Hi all, I've had times of bad service with them here as well.  About a
couple years ago, I had purchased a VHF mobile radio, and it was the last
one they had in stock here, and when I got it here to my QTH, I noticed
that the thing hadn't included a manual.  I went back inthere a couple days
later, explained the situation to an employee who I know quite well,  and I
did not receive the manual right away, I had to wait at least a good month
before I got it.
That was very frustrating.
at 08:40 AM 10/31/2004, Bob Humbert wrote:
>Why do you suppose their return policy is so strict?  Could it be that
>probably 90% of everything that they sell would come back if people weren't
>as bold as we are?  I, for one, am not a passive consumer and I don't think
>that you are either.  I have even bin screwed with their batteries.  They
>sold me the wrong batteries for a Sony cordless phone and getting back to
>the store which isn't convenient to public transportation was really
>difficult.  I don't even know anyone who will defend their products or their
>personnel policies.  You can't hire rocket scientist with a little helpful
>knowledge for minimum wage.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Louis Kim Kline" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 9:45 PM
>Subject: Re: USB to Serial With a Laptop
>
>
> > Hi.
> >
> > My first horror story with Radio Shack goes back to the Realistic
> > DX-300General Coverage Communications Receiver.  I returned the first one
> > within 24 hours, wanting my money back after I saw how bad the front end
> > was and the fact that they wired the battery cradle backwards.  The store
> > manager refused to give me my money back, and would only allow me to
> > exchange it for another receiver.  Apparently in 1979 when I bought the
> > radio, all sales over a certain dollar amount were final, no refunds.  So,
> > I took the second receiver home.  It was better than the original
> > receiver,
> > but it was still a piece of garbage, with intermod and garbage galore, and
> > if you used a single wire antenna on the wire terminals the front end
> > saturated on medium wave and around the 49 meter band big time.  The RF
> > attenuator only worked on the coax connecter, so I made up a little jumper
> > with a PL259 on one end, and an alligator clip on the other end.  I just
> > ran my random wire antenna in through the coax connector.  I also learned
> > that off tuning the preselector would sometimes roll back the sensitivity
> > to the point that I could tame down an overpowering station.
> >
> > Anyway, I started to run into problems with a self oscillation in the
> > receiver front end, and back to the store it went.  They sent it in for
> > repair, and it came back and worked for a few weeks (all they did was
> > realign it), and then the LSB mode quit working.  By this time I was about
> > 2 months from the end of the warranty, and they wanted to give me still
> > another receiver.  I figured that if this one was as much of a problem as
> > the first two, I would be stuck with it.  They also offered to give me a
> > credit towards the purchase of the DX302 which was going to be released
> > soon.
> >
> > Well, like our friend with the scanner, I decided to make a ruckus about
> > it
> > in a croweded store on a Friday night, and threatened the store with legal
> > action if my money wasn't refunded promptly.
> >
> > But, the crowning glory was that I got a hold of the district manager's
> > phone number and gave him an earfull at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday
> > morning.  The local store called me at about 10:00 a.m. that same morning
> > and told me to bring in the receiver with all acc4essories and my sales
> > receipt and they would refund my money.
> >
> > I avoided purchasing major pieces of equipment from Radio Shack for a
> > number of years because of that incident, relenting in the late 1980's to
> > buy a PRO2020 scanner, which actually was a halfway decent scanner, and
> > the
> > Realistic DX440, which was a great FM receiver, but the MW/SW reception
> > was
> > still crap.
> >
> > I presently still have the Realistic DX390 receiver, which is actually a
> > reasonable receiver, ignoring the flimsy headphone and antenna connectors
> > which I never use anyway.
> >
> > That is my horror story with Radio Shack.
> >
> > I do have to say, though, that I miss their Tandy brand of computers.
> > True
> > that some of them were turkeys, but I caught a couple of them on sale that
> > were very solid performing computers.  I had a Tandy 1000RL with a 40MB
> > hard drive, the upgrade to 768KB of RAM, and the clock chip.  For a DOS
> > machine in a ham shack, it was a great little machine.  It was very well
> > shielded, so radio noise was virtually nil, and it had a small foot print
> > which suited the available space in my ham shack.  And, I got it on
> > closeout for $399!
> >
> > The other computer that I bought from them was a 386SX 33MHz machine that
> > had a 106 MB hard drive and 2 MB of RAM which I expanded to 4 MB to make
> > Windows 3.1 run better.  That machine had a double enclosure around the
> > main board and the expansion cards, and as you might expect with that much
> > metal around the guts of the machine, it was also quiet from a radio
> > standpoint.
> >
> > Those were great machines.
> >
> > But, I think the purchase that I liked the best was the HTX202.  I liked
> > that radio because it had the toughest front end of any HT that I've ever
> > carried through downtown Rochester.  I think they hit a home run with that
> > one, and I was sorry to see them discontinue it, especially since the
> > radios that they followed up with weren't nearly as well designed.
> >
> > But, it seems like when they get a good product, they usually end up
> > discontinuing it about the time you want to go buy one.  I was going to
> > pick up their CD recorder after I finished paying for the new roof that I
> > put on the house this summer.  Yep, you guessed it!  They discontinued it,
> > and didn't replace it with anything equivalent.  I'm still looking for a
> > CD
> > recorder.
> >
> > 73, de Lou K2LKK
> >
> >
> >
> > Louis Kim Kline
> > A.R.S. K2LKK
> > Home e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
> > Work e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
> > Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753

Dan In Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
Amateur radio station VA3ets.
EchoLink node number:6165.   Skype name: va3ets
Email or MSN: [log in to unmask]