Radio Shack slashes iPhone prices by $50, offering iPhone 4 for $25 with 3GS trade-in - Page 2

As an employee of radio shack, I approve of this . Anyone who can come to Stamford Target Mobile (which is radioshack in target). If you're from the forums I'll see if i can throw anything extra your way

It takes me about 15-20 minutes or less to get someone in and out with ATT or T-Mobile baring anything unusual with their account. Verizon on the other hand is a nightmare, and I've seen it be up to 2 hours for a single customer.

very frustrating at AT&T won't let me reup my contract till Feburary, when I assume the deal will be over.

Oh well, if rumors are true, maybe i'll want to switch over to Verizon...

This is far beyond an Apple only trade-in deal, they are accepting trade-ins for computers, TVs, mp3 players, cameras, etc. that can be used to buy any comparable Radio Shack item. Apple Insider is only telling the Apple side of the deal because this is an Apple news site.

Radio Shack did not do this to tell people they are an Apple seller or trying to mislead Apple customers. Folks may want to actually look at the site and investigate before commenting.

I had the same reaction. bummer!

My 3G went through the wash last Saturday. After baking it on top of my Time Capsule for a day and then putting it in a silica gel filled Tupperware it came back to life and functions perfectly. The screen however, now has a fascinating water defect on it that sort of looks like 3D water drops.

I wonder what they will give me for it?

Went to Radioshack and tried to get this deal. The sales people were clueless. They didn't have any iPhones in stock, and said they could order one to arrive in 3 days. They tried to place the order, but couldn't get the advertised discount to work on their register. The disaster part is that they deactivated our iPhone sim card, so we ended up leaving the store with a dead iPhone 3G and not even an iPhone 4 on order! Called ATT and they say we have to go to an ATT store to get another SIM card for the 3G, because the old one can't be reactivated. What a mess!!!

You can sell in on Ebay. Folks are getting upwards of $200 for 3G phones with defects (more for phones in good condition, with no cracks or missing features (sound, etc). I am amazed, but you can get a better deal by selling it this way, which will pay for the upgrade to iP4.

I sold a 3G 8gb last summer for $260, and a 3GS 16gb, white, for $360 on ebay (both were not damaged, but did notice all the ones that were advertised for sale with minor and major problems (even water damage), which didn't seem to deter folks from buying them. Just be honest about defects, so you won't get it sent back to you for a refund.

Thanks for the tip, but I searched water damaged iPhones on Ebay and they are not getting good prices. If I can find a Radio Shack has them in stock and knows what they are doing I'll consider giving them a try.

I doubt many of us here are the hand-wringing types at all. But these complaints are real for many people. For them, these issues do resonate outside of forums and that's why consumer protection laws already in place define what is fair.

These things don't just benefit consumers who find it difficult to understand contracts, but also people like us who benefit from having an Apple warranty that is prepared within the rules designed to support the interests of ALL consumers.

Despite all the previous negative posts about the Radio Shack trade in, I can report that at least in the North Dallas area it works and works well.

I first went to my nearest RS location where I had traded in my 16G 3G for a 16G IP4 back in June. The manager told me that this go around, they were not getting any iphones as their store simply did not generate adequate traffic for the product. He was very polite and directed me to another store only a couple of miles away which he knew still had product.

I walked into that store, clean, well organized and nothing distasteful in the least. I had decided that I would make this an upgrade to both our iphones, by handing down my 16G IP4 to my spouse who was running a 16G 3GS and getting me a 32G IP4. I did ask about 16G IP4 availability and was not surprised that they had sold their last one yesterday. He told me that they only get shipments on Fridays (which I already knew). Fortunately they still had 4 32G IP4s in stock so I was in business. He checked my 16G 3GS and confirmed I would get the $125 trade-in value. From the time I walked into the store until I walked out with my 32G IP4 was less than 30 minutes (granted this was Sunday morning and I was the only customer at the time).

The salesperson was knowledgeable of the entire process and while I have no doubt that there are stores without a clue, there are ones that really know how this is supposed to work and make it happen.

So the bottom-line including tax was $144 ($299 for 32G IP4 minus $50 RS sale minus $125 trade-in Plus tax). No hassling with Craigslist or ebay.

