers are scummy.

Radio Shack didn't take this very seriously. Guess I won't shop there... seriously.

I used to work in retail (gamestop...don't hate, I've learned my lesson) and I can tell you it probably wasn't even a manager and more likely some moron SA. It happens more than you'd think.

@Charles Zhang:

Thank you, thank you. Try the veal.

Was the store Corporate or Franchise?

If corporate, then no surprise there. RS company stores will rip off your grandma in two heartbeats.

If franchise, BIG surprise. Every visit to RS franchises are met with friendly, smart folks that really do make every effort to help you out.

I feel bad for the author. His third Pre may also turn out defective.

The Pre has a number of defects that would drive a user to return the phone. Mine powers completely off if I close the keyboard too quickly because of a know loose battery issue. I've fixed it by jamming a piece of paper between the case and battery. My screen has broken pixels. Others are having major battery issues, or other poor build quality issues.

I can reasonably expect Radio Shack is receiving a large number of returned phones. A sales associate checking the phone out, not seeing anything immediately wrong with it and reselling it assuming the first customer was mistaken about a faulty phone.

For a phone that costs around $170 to build it sounds like the $550 no contract price has a large number of defective products built in.

The headline should read "Radioshack Employee" rather than just "Radioshack." There's a big difference.

Companies don't always act correctly and that's why we have blogs like this. As consumers we need to have integrity as well. Painting every company black for individual acts like this just chips away at the Consumerist.com's credibility and clout.

@Charles Zhang: You win an internet!

@Adhominem: An employee of a company is a representative of the company and should act as such and be held accountable as such. Companies have to properly train employees and have procedures in place to make sure that this doesn't happen again. If they don't then it is their fault.

@computerwiz3491:

Was corporate notified? Did they condone it? Do we even know this was corporate owned? Was it a franchise?

@computerwiz3491: Agreed. It is implied that Radio Shack (or Best Buy, etc) as a "thing" cannot sell someone a bad piece of hardware. It will always be a representative of said company that does these things no matter how high up they are.

@undefined:

I'm pretty sure we can agree that it's not official store policy of Radio Shack to sell customers defective and broken products. I'm also sure we can agree this manager or whatever sales associate was acting against store policy.

The headline implies something far more nefarious than what is stated in the article. And from what it sounds like, some SA sold the defective phone, the manager wasn't even aware of it. But when confronted he replaced the phone once, then again when the earpiece had a problem, and waived the activation fee.

to be fair, a lot of people to the "switcher-roo." That is, the buy something it breaks so they buy another one and return the broken one for a full refund, saying they never opened it, etc. Radio Shack can't be expected to launch every app and check. They usually just check the serials, which are stickers easy to swap. A friend of mine does this all the time.

@wvFrugan: Excellent. Sometimes, in my zeal to use big words, I confuse "prepuce" and "crepuscule" with hilarious results.

I agree that we shouldn't claim all of Radioshack is like this just because one store did it but my story is going to help that. I worked at Radioshack for 6 months and we were told to do things like this all the time. If we got a cell phone back we just put it back in the cage and sold it to the next person. I was just a part time sales person so there wasn't much I could do especially since I had a new store manager every 2 months.

@Nighthawke: Glad someone else was thinking this. During my years as a franchise employee, I would have bent over backwards to take care of a customer, and most of my coworkers would have done the same.

Coporate, though? Ick.

@ngallion: It's probably also worth mentioning that while it can be hard to tell if a store is corporate or a franchise, it's a dead giveaway that a store in a mall is corporate. Steer clear!

With this kind oif story, their are always comments about it being a "bad employee", or "not representative". This is a load of hooey, and doubly so in this case.

As some others have pointed out, the employee is acting on behalf of the company. They are the duly designated representative. They are the company.

Their are always some bad apples, but a good company will act quickly and decisively to resolve the problem, and implement policies to try and limit the bad. When this happens, it almost never is featured here, or it has the headline "Company X acts quickly, customer very satisfied".

So good company, it happens like this:
1. Customer buys gadget X.
2. Gadget X is defective, broken, or otherwise problematic
3. Customer realizes gadget X was already returned once.
4. Customer X returns item to store.
5. Manager is aghast that this happens, he immediately replaced it with a new one, possibly offering a discount. He makes sure item works before the customer leaves (if possible).
6. Manager investigates the incident, and takes appropriate disciplinary action to make sure it never happens again.
7. Manager sends a letter to followup, or calls to follow up. He says the issue has been resolved and makes sure the customer is still happy with the purchase.
8. Customer is happy, or at least satisfied. They may write a post about the experience, but probably won't.

But here is what happened:
1. Customer buys gadget X.
2. Gadget X is defective, broken, or otherwise problematic
3. Customer realizes gadget X was already returned once.
4. Customer X returns item to store.
5. Manager denies, lies, or otherwise ignores the problem.
6. Manager does the minimum necessary to get the customer out the store.
7. Nothing ever happens to appease the customer unless the customer raises a huge stink on consumerist, and nothing ever happens to make sure the problem doesn't reoccur.
8. Customer is so dissatisfied the they write it up and consumerist posts it.

