The Daily Background
| RadioShack sucks
by Arlen Parsa
Longtime readers know that I’m a documentary film student (actually, as I wrote earlier today, I’m graduating on Sunday). Today I needed a particular piece of equipment called a 6 pin to 4 pin Firewire cable, so I walked to the local RadioShack here in Chicago on State Street to pick one up.
Knowing that such a cable can be easily bought online for $7.99 at retailers like Amazon or $2.99 at retailers like NewEgg, I expected to pay only a few dollars for it.
When the cashier (who made me wait eleven minutes for them to finish their personal phone call on their cell phone) rang up the cable, it ended up being $40.96 (their website lists the product for less than half that– this store was marking it up for more than 100%). Ridiculous. I walked out of the store without buying it and later picked it up from Best Buy for a cheaper, but still comparatively expensive price. While these these types of stores have more competitive prices on larger items, they make their money from charging exorbitant amounts of money for paltry items like cables. Don’t fall for it.
P.S.- Longtime readers will also appreciate that I didn’t buy a model made by Belkin.
that’s the best part of moving to digital. for instance, most HDMI cables will have the exact same signal quality - ergo. Monster Cable (who as you know charges exorbitant prices) will most likely go out of business…
I’m not surprised. I have a family member who used to work at Best Buy and the employees would only have to pay whatever the the company paid for things like wires. So he could get a $40 cable for like 3 bucks. It’s probably best to get those things online if you can.
well this situation not only have to deal with HD cables… most of the things that stores like BestBuy or RS sale are freaking expensive, going 2 or 3 times the price that you can find on the web… its sad to see back and remember when RS was full of electronic components to work and play at home, now only a few cables, components and like 10000 cellphones…