Fortunately, the last time I bought anything from Radio Shack was 15 years, 3 houses and 4 credit cards ago.
As Mr Ambrose Bierce, 221B Baker St, Hollywood, CA 90210, telephone 867-5309, I am not concerned.
They should have used this as a bargaining chip to drum up business in the first place. “Buy our shit or we sell you out.”
Don’t laugh – I just got an inter-library loan of SpaceHunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone on VHS.
Betcha a class-action suit could stop that sale in its tracks. Any lawyers on board?
Ha-ha!
Even at 10 it felt creepy that they always had to get that damn address, some clerks were insistent so I always made up a name and address on the spot.
Eff-you Radio Shack’s corpse, you were my link in pre internet America to geeky stuff like my first computer and electronic components and circuit board, but I always felt slimed when the clerk would do that phone number thing at the end, especially to a kid.
And I have never received any of the mailers RS sent to me at 1060 W Addison, Chicago, IL 60614.
Etsy, of course, where if this thing were available with a whimsical hand-knit cozy with Spock ears you’d be allllllll over it, and you know it!
That was one of the things that KEPT me from buying stuff at Radio Shack…
I guess I’m the outlier here. I never got the jokes. Radio Shack asks for your number and address? I must have been buying my alligator clips, wire, tiny light bulbs, and assorted batteries somewhere else. In the same strip mall as an arcade within walking distance of my house there was a Radio Shack where they might have known my name if the turnover wasn’t so high. I never got asked for anything other than money.
A few years running I even had a Radio Shack battery club card–once a month get a free battery of your choice, kids! There was a spot for my signature that I never bothered to fill in, and no one ever noticed.
In spite of this I feel badly for all those who had a more than reasonable expectation of their privacy being protected.
I am SHOCKED that a company isn’t honoring its word.
They’ve backed way off in recent years, but for a while there stores (at least in my area) were demanding name and address when you paid cash!
And they wonder why nobody likes them.
I guess their rationale is, “Who’s going to try to sue a bankrupt company?”
I used to manage a RadioShack in the early 90’s. The official policy at that time on asking for your information was that the employee was required to ask. However, if the customer declined, that was the end of it. We’d enter some random 4-digit number and pick an existing person (or dummy entry), or leave it blank.
However, some employees did badger customers because there was a goal (90%, I think) that you had to meet for address collection. If you didn’t meet the goal, there was some sort of reprimand or action taken (I don’t recall what it was now).
On the positive side, this makes me feel better about Radio Shack going down in flames if they’re going to be such assholes about it.
Radio Shack almost certainly has no say in the matter. They’ve filed for bankruptcy, and so it’s up to the bankruptcy trustee. That trustee has an obligation to the creditors to wring money out of every asset it can find. The data is an asset.
Well over a decade ago a big popular medical advice web site - I forget the name - went bankrupt. Naturally, promises had been made about not sharing all medical information people uploaded.
But bankruptcy overruled those promises. All that data was worth money, and the promises to the creditors overrode the promises to the customers. The trustee sold the data to the highest bidder, and the money went to the creditors.
[quote=“RogerStrong, post:18, topic:54288”]
Radio Shack almost certainly has no say in the matter.
[/quote]They most certainly did. Hilco Streambank is merely acting as an intermediary for RadioShat.
Standard General is the the prevailing, highest bidder, but that deal hasn’t gone through yet, so you can’t blame them. The decision was already made previously by RadioShat. RadioShat included personal data in its bankruptcy auction as its own asset class. The blame lies with RadioShat for pulling that shit (or at least trying to). They were not forced to do this. I’m sure some rich assholes would simply love for you to believe that, though…
Sorry, but paperwork doesn’t cover the ass of yet another corporation that has blatantly shat on their customers and threw ethics out of the window. And, we see yet another example of how corporations have ventured further and further away from being anything like a public trust and more like malevolent, sociopathic entities (groups of rich assholes) that attempt to hide behind paperwork and legalese.
I am probably going to get spam offering me a good deal on 27MHz crystals.
