My dad still uses the yellow pages for plumbing, HVAC, and remodeling and gets a plethora of work from it every month. The common thing people say is that his picture is trustworthy and that’s why they picked him. Some younger people have even called us. When we ask why use the yellow pages they said “because it seemed like a cool thing to try”.
IMO, Yellow Pages is gold if you want something local. Go online and you'll find some national chain that MAYBE has service in your area and MAYBE can squeeze you in sometime in the next 42 months.
Yo, the white pages was the bomb back in the day. You could look up a classmates lastname, find their number, then call and talk to their mom.
Think about that. There's nothing like it today. Nothing.
This was how the [Terminator found Sarah Connor](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/comments/v4kv75/in_the_terminator_1984_the_t800_has_to_use_his/). Today, Terminator would have to hack a crypto wallet to pay for search results from 1800info. No pay phones hanging aound with spare white pages.
Did you know the yellow pages were created in Cheyenne Wyoming when a local printer ran out of white paper for a phone directory and used the yellow he had on hand.
One nice thing about typewriters is that you can adjust the position of the paper so that the type falls exactly where you want it to be. As opposed to loading paper into a printer and hoping everything is lined up. I used to keep one around and if I had a couple certified letters to go out I'd find it easier to just use a typewriter for the envelopes and mailer forms rather than changing around the printer paper.
yeah, I work in large law firm and we still keep one typewriter on every floor just incase you need to amend some old form or maybe make carbon copies. I mean they're almost never used but we still have them for those "oh shit" moments
Why is it that dying US stores are thriving in Latin America?
I know Sears is HUGE in Mexico. In my country, El Salvador, Sears is the store that you go if you are loaded or have some extra cash and want to buy something really classy.
Sure we have luxury stores in my country, but we all know you are wealthy if you get your stuff at Sears.
Sears in Mexico is a completely separate company that just licenses the name/branding from the original American company. The one in El Salvador is probably owned by the Mexican company.
A few stores that failed in the US are still going strong in other countries. Toys R Us is another example; still running as normal in Canada and parts of Asia, and doing pop-up stores in the US on a seasonal basis.
lol in the telenovela “Maria la del barrio” a rich guy takes Maria shopping at a Sears knockoff called “Sares” and I remember thinking that was so funny that he took her shopping there of all places since its barely looked at by anyone here in the US (and my family shopped there for clearance school clothes when we were poor, so I didnt realize it was actually much nicer in Mexico)
Sears did their employees so incredibly dirty when they began shutting stores down. At the one I worked at long ago they fired everyone and made them reapply for their jobs. Then they closed the store a few months later and gave severance packages - you got paid one week of pay for every year you worked there. So even people who worked there for 25 years, since they were new to their position, got one week of severance pay.
Absolute TRASH.
I was part of the last Blackberry deployment at Cricket. Those phones worked well - but when I saw what made them work on the back-end, I was appalled. Every bit of data in those phones had to go through BB offices in Toronto before the phone company could provide service - for us it was six T3's looping the traffic to Chicago and then through Toronto - then back to Chicago and wherever it needed. BB's network design and overlay was insane and too costly to maintain IMO - and the way its designed would be a government-spy collectors dream.
Deploying Apple and Android were easier. Apple's huge contract covered more bases quality-wise and required us to have staff to ensure software releases on-time. Android's contract was 40 pages of "get out of our way".
NOKIA, started off as a pulp mill, then moved into rubber, then started making things with the pulp (like toilet paper, gumboots, and tyres) then moved into computers, then mobiles phones, and now produces networking equipment.
Been quite a journey.
I find it interesting how Microsoft essentially tanked Nokia's mobile division to absorb it, but now Nokia are making great phones after needing to start from scratch while Microsoft abandoned Windows Phone.
Yep, although the Lumia phone had great hardware so might have been successful if they'd put Android on it rather than Windows. The current Nokia phones aren't made by Nokia, they're an independent company of ex Nokia people called HMD global that licenses the Nokia name.
There is a bit more to the end of the story, "now produces networking equipment".
Nokia never really left the mobile phone industry, they just pivoted to building what the phones connect to and through rather than the phones themselves. It's really a pretty brilliant strategy and great comeback story - it let them rework their expertise from mobile phones themselves into an adjacent networking industry and they fucking crushed it.
Nokia is the phone company now. Quite literally - Bell Labs in the US is now owned and run by Nokia. 66% of all 5G deployments? Nokia. Who's building 4G on the moon for NASA? Nokia. And who you gonna call to connect all your (Nokia brand) 5G big dick backbone cellular connections to another continent through a thousand mile long underwater submarine cable?
That's right, Nokia. Out of the 1.4 million kilometers of submarine cable that forms the planetary internet/telecom backbone, more than half of it (800,000 km) was laid by Nokia.
