Talk:RadioShack

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[edit] No citation needed

"Many RadioShack stores still carry products dating as far back as the 1980s. Older RadioShack products feature the old logo, or an older Realistic or Archer brand name. It is not uncommon to see a few generations of packaging variations on slower moving products [citation needed]."

I removed the citation needed tag because this fact does not really need to be cited. If you ask any Radioshack employee they can verify this. If you wish you can use me as a citation since it is very true that product can stay in the stores for a very long time. For an extreme example, in my last store I sold a 160" roof mount antenna that clearly had been in the store since the 70's (no joke).

Additionally I added Voicestar to the list of proprietary brands since it is a Radioshack brand (check the back of the packaging if you doubt me). -[SeXyRed] SeXyRed 20:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cuecat

No talk about the cuecat or the affectionate term "ratshack" (which later I attributed as cuecatshack when we'd make city wide runs to each store for our weekly dose of cuecats)

Cuecat wasn't made by RadioShack, and wasn't exclusively sold/distributed by them - why would it be mentioned here? - DavidWBrooks 19:21, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It should be mentioned because of the popularity of the device among shack devotees and the resulting public relations fiasco that resulted when people realized it could be used to gather marketing data from the user base.65.40.11.173 03:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)burnsie

[edit] Employee treatment

Someone, somewhere should mention the heavyhanded means RS has employed to deal with its employees (shutting down anti RS websites like Radioshacksucks.com, purging measures which double its manager turnover in just a year and seem directed at highly paid tenured staff, etc.), construction of a lavish new home office or the class action lawsuits being leveled against it...not to mention the general status of the corporation and its plans for the future. I am not capable of doing so objectively and wouldn't want to mar a great article in trying, but think these things should be addressed. The current article, while professional, seems like it was written by RSH.

[edit] Old logo

There's a few stores here in High Point, NC that have the old logo. -Roygerdodger

And one in Bangor, ME with the old logo as well. That's Just It 04:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NexxTech?

The article RadioShack should refer to the company in its current state, separate from Intertan. I'm pretty sure NexxTech is an Intertan-only brand, and thus being previously carried by "RadioShack" is false, in its current definition. Only two mentions of NexxTech appear on RadioShack.com, and both refer to an external web site. I've never been to the United States RadioShack, but I've been led to believe working at Intertan it was never carried in the US.

Here they've had NexxTech products for quite some time before July 1, 2005. Centrinos as well. -Blazingluke 09:58, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Hmm. Lots? Nastajus 06:02, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Lots and lots! Blank media, cheap devices like MP3 players and digital cameras, and cheap speakers as well as others. Blazingluke 12:20, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'm glad that's all cleared up! -Blazingluke 10:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Typical "Made-In-China" garbage-that's what NexxtTech is...

NexxTech is a brand predominantly carried by CircuitCity, due to the situation with TheSource in Canada and other dealings, the perception that NexxTech is a radioshack brand or is sold by radioshack is an erroneous one.Aeonjoey 10:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

This discussion is at Talk:Tandy Corporation. Fourohfour 16:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't merge

Don't merge as tandy has broken a little further away from Radioshack !!! --Adam1213 Talk + 04:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Tandy Corporation should remain a separate entry, because for all historical value it is a different company in itself. Even though it essentially is the same as RadioShack, the historical backgrounds of these company names warrant their separateness. kirbyjh 05:39, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps one should be the "main" article, and the other primarily historical then. Fourohfour 10:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I work for Radio Shack. The two topics should not be merged. Even though Tandy owns Radio Shack they're almost like two seperate companys. It would make as much sense as merging Barnes and Noble with Game Stop.

--I could have sworn that Tandy Corporation was renamed in 2000-2002 to RadioShack Corporation, in honor of their most (and only) "successful" business. --asplode 4-18-06

-Don't Murge. Tandy has owned other companies besides RadioShack. 152.15.101.33 19:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge proposal removed. It's been there for over 3 months, which is way too long anyway. Okay; I accept the case for separate articles, but the distinction needs to be made clear and unnecessary overlap cut out (some is of course inevitable, but having two similar articles covering basically the same ground is a waste of effort and a PITA to maintain, as well as being pointless; if there's a case for two articles, they should cover distinct subjects).

Anyway, I would be grateful if some people more knowledgeable could help decide what should go where. Fourohfour 19:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal reinstated

I think people are missing the point above -- Tandy Corporation is now RadioShack Corporation. Tandy does not OWN RadioShack, Tandy IS RadioShack. At the VERY least, we should rename the Tandy Corporation article to RadioShack Corporation, move all the corporate stuff there, and keep the RadioShack article as stuff specific to the store/chain. Reference that Target Corporation is the article for the company AND the store, not Dayton Hudson which is the company's old name. Keeping 'Tandy Corporation' around is the equivalant to keeping 'Dayton Hudson' around. --Rehcsif 22:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Response: Why does Wikipedia have separate entries for Standard Oil, Esso, and Exxon? They have separate histories and separate stories. For consistancy with the rest of Wikipedia, Tandy and Radio Shack should remain separate. It's not a case of Radio Shack being a popular Tandy brand that they eventually named the company after, or Tandy simply changing name to Radio Shack- they were completely unrelated businesses for about 40 years until they merged in 1960- and you can still buy Tandy leather... --User:Yary H

