Gold products are just gold-plated. They’re supposed to help against conductivity and rusting (think outdoor coax cables). If you just need a quick fix for a cable, try another store. Even Walmart’s Belkin products are passable.

As far as audio cables… ignoring speaker wires, I personally stick with Radioshack’s audio cables and adapters. I’ve just not had problems with them versus items I’ve acquired elsewhere.

I may be a Sales Associate at the Shack, but I’m also a consumer. If I genuinly think my customer will have a better benifit somewhere else, I’ll tell them so. I was fortunate. When I started I had a wonderful manager. But higher up is cruel overall. I shant go into details of that, however.

To sum up at least the good, here’s some products I do genuinly recommend from the Shack:

Batteries (the red ones; they just last longer)
Flash drives
Cell phones
Anything from the parts drawer in volume (quantity discount)
Audio cables (save for speaker wire)
And possibly a few others that have slipped my mind.

Otherwise do your shoping at NewEgg. *laughs*

Oh by the way, check and see if any stores have products labeled “OSI”. They’re products that are missing packaging and are discounted, or are good parts to bad products. Radioshack throws away anything, good or bad. Smart managers sell the good under “OSI” at a very discounted price. My first manager did that, and I got some good cables like DVI for very cheap.

One last thing, if you have a Radioshack card, you can get 15% off on batteries. They never openly market that for some reason. Remind your Sales Associate, as I don’t think the register does it automatically.

1. On prices – this kind of markup is not uncommon. The cost of stocking some of these things that will just sit on their shelf for 2 years is astronomical.

2. “Manipulating the minds of the buyer”? That’s called sales. It is the same in every store, everywhere.

3. You won’t see the newest computers -anywhere- any more. They are improved so quickly, stores cannot be expected to stock the latest models, it is not profitable to attempt to do so. The newest computers or components can only be found direct from the manufacturer or the larger online distributors.

4. A gold contact was NEVER gold. Did you expect solid gold wire? Shoot, I should have stocked up. A one foot wire would have a thousand dollars worth of gold in it. It has always, always, been a very thin gold coating to decrease resistance *at the point of contact*, nowhere else. It is the same wire underneath, they never claimed otherwise.

Ridiculous.

It’s actually 30 days- the time when you can return and purchase a service plan, accessories in a bundle deal with a cell phone, and so forth.

At RS we do try and find everything for the consumer .Sometiems we’ll be busy and customer service wil ldrop less than we’d like, but mostly it won’t.

I personally try and not sell the ridiculously overpriced stuff, because it’s unhelpful for consumers- i.e. Monster cables and the HDMI ones people mentioned above.

I mostly sell audio cables, parts, cell phones, dig cameras and much more.

OneUNTRUE comment- that we don’t have any parts anymore. Yes, we’ve scaled back a bit, but reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. We still carry potentiometers for example (someone earlier said not!).

Other than that, I apologise to anyone who’s got bad service or a bad deal. In Oklahoma, I’d say you have an 80% chance or greater t oget good service and find what you need (about the same in the region, I can’t speak for the other side of the country). Those who don’t are definitely in the minority.

My policy is simply- don’t lie to our customers (i.e. mislead or overstate etc).

Anyway, hope you folks come in and see us. If you have any problems, call the number and LET PEOPLE KNOW! I don’t want people getting bad service.

Regards,
– Alistair

Radioshack does tend to have some good deals, and believe it or not, many of their prices rival and sometimes beat those of Wal Mart or other big box places. It all depends on the store

I tend to avoid RadioShack though as in general it is not a good place to shop unless you know exactly what you need and how much it costs elsewhere.