RadioShack went into bankruptcy again.

RadioShack was a cool store. They had lots of cool stuff there.

It’s sad to see it go, but it was inevitable. Amazon spit the final nail in the coffin.
Though, for awhile, it was my go-to place for electronics parts, because it wasn’t terribly priced and I didn’t have to wait for shipping. I hate shipping.
Even though all the ones here in SA closed, they had a final hurrah of sorts with the Tandy line of computer accessories. If you recall, Tandy was the line of home computers Tandy Radio Shack sold back in the 80s, ever since the TRS-80 and up until the Tandy 1000. LGR did a video all about the new Tandy keyboard and mouse (spoiler: they suck)

My first real job! I worked there part time in mid 90’s for three years and had a blast. I was terrible at selling stuff! They would always want us to push for things like “three items a ticket” and the extended warranties. I hated bothering people for such nonsense. And don’t even get me started on the name and address nonsense! They actually tracked that stuff and if you didn’t hit a certain percentage of sales tickets with names and addresses on them, you would get in trouble!

It was an interesting time for consumer electronics because home computers were just starting to become mainstream - we only had two computers on display and one had a whopping 212MB hard drive with 2MB of RAM! Cell phones were also a new thing for people - we had three, two were “bag phones” and one was a handheld phone. DVD players didn’t exist, or if they did they were luxury high end items because we didn’t carry any. It was truly still a dominate analog world, which was nice because you still understood how it all worked!

The best part of the job for me was just being able to play around with all the stuff in the store. I was often the only one working there in the evenings and because I was the part timer, worked most Sundays alone too. The store was in your typical small town. At the time it was in the only shopping center in town. And we were such a low volume store I always wondered why they kept it open. Guess it made just enough money to make a profit! It wouldn’t be unusual to only see 5 or 6 customers on a Sunday shift. So I had plenty of time to demo stuff. Another nice perk was what they called the $50 rule. Basically, if someone returned an item “defective” and the cost to the store was under $50, it could be tossed in the garbage and not sent back to corporate. Anything that met this criteria, if it was still in good physical condition, I would take home and try to fix it. I acquired (and still have) a very nice multi-meter that someone simply burnt out the fuses! Also got a nice little shortwave radio that only issue was a disconnected speaker wire.

So in a way, I’m sad to see it go. But a couple of years after I left they had a bright idea to get rid of their bread and butter, the electronic parts, and turn Radio Shack into a cell phone store. That ruined it for me. I remember walking into a Radio Shack about 10 years ago and specifically asking for a “motorola type antenna jack for a car stereo”. Honestly, that’s exactly how you would describe the part and it was for putting a new end on the coax wire going to the antenna in your vehicle. They sales guy took me to the Motorola cell phone accessories display and asked me “would it be in here?” I shook my head and told him I would find it myself. Which I did, in the back of the store. And when I went to pay for it, he had no clue what it was for. After that, I had no need to walk into a Radio Shack ever again.

There are 2 remaining here in Memphis. I went a few days ago and picked up some resistors. They guy working the store told me all but 2 are gone and that those 2 will remain.

We shall see now, eh…

Amazon killed the RadioShack. Amazon killed the RadioShack.

nah, radioshack killed itself before online shopping was really even a thing by changing format to a cell phone store.

I thought RadioShack was LONG dead before I saw this topic. Then I realized that was Circuit City. Oh well, I guess it had a good run. Hope that people cherish their memories.

RadioShack has been gone from Canada since 2005, being replaced by “The Source”, which I really don’t like at all. For all my electronic needs I just go to Best Buy or shop online.

What’s wrong with “The Source”? Granted I will never go there since I live as far from Canada as you can get (New England).

Never had a good experience with anything I’ve ever bought there, and the staff there always seem to pressure you into buying something the moment you walk into the store.