In both cases, the companies representative did something wront. In the first, though, we see a scenario where the company has (apparently) tried to limit the "bad apple". in the second, we see a company that does not.

A single incident may not be indicative of bad "corporate culture", but sometimes a scenario just rings true. Whether because their are MANY such incidents, or because it has happened personally to someone.

Radio Shack falls in both categories for me. I have had a number of negative experiences with them, a number of neutral, and no positive ones since the mid-nineties. Because of this, I only use them when I don't have another immediate option available. For me, this story rings very, very true.

@1stMarDiv: I'd think it happens with every single sale. How could it possibly happen more than that?

Radio Shack has changed ... for the worse! Back in the 70;s when I was in my teens I worked there (as many techie-types) and you actually got people there who UNDERSTOOD what electronics were and wanted to give good customer service (I worked at an authorized Radio Shack franchise dealer and would install CB radios and car stereos). Today, Radio Shack employees are just schlubs looking for a paycheck who, for the most part, have no clue about electronics and with a rare exception care very little about customer service, let alone have any knowledge about the products they sell. Thus, we have the downfall of Radio Shack as we know it today.

@Adhominem: This man was hired by this company. A company IS the people who work for it. Policy or not, this is something RADIO SHACK did.

If the manager had, say, I don't know... punched the customer in the face (crazy, I know, just go with it), Radio Shack would be liable.

I would guess the manager was aware it was returned. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have denied it being used. In fact, he would have been surprised and curious.

Denial is usually a giveaway when people are lying. People who are telling the truth are usually very open and cooperative. People who are lying are combative.

You'd think people would learn to fake it better, but they don't. Just ask police investigators. It's almost always the same story.

Return it again, don't let them get their commission.

But it directly from Sprint.

Oh it gets better if you read the site:

The guy who returned the Pre that was Pre-owned got a twitter message from somebody else who was resold the same Pre about 4 hours after he returned it.

The sold it, it was returned as defective, resold it as new, it was returned AGAIN as defective, and then they resold it as new again...

Sounds like this story you guys posted back with an iPhone incident. [consumerist.com]

Most retail people are not hired as salespeople. All theyb have to do is ring it up. This includes Sears, Penney's, Target, Wal-mart and even Fry's and Best Buy.

perhaps i can be of assistance with some helpful insider knowledge:

1) it is radioshack company policy to sell returns WHENEVER POSSIBLE. this includes phones. there is a procedure to inspect returns for defects, but the effectiveness of this procedure differs wildly from store to store. unofficial official rule (there's a lot of these at radioshack, btw): if it doesn't look like it's been used, it's new.
2) as a rule, phones are SUPPOSED to be sent to radioshack repair whenever they are returned before they are resold. this is in response to a few incidents where customers were receiving pre-personalized (or more accurately, pre-porned) cell phones.
3) phones that are sent to RS repair are sent at a cost to the store (which affects some of the most important metrics for gauging store manager success & bonuses). repairs are billed at extortionist rates ($50+, even for something as easy as a memory wipe).
4) phones sent back from repair are sold at a discount as refurbished. this means the store takes a hit on both ends - they pay for the repair & then they sell a phone for $30-80 less. as a result, stores will likely lose money (or at best, break even) on the sale of the phone.
5) due to these factors, as well as pressure from the middle managers on the district/regional level, most store managers keep returned phones in inventory with the hopes of passing them off on other store managers, returning them to corporate as part of a buyback program when the item nears obsolescence, or simply passing them off on the next poor soul to take their place when they leave.

so, to ensure NEW at radioshack (or really any retailer), insist on phones (or other electronics) in sealed packages. the boxes almost always have a seal, but if not, you can tell a new phone by whether the components (phone, battery, etc.) are in plastic bags with "tamper-proof" tape seals. if they are not, chances are good that you're getting a returned phone (which is often times defective). demand an alternative or shop somewhere else.

@Nighthawke: I'm not quite sure if the one near me is corporate or franchise, but I can say that they are awesome. Whenever I have issues with my phones (and I've had a few screwy phones... damn LG Fusic) they've helped me fix them quickly, and with minimal fuss. As a result I haven't shopped at any other store for my two year upgrades.

@narcolepticdoc:

Wow, that could possibly be criminal.

An activated sprint phone can not easily be re activated. One must call in for a master lock code instead of the one time lock code that the activation system gives. As a so called "scummy" manager of a RadioShack store all of my returned phones are properly handled and my employees will get retrained if they don't.

