Interesting RCA TV in "Once Upon a Time in America"

[drh4683]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Likely, but I can't remember the name of the place anymore. I remember a few 60's Grundig TV combo consoles in there running near the entrance, and the place being mostly gray silver and mirror on the inside. It seemed like Grundig was the only brand in there. I assume when you say infamous that I'm not the only one to leave there as an unhappy customer....

Sounds like S&S and the same mean lady working there. They had a "SABA" sign in the window that was visible from the street, otherwise you would have never guessed it to be an "electronics" business. I was there back in 1995 when I was a kid. I found a 1960 Emud "Senior 60" table radio at a garage sale back then. It was my first ever German table radio and I loved that thing. It worked but was trying to figure out why the tuning eye was not responsive. I was foolishly fiddling around with it with the back off while the set was powered up and I dropped my screwdriver on top of the power transformer and it landed on some terminals and shorted it out and smoked the windings. I was so frustrated with myself over that. I found S&S in the local yellow pages and I called over there and a man with a German accent said they could fix it and get a new transformer. My dad took me over there on the weekend and I was fascinated with all of the stuff on display and Larry (the old man) gave me a tour of the place. All German stuff, Telefunken, Grundig, newer and older stuff. Seeing all that stuff under one roof was such a thrill for me as a kid. But nothing was functioning on display and I wasn't aloud to touch anything. It was like a museum in a way. Morton Grove had a ton of German immigrants and I think that place was geared toward serving them as the owners themselves were also German. It was a pleasant visit the first time around I was really happy discovering such nice place that was local.
After about 3 weeks of no contact, I started to make weekly phone calls to get status updates. The daughter was very rude and said "We are still waiting on the part to arrive" but they would never provide me with an estimated arrival date. Another week would go by, I'd call again, and sometimes it would be the daughter, or Larry who would answer and they were becoming very snarky with me when I'd (always politely) inquire on the status. Well, this went on for 3 months! Being just a kid, I told my dad that they were being jerks with me on the phone. So naturally, my dad was getting pretty upset over the whole ordeal. So he decided to call and he wanted to know what was going on. They were very rude to my dad on the phone and gave him the run around with a bunch of BS as I listened on the other phone in the house. My dad had a great way of talking to people without being rude or abrasive, but these people kind of flew off the handle on him and my dad dropped the hammer on them at this point. They got into a big argument and basically told us "get your radio out of here, we're done with you!". This place was run kinda like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld (no pun intended!) Well, we came to find out these people were a bunch of frauds, they had ZERO knowledge on repair and simply took our down payment on the radio repair and refused to give it back which I think was a pricey $60 at the time. They never had any intention on repairing it. When we went in to get it, the radio was sitting on the counter with an invoice taped to it. Under the comments section of the invoice they wrote "Customer refuses to wait for new part to arrive, NO REFUNDS!" Nobody said a word when we walked in. We picked up the radio, and they were very arrogant and my dad said "we'll be sure to spread the word about this business!" My dad demanded the down payment back and they finally and reluctantly did so. It was quite a learning experience for me at the time as I was only 12 then myself.

So that radio sat in my collection for about 4 years in it's broken state until around 1999 when I found someone on ebay selling an actual parts chassis for the same radio. I got it for like $5 bucks and popped that transformer in there and had the radio working perfectly again. As to why the tuning eye was unresponsive? The typical ERO cap which I didn't understand back in '95. I learned a lot in between those 4 years...