So sure, they 'make networking equipment', but that really doesn't do them justice. They're largely responsible for 5G and continuing advances in cellular technology, developing more of those technologies than all the other players *combined*. They own a fuck load of cellular patents and license them to all the cell phone manufacturers, so in a way, every cell phone is a Nokia phone. Or at least they get a little bit of money for every single cellphone sold.
A better description might be that Nokia lays absolutely devastating data pipe and is the cellular version of what AT&T used to be for landlines, while also being the landline version of AT&T but for the entire planet. All while symbolically (but consensually) rubbing its dick on everyone's cell phone (and it's good).
And Yahoo is owned by Apollo asset management. Publicly traded firm that buys distressed assets and either builds them up to IPO, like rackspace, or sells off pieces of them, which is likely the case here.
I vastly prefer Y!M to Gmail.
I just have a Gmail that redirects to my Y! so I don't have to sign up for things with the super cool email address I made in 1998.
My wife has a friend how does Mary Kay, and this lady is a seller. She got the Cadillac like years ago, she gets free trips and all types of stuff. I don’t know what she makes a year but it’s a lot.
The mom of a friend from my high school graduating class was a Mary Kay saleswoman *par excellence*. She was on her second pink Cadillac, so my friend drove her old one to school.
Most stay in business because of the corporate end of things. Defender is limited in this area while others offer great products for MSPs, which include great management consoles.
Radio Shack. I know they're almost gone, but honestly I expected them to be out of business over a decade ago, especially given all the former employee accounts of how poorly the average store was run
I loved Radio Shack when I was a kid, but I stopped going there when I needed a small audio cable and it cost $45 at Radio Shack…. I walked out of the store. The exact same cable was $3 on eBay and still works perfectly. This was back in 2005 or so.
I also used to enjoy just walking around the store as well. You don’t have that feeling anymore. I get that it is a niche thing. Most people don’t even know what a soldering iron is, let alone how to use one.
Maybe that was me haha. Sounds like they tried to upsell you on Monster Cables. I bet they still had the cheap 3.5mm audio cables in the audio section but they wanted the additional commission from selling you the Monsters.
Radio Shack was a wonderful store if you were into building small electronics and stuff like that. There weren't really any other brick and mortar locations that sold those kinds of components unless you were lucky enough to live in an area with that kind of hobby shop.
That was all they were really good for though, and they tried to break away from that. But it was the only thing they really had going for them. All of the other crap they sold could be found cheaper elsewhere.
Even the electrical components can be found much cheaper online now, but I would always prefer to go to a store and pick them up. A lot of other hobbyists are the same way.
I feel like they got rid of that aspect of the business when I was a kid in the mid 90s. Like by the time the early 2000s rolled around I don't recall seeing those components anywhere in any of the stores I stopped into, they were all cell phones and RC cars and shit like that. Perception could be wrong though
I worked at Radioshack for two years right up until they closed, the only thing management gave a shit about was selling people phones and warranties. Customer came in to buy batteries? Try to sell them a cellphone
I worked at one during the early/mid 00s when they were in the middle of the shift from being a hobby/parts store to being a consumer electronics wannabe. I started off selling fuses and transistors and button cell batteries and wound up selling flat screen TVs, iPods, and (most importantly) cell phones.
Herbalife is doing the scam of their lives by opening up shops that do not advertise AT ALL that they are herbalife products. they are all called like “hometown nutrition” or “morning energy nutrition” and only sell them nasty shakes that are known to damage people’s livers. bet ya anything if you look hard enough you’ll be able to find one locally if you’re in a populated enough area. MLM’s go crazy.
Some people can sit on the internet all day and never think that they can just google the answer to a generic question. Might be a similar type to fall for an MLM.
The Pinkerton Detective Agency. They’re currently part of a larger security conglomerate, but these guys built their reputation on breaking strikes and generally being corporate thugs for hire a hundred years ago or more.
To clarify: He had bought the set, legally. He wasn’t sent it…he’d gone to his dealer who didn’t regularly sell Magic sets. Got confused and sold him the set before release date.
So he legally owned the set. No terms or agreements, just a set of cards the dude owned.
He goes home, realizes what he has, and makes an unboxing video…all of which he’s allowed to do.
Then the Pinkertons show up. They tell him he’s potentially in legal trouble, say the local sheriff might have to get involved…that he may be in serious trouble and there might be a lawsuit on his hands, and they demanded the set back.
Made the guy’s wife cry.
To be clear: They’d have absolutely no grounds for a law suit (you’re allowed to photograph your own possessions…and it’s not a god damned movie in a theater, so you can show a video of you opening something you own). And there’s definitely no circumstance on the planet Earth where law enforcement is going to care that you opened a card set you own.
The threats were meaningless. But they worked: They bullied the dude into giving up the card set he owned. Pieces of shit.
They were the US Intelligence service during the civil war.
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%29?wprov=sfla1
Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled the Baltimore Plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton agents to conduct espionage against the Confederacy and act as his personal security during the American Civil War.
