RadioShack Exploring Possible Sale or Merger

For an electronics nerd like me that lives in the middle of nowhere this is BAD news. I'll have to drive 2 hours to get somewhere similar if Radio Shack goes away.

SprintCC said:
For an electronics nerd like me that lives in the middle of nowhere this is BAD news. I'll have to drive 2 hours to get somewhere similar if Radio Shack goes away.

I'm assuming you live in a community with a RadioShack franchise. If that's the case, then it could be a bad deal. I know the Ace Hardware in Knox Indiana has a RadioShack inside the Ace Hardware store. So if Best Buy buys out RadioShack & eliminates the franchises, at least the Ace Hardware store won't close, but would lose the RadioShack portion of the business. I last remember that store selling Verizon Wireless & Centennial Wireless. I don't know if that store still sells Verizon Wireless since RadioShack doesn't own that...
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ever heard of radioshack.com? Or www.(wirelesscarrier).com?

oh and if you don't have internet,theres always a library. If you don't havee a library then good luck trying to get wireless in the first place

Unfortunately your type of retail store is few and far between these days. I suppose consumers have made their choice with the Walmarts etc... of the world. It appears low paid workers & lackluster service is the future in retail .

I disagree, in the case of radioshack, most of the store are either staffed with sharks, or nerds. and its pretty hard to find a balance between the two. i couldnt tell you what resistor you need to make a 3v bulb work on a 12v system. but i could tell you who has the best wireless plans. Most often i find that stores with huge wireless numbers either have employees doing things illegally/immorally, or a manager that doesnt catch it/doesnt want to catch it. I cant understand why one company growing in a downturned economy would want to be bought by another being hurt by the same economy. I think bestbuy is harder hit by walmart than we are. Anybody can pick an item off a peg, but somtimes people dont mind paying a little more to have more of...
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bro, if your store sells 200 'post-paid' a month, then you would be the talk of radioshack. i would love to know which store you are at.

hardly, i know of a store in portland OR that does 400.

Is it me, or has Azeron not been in the forums all that much recently?

radio shack is usually on par with pricing on BB and we dont do the mail-in rebates either.

Ha, that "knights of the kiosk" stuff was funny!!!
Sure we know the difference between GSM & CDMA because well, you work in the industry, and I'm a phone geek who has been coming to Phone Scoop for 5yrs, but do you think it's thaT important for the avg consumer to know the difference between GSM & CDMA?

Yes, it is very important. If people understand the difference in GSM and CDMA they won't be taking their "unlocked" GSM phone and screaming at people from Sprint and Verizon because it can't be used on their network.

As far as BB and RS phone sales go- it can save people a ton of money. I just recommend that people take a minute to call customer care if they do anything other than adding a plan. It takes less than five minutes to make sure that the account wasn't mistakenly set up wrong at one of these stores.

Yeah, it's always good to confirm that the acct is the way a person wants it to be.

yea, i used to work at a kiosk and now work for radioshack. the kiosk companies brainwash the employees and tell a lot of rumors and lies as fact to sound smart. radio shack is pretty good about telling the truth, or atleast the store i work at is.

maybe as an employee you should do your own research. radioshack bores people to death with their 'knowledge.' try taking an RS employee and re training them to actually sell instead of tell. their sales trainings dont exist, and they dont pay people well enough for real sales people to stay and make money. i worked for SC Kiosk for a year and left when i realized how much money and freedom there was with other companies.

This is true. Granted the staff that works with me are experience sales people who are very good at what we do. However that being said i can and will be making more with at&t/verizon. Base pay of a store manager is 28 a year. Thats also 54+ hours a week. Full time verizon sales people especially in my area if your good can bring in 60-70k a year.

The sales training is actually quite good, it borrows a lot from Carnegie in its process. The real problem is that often you get an arrogant associate who is really a rotten salesperson but thinks they are God's gift because they can manipulate their customers into buying. I have no time for these simpletons. Sometimes we get a former third party salesperson from another dealer and they end up being able to generate numbers but no customer loyalty.
With RadioShack there is a lot of responsibility on the store manager to train associates to give the customer a great experience. Many store managers are asleep at the switch and look away if someone is getting results.

I don't know about Sprint, but I am sure VZW would prefer that they log into My Verizon rather than waste the eight bucks or whatever calling into CS.

Jay, I think it's important to remember that in every company that sells a product or service, especially a complex service like wireless has good and bad people. It sounds like you are one of the ones who are careful to ensure customer satifaction.
I have been connected to the wireless business for over 20 years and I have seen a very wide variety of personalities. I have worked for a wireless carrier store and found them to be the worst. Just get the deal done, whatever it takes to meet internal goals.

We have quite good and extensive training here but not every associate cares. They go for the easy sale however they can get it. They usually do not last long because we have a lot of scrutiny on us. Those people may not be incompetent...
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professional sales manager of...? and i dont think ive ever had a customer come in to any of my stores with an unlocked gsm phone trying to get it active and i worked for t mobile(corp) for a year, and sprint(indirect) for 4. try explainging the difference in gsm and cdma to a customer and see what kind of looks you get.