robert casey wrote:

you'll find the sales people woefully short on product knowledge.

That's been the case for as long as I can remember, since the 70's. The
term "sales droid" was coined with Radio Shack in mind.

When Cincinnati had one Radio Shack store, the store manager actually
knew something about parts that he carried. The folks in the Lafayette,
Allied and Olson stores had a number of people who were knowledgeable.

A couple of the electronic distributors I worked for had product
managers who knew several lines inside and out. They also hired inside
telephone sales people and counter people who were very knowledgeable
about components. At one of them, the sales manager, two of the outside
salesmen, three of the four inside sales people and two of the counter
men were hams.

the moment, RadShack is like a cellular phone store which pushes
batteries.

"Whatever you wanted, we have a cell phone for you!"

Yep. The time before my last trip, I went in for wire wrap #30 wire.
It is great for winding impedance matching transformers on binocular
ferrite cores--much better than enamel wire. The salesman told me that
he didn't think they carried it. I went to the wall and grabbed it.
He then attempted to interest me in a cell phone. When I told him that
I wasn't interested, he began offering batteries.

This last trip was for the F connectors. Again I received a pitch on
cell phones and batteries.

When Radio Shack made a decision to push amateur radio gear ten or
fifteen years back, it did so mostly with Radio Shack branded equipment
which was short on features and rather shoddily made. It pushed a few
2m and 70cm FM HT's and mobile transceivers and a few niche market
rigs like the low power 10m transceivers. The sales people were,
again, woefully short on product knowledge.


Their 2m hand held was actually decent. I have one. Not as rugged as
an old Motorola HT220, though. User interface wasn't that great, but
the Icom IC-02AT was worse. The radio Shack rig did had an excellent
tight band receiver front end. Less intermod issues.

You're correct. The 2m mobile rigs were not as good as the one hand
held transceiver. RadShack also carried a number of brand name 2m and
70cm antennas along with Radio Shack branded antennas. The fact
remained that if one went into a Radio Shack store with questions about
any of the amateur radio equipment, it was highly unlikely to find a
single sales person who had 1) the right answer or 2) any answer other
than "I don't know". I contrast that to the guys at Circuit City stores
I've visited. The sales people seem to have had good product
knowledge training.


Dave K8MN