No one goes to Radio Shack to take advantage of low prices. They go because they need an electronic component on short notice, and Radio Shack is pretty ubiquitous. That’s how Chris and his fiancée found themselves at a Wisconsin Radio Shack in search of a mini USB cable, but they encountered such high prices and high-pressure sales lies that they walked out and found what they needed…at the dollar store.
As a loyal reader I must inform you of a recent incident I had at “The Shack of Price Gouging” (formerly Radio Shack). Last week my fiancé lost her mini USB cord for her digital voice recorder which she uses to record her nursing lectures. She realized that the critical piece of equipment was missing when she went to download the lectures to her computer. We quickly went to the nearest Radio Shack to find a new cable where the salesman attempted to pressure us to buy a $24 digital camera replacement cord. The horrible part is how the salesman tried to pressure us into buying the cable telling us that we won’t find a better deal elsewhere.
Irony!! Desperate and running out of time, we went to the Dollar Tree right next door and found a 2 foot cable that worked well for a single Dollar! The best part of the experience was going back into “The Shack” minutes later to confront the salesman with our new cable and receipt for $1.05. His reaction was priceless: “You mean to tell me that you came back here just to show me this?” I will admit that the salesman was just trying to do his job; however, I used to go to radio shack to get affordable wires and cables. What are they doing? Honestly, I would have never looked at the dollar tree if a simple $10 or less option was available in their store. But, with prices so outrageous I will not be shopping there.
Maybe the high pressure sales tactics are in order to prevent customers from wandering out of the store and going next door.
(Photo: Mike Hepp/Penn Can Mall fan site)
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@TheOrtega: yes, even on RS’s own website! of course they only stock the higher priced items.
I recently found a good DVI-HDMI adapter on Radioshack’s website for 16 bucks. Thinking it was like the old days when people advertised items they actually stocked, I went into a radioshack only to realize that the cheapest one they had was a $50 adapter.
I decided to be patient and ordered one for 6 dollars on amazon.
I won’t even go into RS anymore to waste a few mins
What he means is “I don’t know how to cover my ass. You have caught me so to save face I will accuse YOU of doing something wrong like coming back to show me the receipt”.
What a joke RS has turned into..
While visiting family in CT, I found I had left one of my computer bags at home.
No problem, I can run to RS and pick up a 10ft ethernet cable for 10 bucks or so. They wanted close to 35 bucks!
I laughed at the guy!
The same thing happened because I use my laptops usb to charge my cell phone, that cable stayed at home as well. They wanted almost 28 dollars for a 1.5 foot cable.
HDMI cable to hook my lappy to the Hidef LCD? almost 33 bucks for 6 feet!
The guy trying to sell me tried to tell me that I needed an adapter for the end of the cable that goes into my laptop. I told him I didn’t, he argued with me and tried to tell me “NO LAPTOP COMES WITH AN HDMI CONNECTOR SLOT!!!
So they wanted me to pay ALMOST 100 bucks for 3 cables that should cost LESS than 20 bucks TOTAL! And sell me an adapter I didn’t NEED!
Needless to say, I drove to a electronics store and brought the 3 cables for ~25 bucks total.
The funny thing? The electronics store wanted almost 13 bucks for 4 AAA batteries!!!
I went back to RS for them! 2.99!!!
Hahahahahahahaha!!!!!
@idip: I don’t have too much bad experiences at my local store, but have had a few where I just walked out.
A long time ago, we were buying something, I don’t remember what, and while we were checking out, the clerk was pushing a new cellphone on us, HARD. We didn’t need one, and we weren’t there to look at cellphones. Shaddap.
It seems to depend on the crew working that day, and how many other customers are in the store at the time. I have had good experiences with helpful salespeople, and miserable experiences with pushy idiots who just wanted to sell me something I did NOT need. But yeah, back off on the hard sell, and just have the salespeople be helpful and ask questions about what you need. Like good hardware stores.
RadioShack if you’re still reading:
If every other store (office stores, BestBuy, etc.)sells cables at $20-40 and above, why not carve out a niche for yourself, and advertise gobs of basic 6-foot or smaller cables for $5-10 or less all the time? Maybe most basic adapters or gender changers for $5 or less, all the time? Rather than people laughing in your salespeople’s faces looking at a $35 pricetag on a cable they KNOW they can get elsewhere for less than $5, and buying said cables somewhere else, make up a rack, price accordingly, and put the word out. Once people figure out that they can pick up inexpensive cables at your store after buying their new printer somewhere else, for example, they’ll flock to your store to buy cables, and you’ll generate some more foot traffic? Maybe sell some other stuff too? Hello?
Damn. I don’t even go to “The Shack” for emergencies anymore. I was in a pinch and needed a card reader. I Got one of the RS branded ones as it was the cheapest one there ($20 before tax GRrrr). After only a couple uses (that same day) on a CF card one of the pins broke off, got stuck in the card, and wrecked the card slot on a Canon 5D2.
It also shredded the plastic dividers on an SDHC card.