All I had to do once home was to restore my spouse's iPhone backup to my 16G IP4 and the backup from my 16G IP4 to the new 32G IP4 and swap SIMs. Simple, painless.

My advice to anyone thinking of doing the trade in is to set expectations. If you are expecting the Apple store experience, you may be disappointed but having dealt with AT&T on 3 other iPhone transaction, I can say that my experience at RS is on par to slightly better. If you are trading in you already know a lot about the iPhone so the handholding you get at the Apple store is probably not necessary anyway.

david

You can take a broken phone to the Apple Store and get a new refurbished one for $199 (at least, that's the price for an iPhone 4). My phone fell in the pool and after drying it out, it works except for the camera. They told me I could swap it for that price (which was less than a repair would have cost me). That may be why people are buying defective phones.


Check out amazingcelldeals.com. I bought our last 2 phones through them and was very pleased with the price and service.

I find that the Radio Shack stores around here vary, depending on some different factors. Some are little more than kiosks, some have vast selections of cool stuff. There is also everything in between.

It seems to vary based mostly on demographics, at least around here. The big fancy areas have big fancy stores. The "urban" areas sometimes have crappy stores.

There are several that are nothing short of excellent. From what I have seen, if you go to one which is near a bunch of fancy downtown office buildings, or one at the rich folk's mall, the service will be excellent. If you go to one in an average area, it varies.

It might be okay in it's home base of Texas, but where I live Radio Shack has been famous for many years as being a crap store with little stock and over-the-moon prices. Their staff are renown for great stupidity and lack of knowledge of almost any topic to do with electronics.

US residents might not be aware that Radio Shack as a brand store, has pretty much *failed* all over the world and is currently just a US company whereas not many years ago they operated in many other countries. For instance, it was one of the leading electronics outlets in Canada up until recently, and now it doesn't even exist up here anymore.

Radio Shack is teetering on the edge of existence, and it fell off the cliff of relevance a long time ago.

Radio Shack occupies a certain niche in the community, though it's not a metro area leader in some of the more current product areas like smart phones. A week ago I needed a cable A/B switch, which you're not likely to find at most WalMarts, Targets or even Best Buys. They're very useful for those electronic odds and ends like cables and connectors. Unless you want to wait for your eBay or Amazon order, that's really convenient. Losing a Radio Shack in a place like Spencer, Iowa means a 35-mile drive to Mankato, Minnesota or Sioux Falls, South Dakota for electronic miscellany.

You make a very good point, and probably the SOLE reason they still exist. Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Office Depot or OfficeMax, etc, just don't stock the odds and ends electronic stuff you may need, but, increasingly, you can find most everything at Home Depot or Lowe's these days, so Radio Shack may not be able to make it selling low margin items.

You may recall (actually, I'm old enough to recall) when Radio Shack was the only way to get a catalog that had radio and hifi components and kits (similar to Heathkit, etc), so you could get things that the Sears catalog didn't carry, and no one else in town cared to stock. Most TV shops of the day were only interested in selling you TV's or console HiFi setups.

Anyhow, I remember just recently that Radio Shack was the LAST retailer that I have ever known to finally switch to electronic cash registers - yes, they did all their sales on PAPER multi-copy receipts, which took sooooo long to do, even for a 99 cent transaction. I realized then that they were at least a decade or more behind the curve, and they never had the vision to convert themselves into a Best Buy or Circuit City (which is bust now).

The future hands-down leader in the field is Fry's, and they will make Best Buy look ridiculous. They have EVERYTHING you can imagine - a true super-store (but in a good way), from computer hardware and software, phones, audio, car audio, music, appliances, office furniture, as well as the components you need to repair almost any type of electronic device. I never shop at Best Buy, unless I have a special need, because Fry's always has what I need, at better prices (no, I don't work for Fry's - they started in Silicon valley, and they are now in several major cities in the West, and I'm sure they plan on expanding - check out the store in Vegas sometime.)

Anyhow, Radio Shack even toyed with changing their "image" by changing their name to The Shack - good luck with that. Hope they survive, but doubt it once Fry's gets to town across the US.