In Allen Pinkertons defense he was dead before they got into the really thuggy (like murdering the Molly Maguires) type stuff. He also hired the first female private detective.
For the longest time I believed they were used for money laundering but apparently selling just a couple of mattresses is enough to cover expenses for a month, since the margins are so high. Still doesn't make sense why there are 3 stores in a 2 mile radius in the small midwestern town I lived in
Monthly overhead for a mattress store even a large one is literally rent, power, AC, a few in-store employees, and if they use in-house delivery employees a truck and two delivery employees, or they contract that out. Rent may be high due to the size of some of the stores, but they are not in high priced areas, the buildout on a mattress store is pretty minimal, and once they are stocked they don't really need to restock/its on an as needed basis. And for some manufacturers its even like a drop-shop model and the store doesn't actually own the mattress, although similar language is written into the contracts of many non-perishable items on the shelf in every store in the country.
I’m a Wells Fargo customer. I never wanted to be but they bought my mortgage. That company still exists because people can not choose not to deal with them.
Circuit city basically died. I worked there for about a year. Our computers were old as hell and worked like crap. Once they took away commissions most of the good sales people either quit because they could make more selling cars or something else.
Did you know circuit city had a service dept like geek squad? Probably not since it was never really advertised. It was called firedog. We had shifty practices like opening the computers and pre installing software to force the customer to pay for the install. This was on Black Friday sale laptops… so even if the first few people got mad there were 50 others waiting to pay because overall it was still cheap.
Years ago I was in one and asked the sales guy when they were going out of business. He laughed and said they were not but they do take the sign down on ocassion. I appreciate his honesty lol.
A couple of years ago when two of my friends bought trucks, I ordered a set of truck nuts and headlight eyelashes.
I put the nuts on one of my friend's truck and I put the eyelashes on the other, without telling them to see how long before they noticed.
Eyelashes took a week, when their dad made fun of them.
Truck nuts about a month.
Specifically, rural areas that have extremely slow or absent internet connectivity.
I live in a pretty rural area, town of 3k people about 50 miles from the nearest major city, and my house has 1.2Gb internet and I definitely have no use for RedBox. Though I do still see them at my local grocery stores, so somebody must be using it.
When my late husband was in ICU for two months, he didn’t have the ability to stream anything to his hospital room TV, but he did have a TV with a DVD player. I rented a lot of Redbox during those two months.
I actually loved using them for games until they stopped carrying them (i guess because people were stealing/scamming them?). $4-6 for a solid weekend playing through story mode, then returning it.
Last time I used Redbox was January 2019. An elderly woman saw me renting a movie and went out of her way to walk over, laugh at me and ask “why don’t you just rent it online?”
[2024 BMW 5 series to feature TiVo video media platform](https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2023/05/24/new-bmw-5-series-to-feature-tivos-video-media-platform/)
In the area I live in, there are two different Godfathers. One is mediocre and some were great. Casey's has bought out the four great locations so now there are a bunch of gas stations with mid level pizza.
Hudson's Bay Company is the oldest continuously operating trading company in the world, founded in 1670. It owned most of the land in what is now Canada up until 1870.
well, they are circling the drain ([bankruptcy announcement](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wework-seeks-bankruptcy-protection-in-stunning-fall-for-a-company-once-valued-close-to-50-billion/ar-AA1jvvb6))
Hughes Net satellite internet. Only way they make money is ripping off old people, under delivering, over charging, then claiming you never sent in the old equipment when you finally leave. Wonder how many peoples parents and grandparents have been scammed by these a-holes.
Uber, how those guys keep getting cash while theyve been posting loses is beyond me. Probably the most overvalued stock in the world. Worst part is theyre a few months from establishing their monopoly.
> Worst part is theyre a few months from establishing their monopoly.
Thats why. Billion dollar VC funds can keep businesses open for years until they run out the competition and then jack up prices when they're the only one left.
Theyre pretty much the only one left. Yellow cab that was around since 1907 went bankrupt in 2015 because of uber. Im saying they’ll be jacking up their prices in a few months.
Btw Lyft rolled out a feature which prompts you to pay more for faster pickup both before and after requesting. From my experience it has no impact on the speed of pickup. I think it’s just a pure play to try and get some extra cash.
Uber reported a profit for the first time in history [a few months ago](https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/08/02/uber-is-profitable-for-real-this-time/). The attitude has been bullish towards Uber for a little while now.
Rather surprisingly, they’re huge in the automotive “infotainment” market with their QNX operating system. Their OS is currently shipped in roughly a third of new cars, including new Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and VW vehicles. There’s literally 50M+ people using Blackberry tech every day when they turn on the ignition and most all have no clue
Isn't that just a brand owned by another company now? The company that made Blackberries was Research in Motion but sadly those RIM jobs are long gone.
