Talk:RadioShack/Archives/2013

Compensation Plans Neutrality & Sources Needed

I added the neutrality tag to the "Compensation Plans" because the later half of the first paragraph defiantly sounds like a justification of a policy by RS (see the below sections on RS editing it's own article). Also, I added several citation tags as the article seems to reference a whole bunch of stats without providing their sources. In many cases these non-referenced stats are used to justify corporate policies outlined. One part even states "An internal statistic...", basically a trust me on this one citation.

For Neutrality, I'm referring to these sentences:

"...these are added directly to the associates paycheck. On average, most associates earn between $8-$12/hr with sufficient motivation; ultimately, however, pay levels tend to come down to hard work and efficacy in salesmanship. The workers who excel in motivation, hard work, and excellence are compensated the most."

That statement can be argued with the below statements on this talk page referring to manager & employee layoffs or even some of the scandals outlined in the article. Regardless of your opinion, sources ultimately need to be citied or this section needs a vast rewrite in a neutral tone. Keithieopia (talk) 02:57, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

68.94.237.227 removed part of the dubious comments, so I removed the rest of it. There still is many citations that need to be attributed, there seems to be a edit war between several other persons (but not me) on on removing this entire section completely. Please discuss it here instead. Keithieopia (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

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Not many sites out there go into as much depth in terms of employee compensation plans--cross-referenced this on Yahoo to see where I could find this information to confirm/disconfirm and it seems that pay plans are pretty much locked down.

Anyway I just wanted to say that much; does need to be more adequately cited, but given the sensitive nature of this matter I wouldn't be too harsh on whoever wrote it. From the looks of my query (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=radio+shack+employee+compensation&btnG=Search), there's not much out there to either confirm or disconfirm the author's writing. -S. ---

An aside from someone who worked at retail 35 years ago... RadioShack's choice of the term "Special Performance Incentives for Field Force" is an obvious attempt to create an acronym for "spiff" (qv). As Wikipedia has an article on spiffing, this should be cross-linked.

WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 13:29, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Proprietary Brands

Mio and Envision are listed as proprietary brands, when in fact they are not. Both are national brands, and carried by other retailers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.141.21.214 (talk) 15:07, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Gigaware

Interesting. I once asked a store employee whether Gigaware was the store brand and they said no, it was an actual brand. 69.243.26.39 (talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

RadioShackSucks Link

Is the RadioShackSucks.biz link appropriate? On the other retail store articles I checked (Wal-Mart, Best Buy), there are no such links, even though such sites exist. Should this be removed? Scombs (talk) 22:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

UK Operation

Is anyone able to add the UK to the International section of this page? I remember the business being moderately successful until the mid-to-late 90s when the stores were taken over by Carphone Warehouse, but I'm not sure I'd know where to begin! Davetibbs 17:00, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

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.

they do go out of there ways to make managers lives miserable. I do know that if anyone in the district was earning only 8 something they'd be fired for underperformance maybe just my district though? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.183.32.24 (talk) 00:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

Merge

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

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)

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

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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.18.33 (talk • contribs)

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.

• Radio Shack stores to get out of electronic components biz
• RadioShack’s Everyday Irrelevance
• Already disappearing in 1999 — Omegatron 16:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

I also work @ RS, and in my experience Technical Parts (and tools) make up < 5% of a typical store's sales. even merchandise with an 90+% margin needs to sell one or two a quarter. If RSH depended on parts as a business plan, the stock would be under $20 (whoops). 67.63.17.27 22:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC) Bored.

It depends on the store, I think. Store managers have told me they keep the components to drive traffic into the store, like other stores have "loss leader" to bring traffic in, because those same customers also need batteries and other supplies as well. Eventually you don't become viable for one product line, and people (correctly) assume there is no different between their local Radio Shack and a Best Buy store. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.101.136.61 (talk) 15:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

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.

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)

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.

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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].

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.

