RadioShack has announced they'll soon be closing between 400 and 700 of their 7000 outlets. Blogger Rudy Panucci has a thought…
I've got a suggestion: How about actually having stores filled with electronics and the parts needed to repair them, and hiring sales people who care about what they're doing and have a clue about what they're selling?
You can read what else Rudy has to say but when I read the above, I thought, "He's right." The last few times I've been into a RadioShack — and I've been to maybe four different ones in the last year to pick up a cable or an adapter or something — there's been no one in the place with a clue as to what they had, let alone what to do with it. As Rudy notes, all the people there know how to do is to try and sell you a cell phone.
I went into one a few months ago to buy an extra-loud ringer for my mother's phone. The salesman told me they didn't have any such device and that I should buy a whole new phone with a loud ringer on it. I explained that her phone already had a loud ringer on it and that we wanted something louder. I easily found just such a device on the store's shelves and the salesguy — who said he'd been working there for more than two years — looked at the thing and said, "Gee, is that what these do?"
I bought it, took it to my mother's home, installed it and discovered it didn't work. I took it back and, lucky me, got the same clerk who suggested maybe I'd installed it wrong. (You plug the phone into it and it into the wall. A blind Amish person could get this one right.) I finally got him to exchange it for another one on the shelf…and watched as he put the one I said was broken back in its box and back on sale for someone else to buy.
I'm sure the rise of the Internet has hurt RadioShack sales since it's now possible to order any electronic part in the world online with a few mouse-clicks. But I wonder if World Wide Webbing has also harmed the company by draining the supply of folks who have a little bit of "tech" sense but are willing to work for minimum wage. I'm guessing those folks now have better options and RadioShack is stuck with too many of the ones who think that when a piece of software says "Press any key to continue," they're supposed to look for a key that says "any" on it.