Corey pre-ordered a phone at RadioShack, placing a whopping $50 down on the handset of his dreams. Once the phone came in, the clerk couldn’t find a way to sell him the phone without charging an extra $200. When Corey withdrew his order, the clerk told him he’d “burn” the $50 gift card as a result.

He writes:

I don’t know where to turn, RadioShack has given me the runaround slash completely ignored me in regards to a pre-order their employees were completely unprepared to fill. I have sent the following message to RadioShack via radioshackhelp.com, but expect to be completely neglected on that front as well. Any help?

I placed a pre-order for the Samsung Epic 4G and came to pick it up when I received a phone call from the RadioShack employee that it was ready on 8/31. I spent an hour and a half in the store because the employee could not get the phone to ring up the correct price. Everything was fine on Sprint’s end, the order went through and the activation was set to go, but the register was ringing up the phone for $449 instead of $249. The RadioShack employee kept calling Sprint to try and figure out what was going on, but it was clearly an issue with it either not being entered into the register properly or something else on RadioShack’s end.

Sprint customer care basically kept telling the RS employee there is nothing they can do from their end and I even suggested maybe he should try calling a RadioShack employee helpline or support and I was brushed off and told, “I’m the employee, you let me take care of it.” After an hour and a half of no progress I was told to “come back in 2 hours and it will be taken care of.” Now, I have other things to do with my day, I had already spent close to two hours in the store and was told to come back later and my new phone would be working, in the meantime my existing phone (which is my only phone) would stop working. This was unacceptable to me. So I told the sales associate I no longer wished to purchase my phone with him and I would like to cancel my pre-order. I was told that is impossible and I will lose my $50 I placed towards to phone which is on a giftcard, I was told the giftcard will be “burned” for not being used on the pre-order,

Corey bailed on RadioShack after an unsuccessful attempt at nagging customer service. He ended up buying his phone at a Sprint Store but still hasn’t gotten his pre-order money back.

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