I concur. We have many articles on old companies now merged into current ones; however, we keep the articles on the old companies separate because (1) merging all the histories of a company's ancestors into one article would create a humongous article and (2) it's easier for people to find the history of a given company by searching for that company rather than through a huge consolidated article. For example, Macy's alone is descended from 9 or 10 major department store chains, yet Wikipedia has separate articles on Liberty House, Rich's, Marshall Field and Company, and so on. As you can see, consolidating all those into the already enormous Macy's article would be a huge mess that would only confuse Wikipedia readers. --Coolcaesar 19:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Merge proposal withdrawn. I will edit the Tandy Corp article to be more historical. All new corp. info should be placed in this (the RadioShack) article. --Rehcsif 21:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like an excellent idea to me (I was the person who made (and withdrew) the first merge proposal). Fourohfour 10:51, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
They need to be kept seperate. 69.194.160.132 16:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC) Peter Browne

[edit] Discontinued brands

The statement of which brands are discontinued, etc. needs to be more fully explored. I am a RadioShack employee and I just recieved a new Point-of-Sale Deck update (our files that link various info such as product names, skus, upcs, etc.) and found at least one new item under the Optimus brand again. I've worked for RadioShack for a few years now and to me it seems like they will randomly keep bringing brands back and introducing new ones. The Optimus brand is definately still in use for new products though, and shouldn't really be stated as discontinued. The latest branding of this brand is on digital cameras. If you don't believe me, visit radioshack.com and check it out yourself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.183.18.33 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Electronics components

Because of their initial focus on amateur radio, Radio Shack was basically the only place you could buy electronics components without going through mail order. Over time, they've discontinued selling these things. First they relegated them to a small drawer of shelves, and now even that is gone. This should be mentioned somehow.

Last I looked, the "drawers of shelves" were still there (haven't looked for about a year). Some stores here in the Twin Cities have a larger selection than others. Specifically, mall stores tend to have fewer items than standalone stores, as far as electronic components go. RadioShack.com supposedly will tell you what's in stock at each store, and I've found that to be fairly reliable (although I try not to buy parts at RatShack since they are so overpriced-- e.g. 4 resistors for $1.50 when they're 3 cents a piece in bulk online...) --Rehcsif 17:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The shelves just disappeared within the last few months around here. Not even audio connectors anymore; just cables. — Omegatron 19:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I work at RadioShack, and the amount of parts offered in-store is a factor of both sales history for those sections and items and available sales area. The mall stores have very little parts while other stores (such as mine)offer practically full availability of parts which can be offered in-store. --Jbeam665 00:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More about the resume scandal

The resume section was very vague and skimpy on details. As I came to this page to get details on that, I'd imagine a lot of other people do, too, so I fleshed it out with an extra sentence or two.

[edit] Sarbanes-Oxley Violations?

What is that about? It will be nice that instead of linking to the 'general history' page to have a link to the actuall edit instead. Still. Still either if this is true or not i think thos eedits made the article better.Nnfolz 13:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

  • It looks to me like the edits were more or less corporate malfeasance. Also, the user probably didn't know they could actually link to the edits specifically. Or another explanation about the 'general history' link is that it could have been to demonstrate how many edits that specific IP had contributed to the RadioShack article (and there have been more since then, by the way). Above all else, RS shouldn't be editing an article about themselves. That is unquestionably improper. And I don't know if it is actually against the law for them to do this (does anyone else know?), but it undoubtedly skews POV. Granted, the article seemed slanted to begin with, but RadioShack's edits violate wiki standards, and it artificially biases POV in a way that is certainly not welcome. AmAB 01:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Agreed...but I think the section is thoroughly unencyclopedic. It needs to be rewritten. Templates should not make up part of the body of an article, for example... --Lukobe 01:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
      • In fact I'm moving it here, to the Talk page, for now. --Lukobe 01:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sarbanes-Oxley Violations

See Wikipedia policy that states: "Avoid bias. Articles should be written from a neutral point of view, representing all views on a subject, factually and objectively, in an order which is agreeable to a common consensus. (This is a Foundation issue that applies to all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)" As such, objections to inflamatory, incomplete or false information published by unknown people against RadioShack on this site will be highlighted and corrected with FACTS if possible without compromising the integrity of the information.

As a measure to reduce public criticism of recent corporate restructuring, RadioShack Corporation began systematically violating several wikipedia guidelines by editing this very article [1] [2].

This page in a nutshell: Avoid writing or editing articles about yourself, since we all find objectivity especially difficult when we ourselves are concerned. Such articles frequently violate neutrality, verifiability, and notability guidelines. Contribute on the talk page instead. Feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself.

Because corporate responsibility is undeniable, the inherent objectivity and neutrality of this entire article has potentially been compromised. As this type of corporate interference also violates several minor provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, RadioShack Corporation may be subject to fines and a pursuant investigation to assess SOX compliance.

[edit] Things that really need to be mentioned (and a warning)

The California manager lawsuit really needs to be mentioned. Basically what happened is that California law requires that a manager receiving salary spend >50% of their time doing managerial tasks. Otherwise, they are eligible for overtime like anyone else. RS doesn't believe in this. They are essentially over-glorified sales associates and the abundance of official company literature stating as such destroyed their ability to fight the suit effectively.

In any event, it was settled out of court. And the firm that represented the Cali managers is now suing them as a federal case.

http://www.radioshackclassaction.com/

Secondly, the radioshacksucks.com lawsuit needs to be mentioned as well. RS won that one (unfortunately). The two are somewhat connected because RSS was a big factor in getting word of the lawsuit out.

http://www.poe-news.com/stories.php?poeurlid=31315

Finally, it should be noted that RS has a habit of attempting to silence opposition opinion to them. Judging by what somebody wrote in the layoffs section, it would appear they've already struck this article at least once.

Kensuke Aida 15:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Verizon, Cellular One, Nextel, Cingular, and other cellular wireless network associations.

Over the years they have offer products from various cellular companies, can someone expound upon that? 68.45.4.118 20:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

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