I don't usually do this, but a few years ago I wrote a post on my feelings about Radio Shack, past and future, and it seems to remain relevant, so here it is:

OK, so I've been using Radio Shack since I was a kid. Sure, there are more fully stocked electronics places, but if you need a dipole switch or an LED or a DC connector or a cheap audio or video adapter on a Sunday night, where else are you gonna go? Having all that stuff from 9am-9pm, more or less 7 days a week, never more than a half mile away, has saved my gadget happy ass on more than one occasion.

So I have a kind of fondness for the old girl, with their odd mix of down market A/V products and DIY gear. They always seemed to manage to hit this middle ground between hobbyists, enthusiasts, and bargain hunters, with the occasional genre busting wildcard, ala the venerable TRS 80 or any number of head scratching audio offerings (for instance, they started putting Lineaum ribbon tweeters into cheap bookshelf speakers for no apparent reason, other than someone in the company though it was cool and got to do it). And then there was the portable CD player that had the audio press in fits of rapture, but only if you ran it off the batteries. I have no idea. But then that's the wonder of the thing.

But as far as I can make out, Radio Shack has entered a period (or has been in a period for a while) of complete cluelessness as to how to proceed. Like, falling apart before our eyes.

I don't have any figures on this, but my guess is that the Radio Shack empire was built on a post-war golden age of tinkering and the first big wave of "Hi Fi" hobbyists. That was always the main part of the mix: parts and audio gear. Ok, batteries and cheap RF junk.

I always had the feeling that the people running Radio Shack were sort of like that. Tinkerers at heart. Possibly a tad insane. So: a very eccentric product mix, with some stuff that only an engineer could love. Amazingly hit and miss managerial styles, franchise to franchise, as if, when you sign on, they give you a key to the front door and tell you to just wing it, as long as you can sell some shit. If that means piling stock in the middle of aisles and hiring spooky oddballs, so be it. Really, not another store like it, for better or worse.

But nowadays when I walk into a Radio Shack I never know what store I'm going to enter. Seems like they feel like the old, low margin "I think I'll buy a cheap RF thing and a cheap PA thing and a cheap LCD thing and some wire and see what I can make" isn't cutting it anymore, so they're moving into Sharper Image lifestyle electronics n' gifts territory.

Like, hideously overpriced, insanely over-packaged "robotics" sets. Or entire walls of their take on the little battery powered car craze of a few years ago, but with a whole line of "modding" parts for far too much money. Fucking ionizers. Fucking iPods. I'm sorry, Radio Shack cannot have iPods. It's like running into a big Sonoma Williams display at the corner liquor store. Just conceptually wrong.

And, of course, cell phones, which sometimes seem like what's keeping the doors open.

I think they've cleaned house and gotten rid of the weirdoes and are endeavoring to become some kind of proper, well lit, expensive toy store.

And I think it's a shame. The Radio Shack of my youth was always a slightly scurrilous place, patronized by people who either didn't know any better or knew perfectly well.

There are plenty of nice stores to buy nice things. Radio Shack, bravely, was a half-assed store to buy cobbled together things, in the company of the like minded. I'll miss it.

The vast majority of Android phones have been upped to at least 2.1 by now. There are a few stragglers that are still on 1.5/1.6 but mostly because of hardware limitations it seems.

While there still is a spread of OS levels, the phones being released now all ship with 2.1 and the manufacturers are getting better at keeping up with Google.

There is no "waiting out" Android. Apple could have had a chance to stop the Android rising when it first began by releasing the coveted Verizon iPhone, but it decided to "wait it out". Now look where that waiting got them.

Just got back from getting my new iP4.

I traded in my 3G and received the full $75 on top of the discounted phone. The time took a lot longer as I had to go to two Radio Shacks to seal the deal.

The salesperson didn't verify if my 3G was fully functional. All he did was look at it, front and back and that was it. Like the other person said, they wanted the USB cable, the wall plug and of course the phone.

Out the door price: $80.11.