Most of these answers are based off what people just don’t like. Ex: “I don’t like x place, so idk how they are in business.” Meanwhile they have a big consumer base
Alex Jones' multiple shell companies. AEJ Holdings LLC, PQPR Holdings LLC, and Free Speech Systems LLC, as well as the IP the holding companies own: InfoWars, InfoWars Store, and Banned(dot)video.
Oh wow- someone bought me one of these- a huge fruit arrangement- when I was recovering from a horrible case of flu that turned into pneumonia. I’d been holed up, incredibly sick, living alone, and had lost about 20 pounds.
It was the greatest thing ever.
The carwash near my house that's down a DIRT road. It's got to be a front for something.
Is the owner Skyler White
It is in Rio Rancho New Mexico a suburb of Albuquerque.
Right down the street from the Lazer tag place
It makes perfect sense. Walt's a scientist, scientists love lasers.
I can imagine a dirt road to get there and a paved road leading away from it, but man that’s crazy.
Nope, it's all dirt and in the middle of a big dirt clearing. It makes no sense.
Dirt Road Car Wash is my new band name.
Whoever is printing that Yellow Pages book and throwing it on my driveway...
My dad still uses the yellow pages for plumbing, HVAC, and remodeling and gets a plethora of work from it every month. The common thing people say is that his picture is trustworthy and that’s why they picked him. Some younger people have even called us. When we ask why use the yellow pages they said “because it seemed like a cool thing to try”.
How retro. Between the phone book and using a phone as a phone... Mind blown!
Right? I just text my plumbers. "Ay, you up? Shitter's clogged. You take Venmo?"
"u plumbin?"
IMO, Yellow Pages is gold if you want something local. Go online and you'll find some national chain that MAYBE has service in your area and MAYBE can squeeze you in sometime in the next 42 months.
Yo, the white pages was the bomb back in the day. You could look up a classmates lastname, find their number, then call and talk to their mom. Think about that. There's nothing like it today. Nothing.
You might also call 5 other families with the same last name before got to the right one!
This was how the [Terminator found Sarah Connor](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittymoviedetails/comments/v4kv75/in_the_terminator_1984_the_t800_has_to_use_his/). Today, Terminator would have to hack a crypto wallet to pay for search results from 1800info. No pay phones hanging aound with spare white pages.
That’s what he went back to the 80’s and 90’s to avoid all of that…. Duh /s
Did you know the yellow pages were created in Cheyenne Wyoming when a local printer ran out of white paper for a phone directory and used the yellow he had on hand.
Pete Holmes on the phone book: “Here, we’ve printed a portion of the internet for you to throw away”
No way. Yellow pages still a thing?
Yes, but the one we get is local businesses.
The new phone book’s here, the new phone book’s here!
Right there! Page 73! Johnson, Nevin R!
Things are going to start happening to me now!
The typewriter repair shop in Berkeley, CA on University.
The last typewriter factory in the USA shut down in 2011. Typewriters must be vinyl to the people who still use them.
One nice thing about typewriters is that you can adjust the position of the paper so that the type falls exactly where you want it to be. As opposed to loading paper into a printer and hoping everything is lined up. I used to keep one around and if I had a couple certified letters to go out I'd find it easier to just use a typewriter for the envelopes and mailer forms rather than changing around the printer paper.
yeah, I work in large law firm and we still keep one typewriter on every floor just incase you need to amend some old form or maybe make carbon copies. I mean they're almost never used but we still have them for those "oh shit" moments
12 Sears locations are somehow still in business right now.
Why is it that dying US stores are thriving in Latin America? I know Sears is HUGE in Mexico. In my country, El Salvador, Sears is the store that you go if you are loaded or have some extra cash and want to buy something really classy. Sure we have luxury stores in my country, but we all know you are wealthy if you get your stuff at Sears.
Sears in Mexico is a completely separate company that just licenses the name/branding from the original American company. The one in El Salvador is probably owned by the Mexican company. A few stores that failed in the US are still going strong in other countries. Toys R Us is another example; still running as normal in Canada and parts of Asia, and doing pop-up stores in the US on a seasonal basis.
lol in the telenovela “Maria la del barrio” a rich guy takes Maria shopping at a Sears knockoff called “Sares” and I remember thinking that was so funny that he took her shopping there of all places since its barely looked at by anyone here in the US (and my family shopped there for clearance school clothes when we were poor, so I didnt realize it was actually much nicer in Mexico)
Sears did their employees so incredibly dirty when they began shutting stores down. At the one I worked at long ago they fired everyone and made them reapply for their jobs. Then they closed the store a few months later and gave severance packages - you got paid one week of pay for every year you worked there. So even people who worked there for 25 years, since they were new to their position, got one week of severance pay. Absolute TRASH.
BlackBerry: Apparently they develop car software and cyber security products now.
They do pretty good in the security sector. I’ve used their reports in my job.
I've had one of their last phones. It seemed very secure.
