Posted on 05/28/2016 11:27:48 AM PDT by PROCON
We ordered one full set of appliances from Lowe’s and the installer-—who rescheduled twice and was late when he did come-—was terrible. The dishwasher had to be completely replaced due to his malfeasance.
We got our newest stuff from Sears and it was installed well, on time.
6 months ago, we needed a new washer. We tried Sears.
Walked into a store empty of customers, and STILL needed to wait 10 minutes for the employee to get off the phone with someone to try to sell us a washer.
In the meantime, we had picked one out.
Her FIRST question, was did we have a Sears Credit Card, and she could take our application right there, if not.
We didn’t, and didn’t want one.
Then she tried to enroll us in some kind of Sears Frequent Buyer program. We weren’t interested, but she insisted. That took another 10 minutes, until the application crashed.
Finally, she started writing up the order. Delivery was extra, as was installation, and disposal of the old washer.
Oh, and we needed to buy a power cord, but they were out of these.
We’d been in the store for 30 minutes at this point. And were presented with a order that was nearly twice the price of the machine. We decided, no, and started walking away. The employee FOLLOWED us, complaining that she had done all that effort and time writing up our order, and that it was our OBLIGATION to buy it, now.
We left, went to the nearby Lowe’s, and had a washer picked out, purchased, and installation set up in 15 minutes. . .and all for a price lower than the base retail price at Sears Owebucks. . .
One branch of my (in Illinois) family was a Sears family in the forties, fifties and sixties. A great-uncle was Treasurer and Comptroller of world-wide Sears. Many uncles were buyers, great-paying, respected, sophisticated jobs in those days, travelling the country and the world to select the best products for the hundreds of departments in the chain's stores. Having a good job with Sears carried great cache in the retail world.
What a shame that management slipped from the best to the incompetent. There are millions of Sears-raised generational families still in existence who were long-time loyal employees and who are saddened by what has happened. When I walk through my mostly-empty local Sears and talk to an employee here and there, the long-timers are demoralized beyond belief and thinking of early retirement.
One thing to remember is that nowadays malls are becoming mausoleums populated daily with teeny-boppers hanging out, lunchers in the food courts and seniors doing walk-laps...fewer and fewer actual paying shoppers.
The high-rent, high maintenance Sears stores which have anchored almost every mall nationwide since malls were invented are now stones around the company's neck...and it won't get better for many varied reasons.
As an aside, I bet Trump could save Sears, I wish he would, but he's otherwise occupied, LOL.
Leni
Sears made a blunder by trying to go upscale.
They should have stayed in the reasonably priced good merchandise domain.
Also, they do not have the “customer is king” attitude like at Walmart. I have returned many items to Walmart ourely based on buyer’s remorse. Except for computer softeare and music CD’s, Walmart will take anything back, no questions asked. Just last week I bought a home phone at Walmart. I used it for 2-3 weeks, then cancelled my internet+phone bundle with ATT and Walmart gave me full refund, only question asked was “anything wrong with it”, and I said “I did not like it”.
One time I was on world travel, stopping in India, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Francee, Sweden and England. No one ever questioned my American Express Traveler’s checks. Then I returned home to Chicago and went shopping at Sears on 79th street & Stoney Island. They refused to take my left over traveler’s checks! Sears failed to keep up with the trends and forgot what made them successful.
It would be sufficient to say there is no such thing as a “Craftsman” plant either.
K-Mart is still around? Maybe Sears should ditch that instead. Without Craftsman or Kenmore there really is no Sears.
They still do, or did last year.
Had a 30-yr old Craftsman ratchet wrench replaced; no questions asked.
I replaced my 35-year old washer last year. Only repair ever that I can recall was the drum belt. Once.
I don't expect the new hi tech "green" Maytag Bravos to last that long.
Because Sears has been so poor performing I bought a lawn tractor direct from a JD dealer instead of Sears. Sears has been run into the ground.
It beats anything I’ve ever seen, the gutting of this nation and it’s national brands. It gives all the outward appearances of people fleeing the Titanic.
Is there no pride left at all? You sure don’t see it from industry leaders.
Save Trump...
I sometimes buy vintage Craftsman stuff on Ebay.
Modern era Craftsman hasn’t inspired a lot of confidence in me.
My wife got me this set for Christmas and I use it a lot and will put it with my frontline Craftsman.
Glad I’m not the only one with the same viewpoint.
Yeh its a common practice called selling off your assets before going bankrupt.
This is all Bad Kharma for dumping Mr. Roebuck all those years ago!
:-)
(No, I don’t really believe in Kharma.)
What a shame.
My Grandmother worked at Sears, as did the Mother of my best friend growing up.
This is so sad.
Eddie Lambert (Sears owner) did for Sears what Obama has done for America.
Dumb decision. Sears had a chance to change their entire identity back to the old Sears of yesteryear, a store of the people at the prices of the people.
They could have reflagged all those “K-Marts” as Sears and Roebucks. Could have exited the high cost shopping malls. Could have used the K-Mart name to compete in small towns with Dollar General, Family Dollar, etc., and had a “Name” to do it under.
Instead, they kept doing the same dumb stuff that wasn’t working for either K-Mart or for Sears.
Sears just did not keep up with the times. It became a giant because of the Sears catalogue, but could have regained its glory days by in effect, becoming Amazon.
Instead of trying to preserve its brick and mortar stores, as such, they should have converted many of them to local mostly delivery and large item assembly warehouses, with local pickup to avoid postage and handling.
This would have meant their local inventory would only be smaller items; with the big stuff assembled on site for delivery. It would slash their costs.
They could even subcontract space to specialized businesses, somewhat like they did before, things like watch repair to product customization.
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