FRY's/Radio Shack

On Fri, 6 Feb 2015, Marc Verdiell wrote: But not their staff. 1) Somebody from the college bought a large quantity of memory chips there. When plugged into a dozen of the college's PC/5150s they would not work. BUT, they would work in some generic clones! I drove an hour to the store, and told them that they would not work in OEM IBM PCs. They demanded a few hours to TEST them. After returning They had tried them (hardly a "TEST") in their generic clone. I repeated that they did not work in OEM IBM PCs. The "technician" told me that he wasn't familiar with a BRAND OF COMPUTER named "OEM". They would not even exchange them. I wrote a letter to Mary Eisenhart (editor of MicroTimes), with a cc to David Fry. He came to the college with a bag of working replacements. (successful resolution) 2) I needed a printer cable. The clerk showed me the USB section. "Thank you, but this is for an OLD PC" "Oh, USB 2 will work on USB 1" "No, really old. IEEE-1284" "Huh?" "Micro-ribbon" "Huh?" "CENTRONICS" "OH! Those are printer cables?? I wondered what those were for. We don't carry them." (They had some shelved with the SCSI cables) 3) Back when it was a grocery store with a couple of aisles of hobbyist stuff, it was GREAT!! It was still really good when the groceries were cut back to only what all night hackers would want (some nukable food, toothbrushes, snacks, a superb selection of caffeinated sodas (including Jolt)). But, when they removed the last of the non-snack foods (bread, peanut butter, etc.) and opened multiple stores, they were headed towards Radio Shack. We used to stop there on the way home from the Foothill swap. But, eventually, it reached the point where computers and electronics were secondary to TV and audio crap, with EVERY speaker cranked up to 11. It became extraordinarily unpleasant to set foot into the store(s). 4) Many items are missing parts! and/or are returned defects. Their "returns" policy included taking EVERYTHING that was returned, taping the box back shut and putting it back on the shelf. If the box is damaged, it gets a token "open box" discount. It is true that many things get returned due to customer inability to figure it out, rather than actual malfunction. But, they were not even doing a token "TEST" before returning the stuff to stock. If you ever return something to Fry's and are sure that it is actually non-functional, PLEASE write "NFG" all over the item and all over the box! 5) They were AMAZINGLY late getting a WWW presence. Eventually, they acquired somebody else that had a website. In the mid and late 1990s, when I was still teaching an "Introduction To The Internet" class, I used to give a minor assignment of finding the least expected web presence (in those days, on the rear fender of UC Berkeley police cars, etc.), and also what outfit was the most surprisingly NOT on the web - that one usually went to Fry's. 6) I needed a cheap DVD player. They had two Apex models with a $20 price difference. I asked the clerk about the difference(s). He proceeded to read aloud the identical feature lists of the two shelf tags. 7) There are a few fake "Fry's Employment Application" forms on the web. One of the classics is: http://homepage.smc.edu/engfer_mark/frys.htm