Sears is breaking up with Whirlpool after a century

CNN Money ^ | October 24, 2017 | Chris Isidore

[sarge83]

Sears will have their Kenmore brands made by GE or Fridgedare where they were made by Whirlpool. Sears is a sinking ship that didn’t have to sink.

[Flying Circus]

I have a 1973 Craftsman jointer and a 1951 King Seeley Craftsman drill press. Both are solid, heavy, cast iron tools that still work well despite their age. The last time I was in a mall (~6 months ago) I wandered into the Craftsman tool section at Sears and everything was a toy by comparison.

[Dr. Sivana]

By the way - does anyone know - are the Whirlpool products sold in Sears made in the USA?

Last I went appliance shopping (ten years ago, but for a new house full of stuff) the Sears clerk described them as made in America ... as in North America (including Mexico). I will still take that over Red China.

[BlueMondaySkipper]

I don’t think they’ve been upgraded since the days of MS DOS.

I used to work at Sears and it's worse than that. I think the POS system (the old ones and not the iPads) run OS2.

[Tammy8]

I had a chance to buy one of the first Taco Bell franchises and had no interest. I didn’t even consider it for a moment; too young and ignorant to realize the opportunity.

[catnipman]

“run OS2”

well, that would certainly explain a lot ...

[Tammy8]

I have bought many appliances at Home Depot, after I quit buying at Sears. Home Depot at least acted like they wanted to sell them to me.

Sears and other big names of the past forgot customer service. Customer service is rare anywhere these days but those companies built their business on it, so it was expected by their customer base.

[COBOL2Java]

It’s funny that Sears which was built on mail order business couldn’t figure out how to compete on the net.

Maybe they bought their computers from Radio Shack.

[Intolerant in NJ]

But perhaps Whirlpool is just wants to get off a sinking ship...that's one way of looking at it - we bought a Kitchen Aid oven two years ago - Kitchen Aid is one of the brands Whirlpool makes and we bought the oven through Sears - it worked fine for an oven, and we were satisfied until a couple of weeks ago, when wife tried the self-cleaning function for the first time - midway through the cycle, the oven stopped dead - no cleaning, no electronic display, couldn't even unlock the oven door - I went on line to look for assistance and on punching "repairing Kitchen Aid ovens" into the browser found pages of references to these and Whirlpool ovens, which apparently are and have been for several years noted for quitting during the self-cleaning cycle - several law firms were listed as contemplating class-action suits because of the issue, and YouTube has a number of do-it-yourself clips on repairing this specific fault - through one I was finally able to get the oven door unlocked to get the model and serial numbers to get a repairman. He replaced a couple of fuses for $250 and more or less confirmed without actually saying that this is a common problem with these ovens, telling me ways to maybe run the self-clean without shutting the oven down again (pull the oven half way out of the cabinet, drill holes in the top of the oven cabinet) - laughable - we'll use the oven for cooking until it quits again for whatever reason, then dump it and buy a new one - for sure it won't be a Kitchen Aid or other Whirlpool variant - anyway, maybe it's Sears that's leaving a sinking ship.....

[ViLaLuz]

The ones I’ve dealt with in the past year have very poor customer service, too.