Verizon, Cellular One, Nexte#REDIRECT [[l, 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)]]

I work at a RadioShack and I know that right now the store I work at only sells Sprint/Nextel and Cingular/AT&T, I know that a couple of years ago they sold Verizon (Verizon wanted to stop paying the sales associates commission when they sold a phone) as well and on the corporate intranet site there's a link to alltell's website so I assume some radioshacks sell Alltell as well. For prepaid phones we also sell Tracfones, Virgin Mobile, and Cingular's goPhone.

Radioshack's Retail Locations (that 5000-2003 number)

Over the course of 2005, hundreds of underperforming Radioshack locations were closed by the company. The as-of 2003 number is old. http://www.radioshackcorporation.com 67.63.17.27 22:44, 5 November 2007 (UTC)Zacharias (bsgeek.com)

Criticism section added, person pasted lots of words - Deleted

A criticism section was added recently, which I deleted because it linked to a forum post on 'the ripoff report' a website that posts anonymous letters from people about ripoffs; the info regarding an RS store allegedly reselling defective products, was rebutted by an employee of the company. As a store employee, I concurred 100% with the rebuttal and thus did not post my own rebuttal to the ripoff report site, and summarily deleted the section here. The section can be read in the history, and it posts information that allegedly happened at what i would also call a 'shady' store; as company policy is the exact opposite of all the information posted. Most importantly, unfounded commentary about a specific store not from a media source has no place in an encyclopedia article. Aeonjoey (talk) 06:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with deleting it, although it not really a matter of whether we agree with the rebuttals or criticism. The section was mostly WP:OR and ripoff reports isnt really a reliable source as its more of a forum than anything else. Certainly if the claims made can be backed up by a reliable source wp:rs this should be added. 14:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Total Revenue - Update

How come no one updates the total revenue of Radioshack? Total revenue in 2007 was 4.2 billion USD. http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NYSE:RSH —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.116.37.164 (talk) 18:36, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

CompUSA

Why is CompUSA listed in the RadioShack#See_Also section? Do we need this? If we do then why just the one other company? Donkdonk (talk) 21:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Because Tandy (which would later become RadioShack) sold a chain of stores to CompUSA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.88.109.150 (talk) 01:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Tsbcc-logo.jpg

The image Image:Tsbcc-logo.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --18:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Inappropriate Statements, Sloppiness, etc.

Especially in the section on Employee Compensation..... I don't know where to begin, haha.

Being no expert on the subject, I am not touching the article.... just pointing out that there are some really BAD things that need to be fixed - most appropriately by someone well-acquainted with RadioShack and its history and policies (with a NPOV, of course!)

One thing I will point out is that many numerical values are quite obviously skewed toward the opinion of whoever put them in the article, and at least one (about each store making $300 due to customers not paying their entire credit card balance on time.....but not specifying $300 per WHAT AMOUNT OF TIME) is quite confusing.

itinerant_tuna (talk) 12:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

"THE SHACK" Creative Platform

My name is Wendy Dominguez, and I work for RadioShack Corporation. I see that the Wikipedia community has added a new section to our article titled, “The Shack re-branding.” I’d like to share more information to clarify and expand on this initiative. RadioShack is not changing its name. The name of the Company and all of our stores will remain RadioShack. THE SHACK is a new brand creative platform that RadioShack will unveil on August 6, 2009. Our customers will experience the campaign through television, print and digital media, as well as a three-day launch event taking place in New York City and San Francisco. You can find more information in our press release: http://ir.radioshackcorporation.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=400656.