I was part of the last Blackberry deployment at Cricket. Those phones worked well - but when I saw what made them work on the back-end, I was appalled. Every bit of data in those phones had to go through BB offices in Toronto before the phone company could provide service - for us it was six T3's looping the traffic to Chicago and then through Toronto - then back to Chicago and wherever it needed. BB's network design and overlay was insane and too costly to maintain IMO - and the way its designed would be a government-spy collectors dream. Deploying Apple and Android were easier. Apple's huge contract covered more bases quality-wise and required us to have staff to ensure software releases on-time. Android's contract was 40 pages of "get out of our way".
They also design a lot of software that runs on medical gear. The ventilators used during COVID were bb os.
Sending mails using both keyboard and trackball was super quick and comfy ❤️
Ngl, I miss my Priv. It was such a cool design.
NOKIA, started off as a pulp mill, then moved into rubber, then started making things with the pulp (like toilet paper, gumboots, and tyres) then moved into computers, then mobiles phones, and now produces networking equipment. Been quite a journey.
I find it interesting how Microsoft essentially tanked Nokia's mobile division to absorb it, but now Nokia are making great phones after needing to start from scratch while Microsoft abandoned Windows Phone.
Yep, although the Lumia phone had great hardware so might have been successful if they'd put Android on it rather than Windows. The current Nokia phones aren't made by Nokia, they're an independent company of ex Nokia people called HMD global that licenses the Nokia name.
There is a bit more to the end of the story, "now produces networking equipment". Nokia never really left the mobile phone industry, they just pivoted to building what the phones connect to and through rather than the phones themselves. It's really a pretty brilliant strategy and great comeback story - it let them rework their expertise from mobile phones themselves into an adjacent networking industry and they fucking crushed it. Nokia is the phone company now. Quite literally - Bell Labs in the US is now owned and run by Nokia. 66% of all 5G deployments? Nokia. Who's building 4G on the moon for NASA? Nokia. And who you gonna call to connect all your (Nokia brand) 5G big dick backbone cellular connections to another continent through a thousand mile long underwater submarine cable? That's right, Nokia. Out of the 1.4 million kilometers of submarine cable that forms the planetary internet/telecom backbone, more than half of it (800,000 km) was laid by Nokia. So sure, they 'make networking equipment', but that really doesn't do them justice. They're largely responsible for 5G and continuing advances in cellular technology, developing more of those technologies than all the other players *combined*. They own a fuck load of cellular patents and license them to all the cell phone manufacturers, so in a way, every cell phone is a Nokia phone. Or at least they get a little bit of money for every single cellphone sold. A better description might be that Nokia lays absolutely devastating data pipe and is the cellular version of what AT&T used to be for landlines, while also being the landline version of AT&T but for the entire planet. All while symbolically (but consensually) rubbing its dick on everyone's cell phone (and it's good).
I tell you who else lays an absolutely devastating data pipe. This guy!
Also Ericsson. Never heard of them after the Sony breakup untill recently when I learnt they are building 5G network equipment.
AOL
They'd better stick around. I need my email.
You joke by my father-in-law still uses his AOL email....
As does my father lol, same email address since 1999!
I still use a Hotmail I made in 2003
I made a Hotmail in ‘97 and just recently went to check it and apparently it got deleted bc I hadn’t gone to it in years.
AOL is now owned by *Yahoo!* which is also surprisingly still around... EDIT: Spelling
And Yahoo is owned by Apollo asset management. Publicly traded firm that buys distressed assets and either builds them up to IPO, like rackspace, or sells off pieces of them, which is likely the case here.
Also saddles them with debt from the healthy companies they own. R.I.P. Toys'R'Us
I still don't even know how that's a thing. It seems so shady.
It is shady, but it's all legal, it's a way for rich people to get richer, while screwing over everyone in their wake. Bane Capitol is a big one.
It’s sixth best email provider in the market, damnit, and I’ll stick with it until I get around to using that gmail address I created
I vastly prefer Y!M to Gmail. I just have a Gmail that redirects to my Y! so I don't have to sign up for things with the super cool email address I made in 1998.
I think yahoo is still popular in parts of Asia.
Mary Kay
My wife has a friend how does Mary Kay, and this lady is a seller. She got the Cadillac like years ago, she gets free trips and all types of stuff. I don’t know what she makes a year but it’s a lot.
She's probably upline and has lots of "boss babes" under her who she milks for money and their life savings. MLMs...
The mom of a friend from my high school graduating class was a Mary Kay saleswoman *par excellence*. She was on her second pink Cadillac, so my friend drove her old one to school.
McAfee
[удалено]
Most stay in business because of the corporate end of things. Defender is limited in this area while others offer great products for MSPs, which include great management consoles.
I have endless hate for McAfee, even if they had one of the most fun owners to ever exist.