If I need something in a hurry, and can’t get something from a Target, I just don’t bother…
I used to work at one of the pilot Radio Shack stores that they placed in Blockbuster video stores for no discernable reason (yo dawg, I heard you like failing stores, so I put a failing store in your failing store so you can go lose money while losing money). I would regularly tell customers that they could buy “x” cheaper at a variety of stores around town, typically did that so I could get back to drinking whisky under the counter and playing with the radio controlled toys. Turns out that one of those whom I provided that info to was a mystery shopper, 1 month later our store was shuttered…oopsies.
@webweazel:
I would go to Radio Shack right now if I knew I could get a not as cheap as maybe monoprice but cheaper than BB/Target/Walmart optical cable and HDMI cable. In fact, I would never order from monoprice again because, even though it only takes maybe 1-2 days to get to my place from the facility that is approximately 80 miles away, I’d much rather drive the 8 minutes and pay $5-10 more. Yep, that’s right. But not like $25-30 more. That’s stupid. I could drive up there and get the cable directly from monoprice for that mark up.
@TheOrtega:
Re-read my post and you’ll see the point I was making.
Radio Shack has lost sooooooo much money from me because of their high prices. I would rather shop at Best Buy than Radio Shack, and that is a sad, sad thing, folks.
I am surprised they are still in business, honestly. I went in a couple days to get an HDMI cable quickly and laughed when I saw their prices. I then went to Target and got a much better deal.
They must hate money.
I stopped at Radio Shack looking for batteries for a audio device. Salesgirl said they did not carry the batts, but I could buy a similar device WITH Batteries for only $20. I said this was not even an option, but what would happen when the batteries go dead on the new one? Oh, we carry this device all the time. And that made sense to her? I found the batts at Walmart of course.
Online stores like eBay or Amazon are great for finding cables at low prices. Radio Shack is not the only store that overcharges on cables. Best Buy makes a lot of its profits by overcharging on cables, too. Nearly all the big-box stores do it. As usual, it always pays to take the time to do a little research to compare prices before buying.
DOWn, baby, DOWn!
Radio Shack is like 7/11, you don’t go there for price.
See:
[www.theonion.com]
@dragonfire81:
This is when knowing technical jargon would come in handy…anytime I get the “sales talk” I just spit out some jargon and it usually will leave the seller a bit dumbfounded.
At least…dumbfounded enough for me to make a hasty exit.
@dragonfire81: when the 360′s first came out they didn’t have hdmi ports and you had to buy the microsoft brand hdmi cable because it came with an adapter. he might not have been informed yet if this was around the time that the port was added…
or he could have been an idiot.
@lmarconi: You can get HDMI cables for under 6 bucks at monoprice.com and that cable in the story looks like it’s available on their site for $0.97
@lmarconi: C’mon, you have to be single and live with your parents to work at Best Buy.
@lmarconi: I can understand the need to pay rent, make a living argument. That being said though it shouldn’t be too hard to expect at least partial honesty in salesmanship. I don’t think this case is a great example because $24 isn’t that bad a price for that type of cable if ordering it online isn’t an option. If you have to lie though to make the sale then the salesperson deserves to be called whatever bad names the customer wants. I’m not saying they should be transparent with all their sales and tell customers about things like monoprice and what not, just don’t say anything at all about the price in this case and let the customer make their own decisions. There is no need to flaunt it as something it’s not.
@lmarconi: Calling them a floor monkey is not degrading. Degrading is telling them that you’ll but an extended warranty if they do the monkey dance for you. And then not getting the warranty.
Hmmmm…now I want to try that.
@The Dude: I applied to Best Buy when relocating with my wife to an area with a slow job market. Got a job elsewhere, but give some folks a break. One has to earn a living somehow.
@fantomesq: Honestly, I think you’re taking it a bit too far, but both parties were DBs here. The salesman was kind of a jerk, but so was the OP.
@fantomesq: Dollar stores are liquidators? Maybe they used to be, maybe some independants still are, but the majority of dollar store merchandise is coming out of what I imagine to be thousands of chinese dollar store factories.
Seriously, that crap is mass-produced to be sold for a buck with a healthy margin.
@fantomesq:
It’s a similar deal with opticians. Gross margins for frames and lenses run in the realm of 1000% for a bricks-and-mortar store. That’s why internet opticians can sell you a pair of glasses with lenses for 10 bucks, especially if you don’t mind waiting for them to ship from Hong Kong.
@fantomesq: Market rate has NOTHING to do with the price of something.
Ultimately something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. That’s its value, regardless of market rate or cost to the store or anything else.
This person was willing to pay a dollar for the cable, but not $24 dollars. So the cable was not worth $24. That’s how simple this is.
RS is totally free to try to find someone who does think it’s worth that price. Customers are totally free to laugh and shop elsewhere.
@fantomesq: Careful there. You are using logic on the Consumerist! That doesn’t work around here. All companies are evil.
@Trai_Dep:
If that mother fucker hurts the public insurance chance I hope he dies a misserable death, prolonged painful cancer or something.