The new advertising will place greater emphasis on mobility and wireless products from leading brands. However, the sentence in this section about a “telemarketing campaign” aimed at post-paid customers is not related to THE SHACK brand campaign. We suggest that this sentence be moved, as it is currently presented out of context.--139.60.210.5 (talk) 19:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)RadioShack Communications

I find it fascinating that "Wendy Dominguez" can spit out so many words without saying much that is useful. And oddly enough, in Feb of 2010, I still see "THE SHACK" as the brand for "RadioShack", so I'm confused as to whether this page should be renamed or not. --Randal L. Schwartz (talk) 04:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

How is that ALL MENTION of the "The Shack" branding initiative has been removed!? All contemporaneous sources indicate that this was widely promoted and accepted as a re-branding campaign for the stores (see the press releases of the time). The above Wendy Dominguez post and other corporate action subsequently appear to indicate a backtrack due to widespread criticism of the strategy and reverse what was widely reviled in the market and it rapidly was reversed however it remains historical fact and notable both in terms of the strategy itself AND the reception it received. There are plenty of sources to support this. Unfortunately the current content of this page is clearly being agenda driven by the Radio Shack PR machine and is far from NPOV as they've been able to scrub the entire story from the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.174.53.201 (talk) 16:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

i just stumbled upon this page after reading an article about other rebranding failures [3], and i'm equally surprised that there is absolutely no mention of it on the page anymore. hell, it even still says "the shack is who we are" at the base url of wendy's linked press release [4]. backtracking on a branding decision does not warrant pretending it didn't happen, even if the backlash wasn't nearly as great as the gap's (but this is simply because it is a much larger entity). can anyone familiar with that era of edits bring it back into the page, perhaps? Impasse 15:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was consensus against Radioshack. No consensus for Radio Shack — æk^Talk 07:15, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

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RadioShack → Radio Shack or Radioshack — Per WP:MOSTM. Trademarks that are rendered in uppercase as a matter of corporate policy rather than because of an underlying linguistic reason are to be converted to the same regular sentence case that any other proper noun would appear in. --Labattblueboy (talk) 21:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Struck Radioshack as an option. --Labattblueboy (talk) 19:51, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Weak oppose It seems counterproductive to move this article. Wikipedia policy shouldn't be adhered to as absolute doctrine, it should be interpreted flexable, and I don't see any convincing reason to make the move. 84.92.117.93 (talk) 22:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:MOSTM permits camel case where this aids clarity - as here. --DAJF (talk) 00:15, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose "Radioshack" Support "Radio Shack" with the space. 76.66.194.220 (talk) 05:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose "Radioshack". It's not an English word, and therefore doesn't fall foul of WP:MOSTM. Weak Support for "Radio Shack" per nom. Tevildo (talk) 17:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per MOSTM, which clarly says CamelCase IS allowed (and RadioShack is spelled with CamelCase). TJ Spyke 21:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, I've always known it as being spelt RadioShack. GoodDay (talk) 21:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Radioshack but Support Radio Shack - From the cited policy: "Trademarks in CamelCase are a judgment call. CamelCase may be used where it reflects general usage and makes the trademark more readable: OxyContin or Oxycontin—editor's choice". My choice (and that of other editors above) is to use the CamelCase spelling RadioShack. Radio Shack neatly sidesteps this problem and is also in general use, even by the company since that was actually the original name before they Camelled it together. --Jubilee♫clipman 18:38, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Camel-case doesn't seem to really infringe on the English language. All caps, or lack thereof, is really the big issue. The company spells it as one word. — The Man in Question (in question) 20:58, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Current spelling is fine. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Section of charitys

The section on RadioShack Charitys is poorly written and needs sources. Borderpatrol1987 (talk) 16:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Section on Argentina

There is a paragraph reading "Tandy - RadioShack (Argentina), former Argentinian subsidiary, between the years 1980 and 1996, provided the knowledge of the operation and programing of the machines. Developed by INDEC (Computer Institute) Marcos Juárez, Córdoba. The knowledge project was led by the hand of the Biagiotti´s family, in the Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Mendoza, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Salta, Neuquen and San Luis provinces." I can't make any sense out of this. What is this supposed to tell us? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.195.116 (talk) 23:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like someone did a poor edit and left this stranded. Needs cleaned up now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.187.118.19 (talk) 18:02, 22 April 2013 (UTC)