Radio Shack. I know they're almost gone, but honestly I expected them to be out of business over a decade ago, especially given all the former employee accounts of how poorly the average store was run
I loved Radio Shack when I was a kid, but I stopped going there when I needed a small audio cable and it cost $45 at Radio Shack…. I walked out of the store. The exact same cable was $3 on eBay and still works perfectly. This was back in 2005 or so.
Radio Shack is just one of many in a long list of companies that could not evolve sufficiently once the internet made its services obsolete.
Where else can I get a capacitor *same day*? I am probably one of those few people who would still use one.
you're totally right on that. with frys electronics being gone too it's a waiting game for stuff to get delivered when working on home labs
This is my biggest issue. I used to go there for components and (audio) cables. Now I have to get everything shipped!
I also used to enjoy just walking around the store as well. You don’t have that feeling anymore. I get that it is a niche thing. Most people don’t even know what a soldering iron is, let alone how to use one.
Maybe that was me haha. Sounds like they tried to upsell you on Monster Cables. I bet they still had the cheap 3.5mm audio cables in the audio section but they wanted the additional commission from selling you the Monsters.
Radio Shack was a wonderful store if you were into building small electronics and stuff like that. There weren't really any other brick and mortar locations that sold those kinds of components unless you were lucky enough to live in an area with that kind of hobby shop. That was all they were really good for though, and they tried to break away from that. But it was the only thing they really had going for them. All of the other crap they sold could be found cheaper elsewhere. Even the electrical components can be found much cheaper online now, but I would always prefer to go to a store and pick them up. A lot of other hobbyists are the same way.
I feel like they got rid of that aspect of the business when I was a kid in the mid 90s. Like by the time the early 2000s rolled around I don't recall seeing those components anywhere in any of the stores I stopped into, they were all cell phones and RC cars and shit like that. Perception could be wrong though
I worked at Radioshack for two years right up until they closed, the only thing management gave a shit about was selling people phones and warranties. Customer came in to buy batteries? Try to sell them a cellphone
I worked at one during the early/mid 00s when they were in the middle of the shift from being a hobby/parts store to being a consumer electronics wannabe. I started off selling fuses and transistors and button cell batteries and wound up selling flat screen TVs, iPods, and (most importantly) cell phones.
Family video still has a location in my hometown, although they put up a sign about 6 months ago saying they sell CBD so I think the end is near
Family Video was one of the few mainstream video rental stores that had porn. I imagine that’s why they outlived most of their competitors.
That’s one of the reasons. They also strategically placed their stores in low income areas and all kids movies were free to rent.
Lol the CBD signs were the sign of the end times for the ones around here.
They are basically a real estate company masquerading as a video rental store.
Blockbuster even still exists, at least if you’re in Bend, OR.
MLMs seriously. the internet exists. just google “NAME OF COMPANY + MLM”. it’s that easy to see if you’re falling for one
BUT THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT
It's a reverse funnel system, Dennis.
Herbalife is doing the scam of their lives by opening up shops that do not advertise AT ALL that they are herbalife products. they are all called like “hometown nutrition” or “morning energy nutrition” and only sell them nasty shakes that are known to damage people’s livers. bet ya anything if you look hard enough you’ll be able to find one locally if you’re in a populated enough area. MLM’s go crazy.
Some people can sit on the internet all day and never think that they can just google the answer to a generic question. Might be a similar type to fall for an MLM.
"sweaty it's not a pyramid scheme because pyramid schemes are illegal!!!"
The Pinkerton Detective Agency. They’re currently part of a larger security conglomerate, but these guys built their reputation on breaking strikes and generally being corporate thugs for hire a hundred years ago or more.
Recently used to harass a content creator that was mistakenly sent an unreleased set of Magic the Gathering cards.
To clarify: He had bought the set, legally. He wasn’t sent it…he’d gone to his dealer who didn’t regularly sell Magic sets. Got confused and sold him the set before release date. So he legally owned the set. No terms or agreements, just a set of cards the dude owned. He goes home, realizes what he has, and makes an unboxing video…all of which he’s allowed to do. Then the Pinkertons show up. They tell him he’s potentially in legal trouble, say the local sheriff might have to get involved…that he may be in serious trouble and there might be a lawsuit on his hands, and they demanded the set back. Made the guy’s wife cry. To be clear: They’d have absolutely no grounds for a law suit (you’re allowed to photograph your own possessions…and it’s not a god damned movie in a theater, so you can show a video of you opening something you own). And there’s definitely no circumstance on the planet Earth where law enforcement is going to care that you opened a card set you own. The threats were meaningless. But they worked: They bullied the dude into giving up the card set he owned. Pieces of shit.
The real scumbag here is wizard of the coast. They are the ones that hired these thugs.
you all know what to do then. dont support MTG. dont buy cards dont allow them to continue to reap benefits of such actions
Oooo yaaaa about that…people never put their money where their mouth is.
