Posted on 04/18/2008 9:29:47 PM PDT by BurbankKarl
Sears Holdings Corp., the retailer being reorganized by hedge fund investor Edward Lampert, said Bank of America Corp. refused to renew a $1-billion letter of credit under existing terms, sending the shares down 3.2% in after-hours trading Friday.
Losing the credit probably won't affect Sears' access to cash, the Hoffman Estates, Ill., company said in a regulatory filing. The retailer had $1.62 billion in cash as of Feb. 2, a 58% decline from a year earlier.
Retailers use letters of credit to assure vendors that they have money to pay for goods, and losing a bank's backing may mean having to dip into cash reserves to pay for merchandise up front.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Guess that’s the “softer side of Sears” that they’ve been talkin’ about.
Go buy Sears stuff, they are pretty good to our servicemen
Walking into a Sears store is like stepping back 20 years in time. It’s scary.
You have to wonder whether the weakness is on Sear’s side or on BofA’s side.
Good.
It’s OK because Bank of America offers credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers.
A K-Mart is medium sized town had 9 cars in its’ lot, the Walmart down the street had over 200.
The Sears here has few customers.
bears watching.
I wonder if Sears would spin off the Craftsman tool line?
Sears needs very much to return to a version of its old catalogue, which was called the "Dream Book", because you could see everything you might ever want without going to the store, and order it by mail.
The internet is the best marketing tool going,but Sears needs to work it harder.
It would not surprise me if BofA's trade letters of credit were the real problem, assuming a discerning seller would refuse them as unacceptable.
I have no problem with Sears since they always have parts for their lawn mowers and tractors and other yard equipment, no matter when it was sold, ordering for which is very easy and convenient. The appliance service men (at least in my area) are top notch too and easy to work with. So what is so bad about stepping back 20 years in time?
Our SEAR’S is liking walking into Juarez, Mexico..Every thing there is advertised in Spanish, not English. (Aurora, IL)
“The appliance service men (at least in my area) are top notch too and easy to work with.”
They used to be decent out here, in central Maryland, but no longer.
I scheduled an appointment for them to come tune up my riding mower. In years past, they'd call the night before and give me a two-hour window of when they'd be there. This year, no window. So I had to take the day off work.
I called the morning of the appointment to try to get some sense of whether I was an early appointment, middle of the day, or end of day. No help. I called again later to make sure that they were still on track. Called at 3 pm - “Oh, you're next, you're the last appointment of the day.” Don't know why they couldn't tell me that at 9 am.
Then, at about 4 pm, I got a call, “He's run out of time, he got hung up at his last appointment, your appointment is cancelled.”
Calls to Sears asking for some sort of compensation (like maybe a discount on the service when they actually did complete a scheduled appointment) got nowhere. Their idea of “making it up to me” was to reschedule the appointment. At full price.
Screw ‘em. I hope they go bust. It's apparent that their financial problems are now affecting the quality of their services.
Buying from Sears is throwing good money after bad.
sitetest
Yeah, I would have been ticked off at that level of service myslef and raised holy hell with Corporate Headquarters over it. I’m in south central Pennsylvania, so our repair guys are pretty decent, and they have never cancelled or missed any appointment with me.
Well, our service folks here were quite good as recently as last spring. I suspect that if the moron had actually gotten out here, he'd have done fine tuning up the mower.
But the inability to give me a shorter window than “between 8 am and 5 pm” and the unwillingness to make it right after they loused up means that we customers are vulnerable to Sears’ service errors.
When I called the many numbers that I called to complain, I got an attitude of, “What do you want from us? We're making it up to you, we're offering to reschedule your appointment.” This even from their special department that handles resolving problems caused by their errors.
What a bunch of clowns.
I know that Sears is struggling to stay in business.
They don't deserve to.
One more incompetently-run company that doesn't give a damn about their customers that will wind up on the ash heap of history.
Kinda sad.
sitetest
Soon, the stores became the paradise it is now....paradise, that is, for men who need tractors, lawn mowers, camping equipment, tools, automotive and the like. This heavenly masculine store section plus its TV department and its crappy appliances are the only reason one can find humanoids in its stores at all.
Our Sears here is at one end of the mall. Its used mostly as a conduit for women walking from the parking lot straight THROUGH to get to the rest of the mall.
Years ago I talked to long-time Sears employees who were demoralized even then....telling me they were just putting their time in till retirement. It's even worse now. Sears employees were historically a "family". That was long ago and far away. I know, as many men in one side of my family were Sears men. There was great pride in working for Sears.
Corporate, greedy and over-educated suits and Wall St. financial manipulators are the reason we're seeing all the iconic stores going under. The hands-on, old-school executives who knew their customers and who provided REAL service and top quality are for the most part relics of the past.
And under WHOSE watch are all these retail stores going under, pray tell?
Leni
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.