Complaint Review: Radio Shack - Lincoln Nebraska

Hello Friend,

I just was to start off by saying sorry that you had a bad experience at Radio Shack.

Normally refurbished anything is almost brand new, all the bad components are replaced. Now that we got that out of the way, lets do a little explaining of the battery issue, batteries are rated at a average life expectancy,  but there is no guaranteeing how long it will last,  because it all matters on how you use it.

For instance, if you have your wifi constantly on, its constantly scanning if you are not connected to a network. When you load a laptop, the programs that are on the laptop that load in the background, are still running, they drain your battery as well. Preloaded programs are a big pain with laptop and on the go because they use a lot of juice from the battery when they load up at start up. if you are constantly typing on a laptop it uses more power, brightness of the screen, you can't just expect a battery to last 2 hours because its rated at it.

You have to understand that any store, even family owned stores can't always carry that much cash on hand, no store will ever keep over a couple hundred in the cash register over night, the policy is in place to keep the employee, employer and consumer safe. Each company has its set of policies that the employees and consumers must abide by. Without a policy radioshack and the consumer could both lost out on many opportunity and many issues could be handled poorly and unprofessionally. Do not get me wrong, there are still situation that can be handled unprofessionally, for instance, sounds like Mike may of not known the exact policy, or the policy for their district is different because of so many issues, each district has its own set of policies on top of the corporate policy, because each area is different. Either way, our goal here at radioshack is to provide you informed and accurate information, as well as much help as we can give you, however not every piece of information is easy to remember. Try to remember the main points off all the product in a radio shack store, there are 100s - 1000s of items with different information, now along with that, radio shack has a huge policy, because its trying to protect its consumers and itself.

Again, sorry for the bad experience you received at one of Radio Shack's stores.

-- Your Friendly The Shack Sales Associate

Radio Shack stores in general are small low volume stores and limit the amount of cash they keep in their drawers in case of hold up/robbery.  Managers are required to do "cash drops" at the bank if too much cash accumulates or at certain times of day every day.  This is typical of all retailers, not just Radio Shack.  If you've not noticed, Convienience stores typically have signs telliing customers "No Bills larger than $20.00."  Some large stores do not offer cash refunds but give out credit cards instead.  Home Depot does this.  I returned a tool my brother bought me for Christmas that cost $82.00 and got one of these credit cards that I could use for other purchases in any Home Depot.  That was not what I wanted as I have every tool known to man kind.  I also didn't have any current construction type projects going on so there was virtually nothing in the store I wanted or needed but I had no choice.

Also realize what "refurbs" are.  They are things somebody somewhere has purchased at retail that didn't work or quit working within the warranty period and have returned.  These items are returned to the manufacturer and tested and repaired. Usually in the return, there will be a note "Battery will not charge" or something like that.  I've sold tons of refurbs in my business and have had very satisfied customers.  I've also bought a lot of refurbs for myself and have been equally satisfied.

On an assembly line, maybe only every 20th item is checked.  If a defective item is found, usually all that have come since the last item was checked will be pulled to see where the problem started.  The checking on the assembly line is minimal and would not likely find a charger that is putting out low voltage for example.  Refurbs are extensively tested, each and every one of them, so the chance of getting a substandard refurb is very low, almost non-existant.

Also, refurbs usually have a much shorter warranty period, usually 30 days or so while a product new out of the box may have a 1 year warranty.  For this, you usually pay a much lower price.  A refurb can cost 25% - 40% of the cost of a non-refurb item.  This is a gamble the consumer decides to take or not take.  "Do I buy a refurb for $35.00  or a standard item for $99.95?"  Personally, I've had such good experience with refurbs that I'll take the risk every time.  There is a store here in my town that almost exclusively sells refurbs of national brand name merchandise and I am a regular customer.

It appears the charging system in your laptop was not putting out the necessary voltage resulting in a less than fully charged battery and thus a shorter operating time on battery.  This should have been caught at the manufacturer's repair facility.  It should have been no more than hooking a VOM meter to the charging system output.  But here's a possible scenario:  The original purchaser may have found two problems or not realized the charging problem.  The other problem may have been a balky on/off switch just for an example.  When the computer got back to the repair facility, the tech would read the paperwork that accompanied the computer, hooked it up for a couple of hours to charge the battery and then moved it to the repair bench where he replaced the switch.  It would only be on the repair bench for less than an hour and he just didn't realize there was also a problem with the charging system, boxed it up and  sent it out as a refurb.