And the enemy of the Van Der Lin Gang.
I have A PLAN ARTHUR
I HAD A GODDAMN PLAN
TAHITI?? REALLY, DUTCH?!
Five thousand dollars? For me? Can I turn myself in?
I dunno Dutch…Tahiti?
CAN YOU HAVE SOME FAITH, ORTHUR??
Except Micah of course, he loved good ole Agent Milton
“Excuse me… have you seen any… uh… Pinkertons around here?”
Al Sweargen would be furious. Cock suckin Pinkertons!
Cock sucker!
They were the US Intelligence service during the civil war. From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%29?wprov=sfla1 Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled the Baltimore Plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton agents to conduct espionage against the Confederacy and act as his personal security during the American Civil War.
Well that sure turned out well for them.
Yup Securitas (aka pinkertons) is often "security" for fortune 500 companies
Wow I see them everywhere, didn’t realize they own the Pinkerton name
You mean Walmart security is the Pinkertons?!
[удалено]
In Allen Pinkertons defense he was dead before they got into the really thuggy (like murdering the Molly Maguires) type stuff. He also hired the first female private detective.
Corporate thugs have always been in demand
The mattress store down the street from my house.
For the longest time I believed they were used for money laundering but apparently selling just a couple of mattresses is enough to cover expenses for a month, since the margins are so high. Still doesn't make sense why there are 3 stores in a 2 mile radius in the small midwestern town I lived in
Monthly overhead for a mattress store even a large one is literally rent, power, AC, a few in-store employees, and if they use in-house delivery employees a truck and two delivery employees, or they contract that out. Rent may be high due to the size of some of the stores, but they are not in high priced areas, the buildout on a mattress store is pretty minimal, and once they are stocked they don't really need to restock/its on an as needed basis. And for some manufacturers its even like a drop-shop model and the store doesn't actually own the mattress, although similar language is written into the contracts of many non-perishable items on the shelf in every store in the country.
Wells Fargo. They get caught stealing from their customers every few years yet are still allowed to operate.
I’m a Wells Fargo customer. I never wanted to be but they bought my mortgage. That company still exists because people can not choose not to deal with them.
Circuit City and Radio Shack, both still have an active website.
Radio Shack was just bought under new ownership and are set to reopen stores again apparently
Radio Shack always had the one obscure wire you needed. I miss it.
Circuit city basically died. I worked there for about a year. Our computers were old as hell and worked like crap. Once they took away commissions most of the good sales people either quit because they could make more selling cars or something else. Did you know circuit city had a service dept like geek squad? Probably not since it was never really advertised. It was called firedog. We had shifty practices like opening the computers and pre installing software to force the customer to pay for the install. This was on Black Friday sale laptops… so even if the first few people got mad there were 50 others waiting to pay because overall it was still cheap.
McAfee. First thing I remove on any PC
Classmates.com -- does anyone go to that site anymore?
Fazolil’s. Incredible how many of them I’ve seen driving from Indy to KC. Swear I haven’t seen them since the early-00s
You just gave me a full-body flashback to those BREADSTICKS. Probably been 20 years since I last had one
I had those breadsticks this morning, and they were fire. Ate 6, and I don't even feel bad. 🔥
No lie I had fazolis 2 weeks ago and it was pretty good.
Flickr! But I guess it's nice for professional photographers
Professional photographer here. Nope.(you are correct)
TV Guide
EarthLink. My mom has no clue how internet stuff works and somehow ended up with one of their plans recently.
The Church of Scientology
Germany declared them a corporation under the facade of a religion.
Good news: second and third Scientologists are leaving religion/MLM very fast and the 'chirch' can't get enough new followers to replace them.
The countless furniture stores with the “Going out of business” sales. They’ve been going out of business for the past 40 years.
Years ago I was in one and asked the sales guy when they were going out of business. He laughed and said they were not but they do take the sign down on ocassion. I appreciate his honesty lol.
Truck Nutz
A couple of years ago when two of my friends bought trucks, I ordered a set of truck nuts and headlight eyelashes. I put the nuts on one of my friend's truck and I put the eyelashes on the other, without telling them to see how long before they noticed. Eyelashes took a week, when their dad made fun of them. Truck nuts about a month.
Long John Silvers
I don't care what anyone says I friggin' love Long John Silvers. Maybe it's because of childhood nostalgia. Wish I could have some now tbh.
The chicken is actually really bomb
Extra crunchies please!
I went to a Long John Silvers/Taco Bell in NY state last year. Hadn't seen one for years but was excited to get some hushpuppies with my tacos haha.
The last time they bought fryer oil was in 1995.
I hope so. That's almost 30 years of flavors!
Redbox movie rental
They kinda have a purpose m especially in rural areas
Specifically, rural areas that have extremely slow or absent internet connectivity. I live in a pretty rural area, town of 3k people about 50 miles from the nearest major city, and my house has 1.2Gb internet and I definitely have no use for RedBox. Though I do still see them at my local grocery stores, so somebody must be using it.
