RadioShack to close 500 stores.

[Dog Walker]

My first PC was a TRS-80 with 8 1/2 inch floppy discs that would hold a huge 140K.  Anybody else remember CNTRL-C when you changed discs?

[thekillingwax]

A capacitor blew on my TV a while back and I went to RS- they used to have racks full of components, now they had a two sided three foot high display. I hate to see people lose jobs but when Walmart has a better electronics selection than you? Time to hang it up.

[avonjax]

Let m

RS was the thing back in the day; their store is where I saw my first Apple computer in the 70s. Nowadays, they cannot compete with online purchase. Most people wanting electronic parts, etc. are savvy enough to be able to describe what they want well enough to shop for it online, where the prices can be a fraction of RS. Best Buy and others are suffering with this as well.

I will add to the Best Buy discussion....
Two weeks ago Best Buy eliminated their district staff. 2000 employees will be laid off.  Monday in phase 2 they eliminated half of the management on the store level. They say it was another 2000, but if the store I work in is an indicator it was way higher. We lost 5 in that one. Next month it's rumored that phase 3 begins with laying off at least 2 full time employees per store. They will keep all part time staff. Of course their cutting full time so they don't have to pay insurance and benefits which will be a large cut in expenses. In the store I work in there are only 6 full time employees on the sales floor. Now you kinda know why service in these places is so horrible. A bunch of, forgive me for saying this, 20 somethings who are just collecting a pay check are running the place.
I'm sure phase 4 will be store closings.
I don't see Amazon coming in and filling the gap in jobs when Best Buy goes under. These jobs will be lost. Maybe forever. We'll see.
All the online businesses will see an increase and they may hire more people to cover their needs but it will not be a help for the people in the state or city where the online retailers don't have a physical warehouse or call center. And believe me these jobs will be on the same pay scale as the Best Buy and Radio Shack which is needless to say low.

[avonjax]

A capacitor blew on my TV a while back and I went to RS- they used to have racks full of components, now they had a two sided three foot high display. I hate to see people lose jobs but when Walmart has a better electronics selection than you? Time to hang it up.

WalMart's electronics is awful. It's gonna be interesting when they are the only game in town.

[thekillingwax]

I don't really know what could be done to save best buy. The internet is killing them and right now, tons of people use them as  a showroom for amazon. Personally, I don't like buying big electronics online but they've also got competition from places like costco- I know when I bought my last receiver, BB was selling it for $700, Costco had it for $400 and the TV I bought was a few hundred cheaper there as well.

[funwithteeth]

Conversation that occured between me and my mother after finding out she spent $50 at Best Buy on HDMI cables for her new HDTV:

Me: You can get perfectly good HDMI cables for less than $10 on Amazon.

Her: No, as the salesman said to me, "If you were driving across the country, would you rather travel in a Geo or a Lexus?"

Me: It's his job to convince you to spend more money. Were $50 cables all they had?

Her: No, they had some $15 ones, but those aren't as good. And it's not like he makes a commission, so why should he be trying to get me to spend more?

[peestandingup]

I don't really know what could be done to save best buy. The internet is killing them and right now, tons of people use them as  a showroom for amazon. Personally, I don't like buying big electronics online but they've also got competition from places like costco- I know when I bought my last receiver, BB was selling it for $700, Costco had it for $400 and the TV I bought was a few hundred cheaper there as well.

The old model is dead as a door nail, but these companies are trying to hang on to it for dear life. Obviously it isn't going to work because there's very little ways you can compete with internet commerce companies that have such smaller overheads & where you're able to find any item with just a simple search from your smartphone while sitting on the toilet in your cozy home for way cheaper & less frustration.

The ONLY way to do it would be to hit them where they are weak, and that's with waiting for deliveries (which takes days). People sometimes need stuff right then, that day. Places like Best Buy could turn their stores into distribution centers, staffed by a few knowledgable employees, where someone could order what they need online (at Amazon prices) & go pick it up that same day.

Anything else is just delaying the inevitable. Which is exactly what they will do.

[Gators312]

I don't really know what could be done to save best buy. The internet is killing them and right now, tons of people use them as  a showroom for amazon. Personally, I don't like buying big electronics online but they've also got competition from places like costco- I know when I bought my last receiver, BB was selling it for $700, Costco had it for $400 and the TV I bought was a few hundred cheaper there as well.

I believe Costco also has a generous 90 day return policy with no restocking fees.