I followed up on the radio shack website to ck if I qualified for an upgrade(AT&T had already told me I did) and they said yes. Then I followed the links to upgrading w/ my current account and found that my 450 min /mo account was not listed and the current 900 min would cost $20 more than I pay now. Anyone else run into this problem?
Mark

Just wasted about 2 hours with Radio Slack. I've got two iPhones I wanted to upgrade to iP4 32 Gbs. I checked with my closest Radio Slack and discovered that they are independently owned and don't get any iPhones. Then I checked 3 corporately owned RSs and they didn't have any 32 GB in stock. An employee at the 3rd location gave me the number for their regional office. His store didn't have any and he checked the stock at all of the stores in his district. Not one 32 Gb. Not to worry he said. I can order it from the store and our "Direct to you" program will send it straight to your house...but if you want the trade in, I have to do that at the time of sale so you'll be several days without phones.

We'll I got smart and checked eBay and saw that used 3Gs were selling for much more than $75 so I said okay, I'll sell them myself and called him back to buy the phones for just the $50 discount. "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't make the sale over the phone, you'll have to come in (this so HE can order them...)"

Anyway, dropped the Christmas decorating and cruised into the store. When I got there, he wasn't there so I had to wait. When he finally came back in, we discussed options and he told me that his district included from the VA/NC border and Norfolk to Williamsburg, but did not include Virginia Beach (which for me is about as far as Norfolk). I asked if he had checked the Virginia Beach district. "Oh, I can't see their stock. Corporate makes us compete against each other" So I asked "Could you call and see if any of them have the 32Gb)" He did and, again, no luck. So then we tried to do the "Direct to you" purchase. He was clueless so he called around looking for help. Everyone was clueless about direct to you. When finally got into the system he discovered...you guessed it...Zero stock of 32 Gb. At that point, having my long standing impression of Radio Slack reconfirmed, I gave up and ordered the phones from Apple. Totally painless, upgrade fee waived, phones in stock and will be shipped to my house by Tuesday. Granted I didn't get the $50 discount, but originally I was going to trade my phones in and would have ultimately gotten a lot less than I'll get by selling them on eBay or Craigslist so I consider the whole process a wash.

My bottom-line...I'm not sure how Radio Slack even stays in business. (Oh, and they tried to blame the whole problem on Apple...)

I don't understand why people think this is such a great deal. If you have a working 3G, or 3GS, that product is worth MORE than Radioshack is offering you for it. So go sell it on Craigslist or Ebay, and buy a new iPhone4 with the proceeds. Simple!

I'm in Northern Virginia. Did the deal for a 32GB IP4. Went flawlessly. I'm very happy.

Care to provide the evidence to back that up?

There are a LOT of Android 1.5 phones still being sold. My daughter's Motorola Backflip is still being sold with Android 1.5. There are rumors that a later version (2.1) will be available 'real soon now', but certainly not on my carrier. Heck, they've been saying the same thing since she got the phone in June.

Not to mention, of course, that even if it DOES eventually get upgraded to 2.1, it's a brand new phone that is still on the market and will apparently never run 2.2 or later. Given how all the Android fans like to brag about how important Flash is, you'd think that would be a major failing.

Yep! Latest data straight from the Android Developers website:

http://developer.android.com/resourc...-versions.html


Just because you haven't taken the time to look doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. I believe you said this same thing in another thread a while back and I posted this exact link:

http://www.motorola.com/Support/US-E...re_Update_Page

It seems like you ignored it the last time. I hope you don't ignore it this time. Go get your daughter updated to 2.1!

Thing is, your daughter bought what's essentially a featurephone that runs Android. Once she's on 2.1, she should now be able to run the majority of apps out there. The Backflip's limited by its hardware, so you'll understand if she can't run the hardware-intensive apps (mostly games).

Sometimes, a cheap phone is the most expensive choice.

I'm confused--the 3GS came out just under 18 months ago. Are people really eligible for upgrades from 3GS already? I know they were saying that people who had bought their phones in late 2008 could get an iP4 even if it hadn't been a full 2 years, but I didn't think anybody with a 3GS could, unless maybe they have a deal for people with very expensive service plans or something.

Which doesn't say what you claimed.

You said that the vast majority of Android phones have been updated to 2.1. That site says that the majority of phones THAT ACCESSED ANDROID MARKETPLACE were using 2.1 or later.

