Some years back when the company I was working for went out of business I picked up an extra job at a Radio Shack while I looked for another one. It actually turned out to be a decent one for the time I had to put in there. Depending on the type of contract, plan and number of phones the customer activated it was pretty common for me to get $75-200 from each of those activations. Needless to say even though I tried to be helpful to everyone that came in I definitely paid more attention to you if there was even a slight interest in a phone activation.

I'm pretty sure that they would have gotten to the bankruptcy point (if not simply closing tons of locations which they likely should have done long ago) many years sooner if it weren't for cell phones. Activating phones is very profitible however if you have to use that profit to keep what was at one point over 3000 locations running which were already in trouble before the phone push due to a combination of bad decisions, some questionable business practices and simply a changing marketplace you're not gonna make any headway.

It's true that changes in what people purchase, how they purchase and a host of other factors that make up "life" are big contributors. However between my time there, long-time employees I know and a couple of district managers I kept in touch with I feel pretty safe in saying a good chunk of it they did to themselves with bad decisions and some pretty questionable practices.