Lisa,

I worked for Radioshack from approx 9/01 to 10/02 and you can see by the name of my website that I am not a fan of Radioshack and in this case I am actually on your side. When I worked for Radioshack most of the people who worked in the stores were honest and friendly that is why I took a slight offense to your comment about them lying to you. First let me say that there are 2 sides to every story (Technically 3) and secondly I was not there when you purchased the cellphone.

I have been the current owner of the website for just over 5 years now and I have read every single posting to the website. Lately I have been reading more and more stories from current employee's who are under immense pressure from the District Managers to sell cellphones and to make sure that they sell all of the available accessories. It has gotten to the point that if your cellphone sales numbers are not "Satisfactory" that many employee's are finding that they are no longer needed and are let go. In this economy this put's a lot of pressure on the employee to do whatever they need to in order to keep their job's. It is not Radioshack policy to lie to customers but then again what retail store does have this policy ?

From reading your story and watching your video I can safely assume that you are very well educated about cellphones, User Plans and Contracts. I do not know very much about how Radioshack handles new activations and upgrades to current customers. I'm sure that you could educate me very well on this subject as many things have changed since 2002 and after Radioshack I have refused to ever work in retail ever again.

Now I'm sure that there is a percentage of employee's at Radioshack and every other Consumer Electronics store who are not fully truthful in everything that they say but let's face it from what you described you were obviously lied to. In this case I have nothing good to say about an employee who represents a large company who outright lie's to a customer. It has been my experience both as an employee and a customer that most of my dealings with employee's have been positive and I have not been lied to. I still believe that a majority of employee's are honest and hard working despite the unbelievable expectations that are placed on them by upper management to sell as much as they are expected to during a time when the economy is not the best, people just don't have as much extra cash to lay out to buy new cellphones and accessories that you can find better quality and much cheaper prices on eBay. Finally we both know that the cellphone market is over-saturated which is to the customers advantage these days but it makes it more difficult for sales associates to sell or upgrade a phone when if the numbers are not good for them they can walk out the door and go somewhere else.

Like I said before I was not there when this took place, maybe people should start using the features on their smartphones to audio tape the conversations between them and the sales person. I highly recommend though that one should check the laws in their state regarding doing this BEFORE actually doing so to make sure they are not breaking the law. Here in NJ only one (1) party in the conversation needs to know that a recording is being made and the person making the recording is aware of that making it perfectly legal. The reason I mention this is because last year I had a problem with my Landlord who wanted to evict me because after numerous attempts by the proper legal means I needed some situations in my apartment remedied. When they refused to respond I was forced to go to the city Department of Health and also Code Enforcement only to find out that despite the Landlord owning this house since 1996 and renting the 1st floor apartment that they had NEVER received a Certificate of Occupancy for this apartment. After that all conversations were recorded including the one where my Landlord stated that I had to leave because we went above his head and got him in trouble. Also in that conversation were the complaints of what they were required to fix by Law to be told by the wife that "If I didn't like it I could Move Out". I only mention this because of making sure that if you decide to ever record a conversation to be sure to check the laws in your state to see exactly what they are. BTW, the situation here has been remedied and I continue to live here happily.

Well it sounds like this was an incident that would have been nice if you had an audio recording of because now it is your word against his and anything spoken is hearsay.

I am sorry to hear about all the trouble you are going through with this but not to be facetious why did you sign these contracts when you knew that what you were being told was incorrect ? From the average person I could see this happening but you obviously know much more about all of this then the average person. Even myself from working in the field years ago I know darn well that carriers charge ETF's but the one on the receipt of sale that you posted is a new one to me, I have never seen or heard of this one so it is something fairly new.

I hope that you can remedy your situation with Radioshack to your satisfaction and IMHO I would never go anywhere but the Carriers Corporate stores to upgrade my phone EVER. Best of luck to you and I will be checking in here from time to time to see your updates. The reason that I knew about it was because one of my members posted it to one of my forums.

Good Luck !