Radio Shack’s Web Site Saved my Life

Ruven Gotz, Anilet Inc.

Ok, that’s a lie: Radio Shack did not save my life, but it did save me a lot of wasted time and, best of all, it saved me from the terrible drudgery of standing up to change the channel on my TV, but more on that later.

I am not a particularly huge fan of Radio Shack, it’s not my typical first choice for high-tech shopping (I usually go to Future Shop or Best Buy). But, this is a story about a company that created a Web site that provided the exact services that I needed.

Here’s what happened. I needed a special cable. I had a new video camera that used a “fire wire” connection to transfer the video from my camera to my computer. Most of the time, a standard fire wire cable will work fine. But my computer is a laptop, and it had a special “mini” fire wire connector.

I tried to call Future Shop and Best Buy to see if they had it, but I could not reach a person who could help me. So I took a drive down to the closest Future Shop. I spend 20 minutes there while several different sales reps pawed through the collections of cables to discover that they did not have what I needed.

So, I started driving around, stopping at all the little computer stores that line the sides of many suburban main streets. No-one had the wire that I needed. When I got home, I went on-line to try to find the product at Futureshop.ca. No luck. Then I tried Best Buy. It took me quite a while to find the Canadian Best Buy web site. The Bestbuy.com site has no links or store locator to the Canadian branch. If you search Google for “bestbuy canada” you get a bunch of sites trying to sell you coupons. Oddly enough, you need to search for “best buy canada” to get to the Canadian Best Buy web site (www.bestbuycanada.ca) , but don’t bother, they have nothing there to help you except a store locator.

In desperation, I tried radioshack.ca. I instantly found the wire that I needed and, now here comes the good part: They showed me which stores in my area had the cable in-stock! Along with the store location, they gave the phone number. I called the store that was around the corner from my house. Yes, they did indeed have it, and they would hold it for the ten minutes it would take for me to get there. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Two weeks later I needed another unusual component. This time I didn’t waste any time. The Radio Shack site showed me that it was in-stock at a store 10 minutes from my house. I did not shop around, I did not compare prices, I drove there and picked it up.

I have since found that Future Shop also has the capability to show you which stores have in-stock product, but Future Shop did not have either of the items that I was looking for.

Then, Radio Shack came to my rescue again. I have one of those universal remotes for the TV that you have to program with a 4 digit code that tells it what type of TV you have. For some reason, my remote “forgot” what code it was supposed to be using, and I could not find the sheet with the information anywhere. I know, I should have given that paper to my wife, and she would have filed it for easy reference – but I didn’t do that, and now I couldn’t find it.

Radio Shack is not perfect; the Canadian site didn’t help me. But the U.S. site, radioshack.com does have a link, right at the top of the page, called “Manuals”. I clicked it, and found the manual for the controller. I paged through, found the elusive code, and there I was, wasting my time in front of the TV without the incredible pain of having to stand up to change the channel… all in less than 10 minutes.

Radio Shack, really does “get” what the Web is about.
 
 
 

© 2004 Anilet Inc.