Batteries and charging systems are strange systems.  For instance, to fully charge a 12 volt automobile battery, the car's charging system will have to put out 13.8 volts. If it's putting out 12.3 volts, you'll get a partial charge and everything will initially seem fine.  But try starting the car on a very cold morning several months later and it will appear to have a dead battery.  This may be the case with your computer.  It may have been getting enough charge to appear to be operating properly on the repair bench for an hour or less but when you depended on it to operate 3 or 4 hours, it just didn't have enough charge in the battery.  I can't give the repair facility a free ride here, they should have checked the output of the charging system.  The only thing I can imagine is that the repair tech had so much work that he was taking short cuts to make it appear he was productive.  That's no excuse.

The only advice I can offer is to either pay full price next time or immediately and fully check out all working systems if you decide to buy refurb again.  Personally, I take the latter option.  My experience has been that refurbs are at least as reliable as new items and possibly more so.  Most of the refurbs I have are power tools.  When buying, I take them out of the box and look them over carefully.  If they do not appear to be brand new, I get another one off the shelf until I find one that does appear new.  Since the warranty on a refurb is short, use the item as soon as you buy it (I know you did that) and if there is any problem, return it to the store immediately.

The retailers who sell refurbs want satisfied return customers and will generally bend over backwards to accomodate you.  They know reputations spread quickly and only a very few dissatisfied customers can quickly spoil their reputations.  The manufacturers credit them the full price they paid for the item less the cost to pack it up and otherwise get it ready for shipping and handle the return.  The manufacturers generally also pick up the shipping costs so there is little reason for a retailer to resist taking a refurb back.  Not doing so can hurt his reputation in the local community.

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...all stores have tons of money in their cash drawers at all times, in reality that is not the case.  Radio Shack stores are generally doing very well when they sell $1000-$2000 in a day.  That generally doesn't consist of too much cash (which most being done by credit or debit card).

In fact, Radio Shack actually has a policy that we are supposed to keep our amount of cash on hand at or near $300-$400 dollars (depending on if it is a mall or stand alone location).  While I haven't asked for the full details on this policy, I'm assuming it's so that if the store is robbed, then you only lose $300-$400.

You were not lied to by the district office.  While if you went to a mall location, you would most likely be able to get a cash refund (even though that might deplete their daily cash greatly), stand alone stores don't get much cash in a day.  In fact, just 2 days ago, while doing the final deposit, we only had $311 cash at the end of the day.  We went the entire day and only had $11 more cash than when we started the day.

However, the policy that the $50 returns have to be done by check isn't true.  However, a $300-$500 return would most likely not be done in stores.

Even for stores that I've worked at that have more cash, such as mall stores, mid-day deposits are done if there is ever over $1500-$2000 cash in the drawer.  Once those deposits are done, they are back to $300-$400 cash again.

If you wanted a cash refund, you really do have to be lucky with your timing.

On to the matter of the computer however, you did purchase a refurbished computer on clearance.  I can understand your complaint with the battery, since I've dealt with batteries that cost waaaaay too much and don't last long at all (Dell Inspiron batteries), I can't feel too sorry for the rest of the situation.  It is unfortunate that the laptop you purchased appears to be defective.  However, being upset because you were sold a refurbished computer for a discounted price and having something wrong with it is naive.  If you wanted to be sure it would work, you should have bought a brand new one (which still can be defective every now and then).  That's like buying a used car and then complaining when it has engine problems.  You chose to spend less on a refurbished product.  Sometimes you win with that gamble and sometimes you lose.

On a different note though, if you need the security of cash refunds on large items ($200+), Best Buy and Walmart, which literally sell over $100,000 daily in their stores, will have that type of cash.  Radio Shack has always been a smaller retailer.  I worked at a store that sold under $500,000 in a year.  Some Best Buy's do that in a weekend.

as far as the computer goes, all electronics stores are going to occasionally have something in stock and sell something that is defective, because you don't know it till it's out of the box.  ESPECIALLY when you go for the discontinued model.  And as your own quote states, the return policy allows for cash refund IF the store has the funds, and if not you are mailed a check.  You can't expect a store that does less than $500 cash business in a day to have an extra $500 lying around just for a jackass like you who thinks he ought to be treated like a king when all the other customers are perfectly happy with the policies.  Oh and by the way, it is evident that all the other customers are because the company is doing very VERY well.  So don't expect that headline anytime soon