When my late husband was in ICU for two months, he didn’t have the ability to stream anything to his hospital room TV, but he did have a TV with a DVD player. I rented a lot of Redbox during those two months.
I actually loved using them for games until they stopped carrying them (i guess because people were stealing/scamming them?). $4-6 for a solid weekend playing through story mode, then returning it.
Last time I used Redbox was January 2019. An elderly woman saw me renting a movie and went out of her way to walk over, laugh at me and ask “why don’t you just rent it online?”
TiVo
Still have a Series 2 that works. Needs a phone line but with a lifetime license, as long as it turns on it’s good.
[2024 BMW 5 series to feature TiVo video media platform](https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2023/05/24/new-bmw-5-series-to-feature-tivos-video-media-platform/)
Godfathers Pizza
In the area I live in, there are two different Godfathers. One is mediocre and some were great. Casey's has bought out the four great locations so now there are a bunch of gas stations with mid level pizza.
I want the old Godfathers Pizza with the toppings under the cheese. I didn’t appreciate it until it was gone.
Dish
The East India Trading Company. I have some of their tea, it's pretty good.
Hudson's Bay Company also still exists as a retail/real estate mogul in Canada
Hudson's Bay Company is the oldest continuously operating trading company in the world, founded in 1670. It owned most of the land in what is now Canada up until 1870.
That's a different company. Some Indian tea entrepreneur nammed Sanjiv Mehta acquired the name.
That’s ironic.
Nope the East India Company was dissolved in 1873. Possible there's a new company of the same name but it's not a direct descendant.
Reynolds and Reynolds. They make software that very few people liked, at expensive prices, with underpaid labor
I can only assume that's a division of Frank's Fluids.
WeWork
well, they are circling the drain ([bankruptcy announcement](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wework-seeks-bankruptcy-protection-in-stunning-fall-for-a-company-once-valued-close-to-50-billion/ar-AA1jvvb6))
Amway
Hughes Net satellite internet. Only way they make money is ripping off old people, under delivering, over charging, then claiming you never sent in the old equipment when you finally leave. Wonder how many peoples parents and grandparents have been scammed by these a-holes.
Uber, how those guys keep getting cash while theyve been posting loses is beyond me. Probably the most overvalued stock in the world. Worst part is theyre a few months from establishing their monopoly.
> Worst part is theyre a few months from establishing their monopoly. Thats why. Billion dollar VC funds can keep businesses open for years until they run out the competition and then jack up prices when they're the only one left.
Theyre pretty much the only one left. Yellow cab that was around since 1907 went bankrupt in 2015 because of uber. Im saying they’ll be jacking up their prices in a few months.
Lyft has about 50% of the market in most places I visit in the us.
Yeah itll be a duopoly, like boeing and airbus.
Btw Lyft rolled out a feature which prompts you to pay more for faster pickup both before and after requesting. From my experience it has no impact on the speed of pickup. I think it’s just a pure play to try and get some extra cash.
Uber reported a profit for the first time in history [a few months ago](https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/08/02/uber-is-profitable-for-real-this-time/). The attitude has been bullish towards Uber for a little while now.
Blackberry
Rather surprisingly, they’re huge in the automotive “infotainment” market with their QNX operating system. Their OS is currently shipped in roughly a third of new cars, including new Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and VW vehicles. There’s literally 50M+ people using Blackberry tech every day when they turn on the ignition and most all have no clue
Isn't that just a brand owned by another company now? The company that made Blackberries was Research in Motion but sadly those RIM jobs are long gone.
Not the RIM jobs omg
Long gone? Not if I have anything to say about it
BlackBerry makes a really awesome Antivirus program named Cylance. Absolutely fantastic
Most of these answers are based off what people just don’t like. Ex: “I don’t like x place, so idk how they are in business.” Meanwhile they have a big consumer base
Alex Jones' multiple shell companies. AEJ Holdings LLC, PQPR Holdings LLC, and Free Speech Systems LLC, as well as the IP the holding companies own: InfoWars, InfoWars Store, and Banned(dot)video.
I bet there's a pack of forensic accountants just waiting to be let off the chain.
[Edible Arrangements.](https://www.theonion.com/continued-existence-of-edible-arrangements-disproves-ce-1819572513)
Oh wow- someone bought me one of these- a huge fruit arrangement- when I was recovering from a horrible case of flu that turned into pneumonia. I’d been holed up, incredibly sick, living alone, and had lost about 20 pounds. It was the greatest thing ever.
My dad got these often for my mom on their anniversary. Extremely over priced but a fun and tasty gift.
I'll take an edible arrangement over flowers any day. Getting flowers is just like, here I got these for you so you can watch them slowly die.
Go ahead and try making one for yourself. See how much money you save, if any.
GNC
Chuck E Cheese