On March 6, I took my Lafayette professional grade turntable to the Radio Shack store in Casa Grande, AZ, and paid a $20 deposit. I later received a phone call from the service center in Murray, Utah, and was informed the phono cartridge replacement would be about $51, in addition to the deposit.
Some time later, I got a call from the store in Casa Grande that my turntable was back. I went in to pick it up and almost had a heart attack. My $200 to $300 turntable was a jigsaw puzzle. The plastic dust cover was broken, the counterweight had been removed from the tone arm, the turntable itself was off of the base, and the tone arm was under the turntable.
The manager of the store told me how he had packed the turntable for transport to the shop and it was reasonable. The manager of the shop claimed the unit had arrived damaged. Not from the way it was packed, it wasn't. The manager of the store was fantastic, he did everything he could to try to get the unit to work, but it would not play a record.
It was sent back to Murray, UT, and here it is, April 21, and still no word from the shop. All the turntable needed was a phono cartridge, and I trusted Radio Shack, as there is no other electronics service shops in our county. A phono cartridge and a foot. They said they could not find a foot, but I said that is no biggie, I have a few ways I can go on that. How hard is it to install a phono cartridge? Is it necessary to tear a machine to pieces to replaces a cartridge? I think not.
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