@Trai_Dep:
Just print up a sign that reads: “A schande fur de goyim”!
Maybe in Yiddish it will get through to that creep!
@Trai_Dep: Way to go… injecting politics for absolutely no reason.
@wvFrugan: Really? You hope that if someone doesn’t agree with your opinion on government policy that he should die a painful death? I don’t understand this ridiculous hatred.
@Trai_Dep: Bravo on both comments
My response would have been
“Yeah, and now I’m going to further show it to your manager while you watch and ask him to rethink your little “career” here! Don’t go anywhere – this will be fun!”
(Follow that by a word of mouth damages calculation to the manager saying how many thousands of dollars over the next 10 years the employee just lost them, and that is BEFORE you post on the internet.)
You see – abusive lying anti-customer retail bullies need to be put in their place. There are 250 decent people just waiting for the chance at their jobs – so be it!
@Adhominem: Because the economy has nothing to do with one’s job at all? I worked very hard during college and I work in a retail environment. My area isn’t hiring right now. Don’t be so quick to judge.
@Adhominem: This generalization is so patently absurd as to be laughable. Walmart’s VP Int’l for Chinese marker started out unloading trucks in a Walmart store. BBY CEO started out as a salesperson in the original pre-BBY BBY. Some people enjoy meeting lots of new people, enjoy the challenges of salesmanship and problem-solving, and enjoy helping people.
I can’t imagine what you do for a living, but having worked retail a long time, including time as a BBY manager, I can assure you that I did not fit into neither of your two silly assertions.
Not all salespeople are liars, not all big-box stores are terrible. Speak to your own experiences, don’t just make blanket statements, the true last resort of the unimaginative.
@DangerMouth..Passed the Audition!: @Outrun1986: Perhaps I should have said “Many (generic) dollar stores”, not specifically the Dollar Store. While some of the product is cheap foreign produced non-name brand product, much of it is brand name overruns, clearance and liquidation.
@wellfleet: You’re right, I made a very cynical generalization that was widely inaccurate and I apologize.
Though, I do defend them for my personal experiences working in the retail industry.
@trashbaby: Monoprice is GREAT if you can wait for it to be shipped to you, but the OP sounded like they were in a “need it today” sort of situation.
@MrHowser: less comments, more followers?: The problem is, they are choosing to make their living by lying to people. They are either lying about the product or lying about their knowledge of the product. Either way they are choosing to make their living by lying. Which in my book is equivalent to fraud.
@silver-bolt: How exactly would they do that? HDMI is just copper wire. It has no computer and anything in it that Microsoft could detect.
@arsenicookie:
That is not a HDMI cable. It was basically a cable and a switch in one. It allowed for use of Component or Composite (RCA), which ever one you needed, with a flick of a switch. Those actually came with the consoles, so you only needed one if you somehow damaged it.
@PsiCop: Computer City was purchased by CompUSA – I was working at CompUSA at the time and I remember we were FLOODED with useless stuff from Computer City after those rip-off liquidators were unable to sell the assets in a timely manner.
@Radi0logy: I learned not to trust any hardware from Computer City after a friend who needed to replace a CD drive on his PC took me to one and got one at a ridiculously low price. I installed it, and initially it worked, but inside of a week it had failed … it would spin endlessly if you put a CD in, and the eject button didn’t work, to open it you had to use the paper-clip mechanical bypass. (Of course, it opened up still spinning, which was fun … NOT!) I ended up ordering a new drive online — it might have been from CompUSA! — and put that in. No problems after that.
It would have been nice had CompUSA made a go of things, but I guess there’s too much money to be had in liquidating some businesses rather than continuing them.
@Outrun1986: Hey, now that’s a useful tip – I never would have thought to look there. Yesterday in JCPenney I saw very inexpensive mp3 players in the linens department – no idea why.
@Persistence: The customer is NOT always right. Policies exist for a reason and although sometimes rules can be bent other times they can’t. Just because you walk into a Gamestop and demand they replace your broken 360 with a brand new PS3 doesn’t mean they are going to blindingly oblige.
Even retail jobs require training to become effective at. Let’s say you sell mobile phones for AT&T. You have to be familiar with the features and functions of every device, then you have to know the features of details of all AT&T plans. It also helps to have some general working knowledge of the cellphone industry in general. This training is not acquired overnight, it takes time to learn and understand at all and become effective at helping customers.
Obviously, working the counter at a gas station selling potato chips, beer and smokes doesn’t require much fancy training.
@Areyouagoodlittleconsumer: There may well be 250 people waiting for the chance for the jobs but Radio Shack management WANTS much of the behavior that this salesperson demonstrated, so complaining to them wouldn’t be effective… Word of wisdom – do not spout out your “word of mouth damages calculation”. If you want him to help you, then telling him that you know his job better than he does is a bad strategy… lay out the situation and IF he agrees with you then he’ll draw that conclusion on his own. More likely you’ll just get platitudes and the manager will commend himself for his employee’s followthrough of his instructions… you think that hard sell comes from the employee?!?