[cva66snipe]

I know what I'm talking about on this. What I posted about was policies they had even into the 1970's. True other companies made their product and Sears manufactured nothing. Their modified or unlisted products requiring Sears parts you could only find guess where? At Sears. A Briggs and Straton engine from a hardware store you could buy parts anywhere. A Sears engine? NO in some way it was modified not to quite match up. Everyone starting getting mad over the nonsense. It was done to sell service contracts.

Now later on eventually yes you could finally go and get parts anywhere and that occurred. My guess is info finally got shared but back then no one had it but Sears. It was that and stores could not cross reference. Believe me we tried.

One store in our city had every appliance part made except Sears products. It always ended up in a trip to the nearest Sears warehouse/parts center and eternal backorder.

[HamiltonJay]

You could always get the part you just needed the proper cross reference. I have no doubt that sears didn’t make it easy to find them but given I’ve had kenmore in my home my entire life as well as craftsman I can tell you that the folks who repaired thing as a profession have always known how to cross reference the original manufacturer.