Friday, February 22, 2008

Radio Shack sucks

This will be one of those somewhat vindictive, purely personal blog posts that every blogger seems to come to periodically.

Don’t buy anything at Radio Shack, unless you don’t care if it breaks and you don’t see a dime of your money back.

Me, back at the store after buying a Radio Shack personal cassette tape player to listen to FOIA tape recordings of old immigration proceedings for work:

This tape player is broken after I used it for three days. Can I get my money back? I have the receipt and it hasn’t been 30 days yet.

Sales clerk: Do you have the original packaging?

Me: No, I threw it away because I didn’t think the tape player would break after three days.

Sales clerk: No packaging means no refunds, no exceptions.

Me: Can I get store credit? (Thinking to myself, “Not that I want to buy anything here anymore, but it’s better than nothing.”) Is there anything you can do for me here?

Sales clerk: You can't get store credit, but you can trade it in for another one at another store. You can’t do it here because we are all out of that item.

Me, before walking out in an aggravated state: Thanks.

Now, why did I feel it was necessary to say thank you after what had just transpired? It must be a thankless job enforcing such a customer-unfriendly return policy, but still …

So, having vented now, I’m feeling a little better already. I’ve re-learned what every junior high school student knows but I must have forgotten over the years: low price is not a reason to buy stuff at Radio Shack, it’s a reason not to buy stuff there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i am a former radioshack manager i worked there for nearly 2 years anything that you buy from a radioshack that is less then 50 dollars they have to return at the stor eif it was bought within 90 days is called the 50 dollar rule.it doesnt matter about packageing if you would of called cust service the manager would of had his ass handed to him. on anything 50 -200 dollars reguarding packing its up to the manager to decide to take back because they have to send them back to the manufacter for credit and if they dont have the packageing they wont get credit. For the most part anything that you buy from a radioshack for less then 100.00 is scraped out of the system when its returned which means that the manager takes it out of inventory and throws it away

yave said...

Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately, knowing this doesn't do me much good now. A rule isn't much good if you lie to your customers about it. I won't have the chance to find out if the rule normally applies, though, since i won't be going back to RS again.