Big difference.




All well and good - except that it doesn't work on her phone with her carrier.

Just another Android fragmentation problem.

Which is why I don't recommend Android phones.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Where've ya been? Many people were able to get the 4 12 months after they bought the 3GS, if you spend more than $100 a month on service which many people do.

But isn't app development the major driving factor behind this fragmentation? Developers need to know which Android OS to target and the majority of them accessing the Market are on 2.x. This is probably the best way to determine the relative amount of devices running which OS is out there in the world.

I will agree that there was a period where the manufacturers went nuts and released a few models with 1.5 and 1.6 when 2.x was just released. However, they've all recently straightened out a lot and the majority of new releases are at least 2.1. Hence I believe the 1.5/1.6 devices are early devices/that crazy period/low-end featurephones.


I have seen you use this link before in the past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ndroid_devices

I don't know how accurate this list is, but it looks fairly all-encompassing and I'm willing to run with it. Doing a quick "Find" command, "1.5" generated 31 hits, "1.6" 46 hits, and "2." generated 338 hits. 77 out of 338 is just under 23%.

I should add some caveats that some of the "1.5" and "1.6" hits do also say something along the lines of being upgradeable to 2.x. I also noticed that some of the "1.5" and "1.6" hits are phones from 2008. Take this quick glance for what it is.


Ah, not an AT&T customer. You never mentioned that. Telus or Optus, I take it? Reading up on it, this update is exclusive to AT&T (the original carrier this phone was intended for), which is odd.

And let me ask you this. Is she happy with the phone right now? Is she clamoring for the 2.1 update or is it you?

Having been cash short for some time this was the best way to go to get from 3GS to 4. I called the local chicken shack to confirm the deal and inventory, ran down there, and I was in and out in about 20 minutes. They were very well trained, capable, and friendly. Of course, in CA there is tax on the pre-discounted retail price of any discounted phone, it came out to $66 including the tax.

Yes, Craigslist might have made it a tiny bit of a better deal, but chicken shack was waving the $36 AT&T activation fee, so this was a good decision for me all and all.

Sounds like the sales person told you wrong. All new iPhones are $50 off the normal price. Trading an iPhone 3G should have gotten you a minimum of $75 credit towards the iPhone 4. This is in addition to the $50 off, so the 32GB should have cost $175 (with 2 year contract, of course.)

We did the deal last night. Got my wife a 16BG iPhone 4. The staff were very nice and efficient. They kept the store open an extra 30 minutes so we could come get the phone; and we were in and out in that amount of time. (The sales rep I had talked to said they had 3 iPhone 4's in stock, so I didn't want to waste time.) We were going to trade in her 3G but decided instead to try to sell it. What a deal!

I was shopping at Pentagon City today when I saw this story pop up in my reader. I went over to the Radio Shack and they said nobody had any in stock anywhere. Luckily, my local Shack (I live in Frederick MD) had one and I did this today. Traded in a 3GS and a 3G for a brand new 16GB iPhone 4 and a $51 gift card.

Did anyone besides me, actually try this?

I clicked through the "Eligibility Checker" link, entered my info, it said 1 of the 2 phones qualified now, the other would qualify in 6/2011 - then I tried to proceed, and could not find any Iphones amongst the 30+ phones it offered me. I changed the filtering, chose AT&T only, nada, then I removed filtering to show all phones, did a browser search for "Iphone" - nada. I even hunted around the site - can't find any Iphones. What gives - bad CMS settings?

- Thoroughly confused.

It's an in-store offer only.

As Paul Harvey would say, "Page 2..."
On a lark, I decided to go to another RS. I simply asked about the deal upon arrival, and presented my 3G for inspection. The sales guy knew *exactly* what the score was, and his cow-orker confirmed she'd done with a $75 trade in, total price $88.

And so it was. They had a 16GB in stock. Total time for the transaction was about 20 minutes. A well trained rep, went like clockwork.

I take back everything I said. Just go to the right location at the right time, and this is available.

I'm going to have a hard time not thinking of Radio Shack employees as "cow orkers" from now on.