Radio shack are jerks, you can't even buy a simple thing without them trying to shove other stuff down your throat. I bought a $2 pack of wire crimps, and the guy said I could get half off if I was with a certain phone carrier. So I foolishly told him what carrier I was with, and he proceeded to try to shove a cel phone service contract down my throat. It was clear this was obviously a staged tactic to just get me to talk about cel phone.. there was no discount with any carrier.

@capkincaid: That's what I was wondering. I used to work at RadioShack, and I'm wondering how they managed to activate an already activated phone without someone wondering what was going on. Cell phone returns are supposed to be sent back to be refurbished. I always grabbed a brand-new box whenever possible (sometimes I couldn't avoid selling phones we had taken out of the box to show people), or called in for the master lock code only if I was sure the phone hadn't been sold before. Then again, our store/employees weren't scummy.

However, knowing some of the stores and employees I have encountered, and knowing that RadioShack is usually the last to get a really hot item (or gets it in really low quantities), I wouldn't be surprised if there were some scummy employees selling an activated (popular) phone just so they could claim a sale.

I was an assistant manager for a corp owned Radio Shack a long time ago. This is SOP for them, they do it all the time.

@mac-phisto: In my store at least(a high volume store at that) we no longer do refurbished phones. Every phone return is sent back outright. Also, just because a phone is not sealed or some components are not in their tamper proof packs does not mean a phone is not new. Would you refuse to buy a car soley because the guy in front of you drove it around the parking lot? Some people are very insistent on seeing a working example of a phone and we only get one demo phone per carrier.

Should this have happened? No.
Should we crucify a company for it? No.

@nocturnaljames: They do this because of the horrible pressure from corporate. It doesn't make it right (and I avoided it whenever possible when I worked there), but it makes it easier to understand. There are some people who are cell phone sharks and enjoy the fast-paced selling, but most of the employees work under the threat of being written up and berated for not selling any cell phones for a month in a market that's been oversaturated. It's ridiculous.

You mean they didn't even offer to double the warranty? How RadioShack Of them.

@Charles Zhang: Fantastic! Why can't all f-worders be like you?!

@Andy misses his 360 :(: Not fuckers lol

@ngallion: Hm, "ick" is pretty much how we at corporate felt about the one franchise store that fell within our district. Maybe it was just the one store, but it was ancient and dirty, and so was everything and everyone in it. And they were constantly calling us for help with customers because they could never figure out exactly what the hell they were doing. So I suppose it just depends, but honestly, after wasting away two perfectly good years of my life working for those blood-sucking cretins, I would never set foot in another RS again regardless of who owns it.

@Adhominem: I take it you've never worked for a Radio Shack. It may not be "official" store policy but "official" doesn't mean squat. We were "officially" supposed to send back all opened returns to repair regardless of condition (especially phones) but I guarantee you less than 1/10 of those actually got sent back. Most were just polished up and put right back on the shelf. That was not due to errant employees, that was the instruction of the store and district managers. Mac-phisto on the thread down below explains pretty well why that is. Doesn't make it right, but that's what happens. The other problem was also that we got extremely limited stock, and attempting to resell returns was pretty much the only way we ever had anything in the damn store. Most of the SAs didn't like it, and most of us complained all the time. I assure you, whoever did this most likely did so at the behest of his or her manager. The manager may not have been aware that this particular unit was a return, or defective, but I'm still certain that the employee who put it back on the shelf would have done so only because that is what s/he had been instructed to do in the past.

@vastrightwing:

That's not much of a promise.

@Adhominem: "Painting every company black for individual acts like this just chips away at the Consumerist.com's credibility and clout."

I don't get it. Are you questioning The Consumerist's credibilty and clout based on the action of one employee who wrote the headline? Or, are you telling us that we shouldn't behave like that? You can't have it both ways.

@Adhominem:

It requires additional time and effort on the part of the customer to discern the two in any given situation...if it even is possible.

A company or its employees getting upset about this mistake is just another way of saying they are upset at the person making it for not knowing the company's internal policies, or not knowing all the little details of the employee's job. It's assuming that outsiders should act as though they have insider's knowledge. It is even more unfair than conflating the will of the employee and that of the company.

@ellastar: God, tell me about it. My manager was the worst about that stuff. Every so often he'd make his way up to the sales floor to push stuff on people to try and make sure we were following his shining example. For every single customer, regardless of what they were buying, the same speech: "Would you like to save 10% on that with a Radio Shack credit card? Would you like the service plan for only $5.99? We've got a great deal on batteries, 4 for $10! Hey, nice phone you've got there- who's your service with? Did you know if you've had your phone for two years you can upgrade for free? Here, have a flyer! You should really buy a Monster cable with that. What's your zip code?" It was so bloody embarrassing. None of the SAs ever did more than one or two of those per customer, but he seriously unloaded on all of them. Ugh.

@Adhominem: Ah no the company sold the product - the sales contract is between the company and the customer not the employee. The employee is merely the agent of the company. Consumerist is correct in how it worded the article.

@Clobberella: That sounds like a better option.