[duvaldude08]

I NEVER go in radioshack. I actually forgot they existed until I seen this thread.

[BridgeTroll]

I don't really know what could be done to save best buy. The internet is killing them and right now, tons of people use them as  a showroom for amazon. Personally, I don't like buying big electronics online but they've also got competition from places like costco- I know when I bought my last receiver, BB was selling it for $700, Costco had it for $400 and the TV I bought was a few hundred cheaper there as well.

The old model is dead as a door nail, but these companies are trying to hang on to it for dear life. Obviously it isn't going to work because there's very little ways you can compete with internet commerce companies that have such smaller overheads & where you're able to find any item with just a simple search from your smartphone while sitting on the toilet in your cozy home for way cheaper & less frustration.

The ONLY way to do it would be to hit them where they are weak, and that's with waiting for deliveries (which takes days). People sometimes need stuff right then, that day. Places like Best Buy could turn their stores into distribution centers, staffed by a few knowledgable employees, where someone could order what they need online (at Amazon prices) & go pick it up that same day.

Anything else is just delaying the inevitable. Which is exactly what they will do.

This could be a food truck vs B&M restaurant argument...

[twojacks]

Radio Shack I thought was onto the right path about a decade ago.  Does anyone else remember when they were positioning themselves as the electronic fixit guys?  When the junk you bought stopped working, they could tell you what was wrong and fix it.  I used them for a problem with a cd rom.  Most crap these days are easier to dispose of and replace than fix.  So I guess that's why that didn't fly so well.

[carpnter]

Conversation that occured between me and my mother after finding out she spent $50 at Best Buy on HDMI cables for her new HDTV:

Me: You can get perfectly good HDMI cables for less than $10 on Amazon.

Her: No, as the salesman said to me, "If you were driving across the country, would you rather travel in a Geo or a Lexus?"

Me: It's his job to convince you to spend more money. Were $50 cables all they had?

Her: No, they had some $15 ones, but those aren't as good. And it's not like he makes a commission, so why should he be trying to get me to spend more?

I pissed a salesman off in BB when I was in there buying a new HD TiVo several years ago right after they came out.  There was couple buying a TV and the salesman was trying to convince them to buy the Monster HDMI cable.  You could tell that they didn't really want to spend that much money and he kept trying to sell them.  Finally I got tired of waiting and told them that the Monster Cables were overpriced and told them that an HDMI cable was an HDMI cable and spending $150 on a Monster Cable wasn't going to make their picture any better.   He tried to argue with me about the warranty and how it was worth it and I finally said, if a cable is made to meet the spec, it is going to give you the same picture as that monster cable and I could easily buy 8-10 or more HDMI cables online for the same cost as that Monster Cable, so the warranty is pointless. 
After they decided not to buy the Monster Cable and the salesman went to get the TV they thanked me for my advice.  I told them about a couple of websites they could buy cables from cheap, monoprice.com being one of them.

[coredumped]

Looks like they're not going to make it.

Reports of RadioShack's demise are nothing new, but now it seems like the electronics retailer may be done for good. Bloomberg reports that company is in talks with Sprint to hand over around half of its remaining stores to the wireless company. The rest of RadioShack's locations will close, and those that are included in the deal will be painted yellow and black. This means the shops where most of us purchased parts for a project will cease to exist. Nothing's final, and until the ink is dry, another suitor could swipe up the company and allow it to keep on chuggin' along. RadioShack is facing bankruptcy after years of declining sales, so even if Sprint doesn't agree to buy those stores, a move of some kind is imminent for the company that's been selling tech since 1921.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/02/radioshack-sprint-buyout

Too bad, they really lost their identity in the early 90s, maybe sooner when they started selling nothing but phone chargers.

Best of luck to all the employees.

[thelakelander]

Not surprising. I had forgot that they were still around. I haven't been inside of a Radio Shack since the early 1990s. I think I stopped in to look at the price of pagers then and I walked out because they were too high.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I wish the employees well too.  Jon Bois, the sportswriter for SBNation, wrote a funny but sobering essay a while back about his experiences in working for Radio Shack for a couple of years.  Sounds like they painfully overworked their employees and store managers, and management (obviously) gave little thought to modernizing the store's inventory or approach.  There's fascinating vignettes in there about inventory purchases too, e.g., his store in Kentucky was forced to buy 100 radio controlled versions of a cartoon car from a British TV series, and predictably sold none.