Sears on Main in Houston used to draw people in from all over Southeast Texas who had never seen anything like it.
Of course it's abandoned now.
Posted on 06/25/2017 8:56:12 AM PDT by ARGLOCKGUY
I haven't been inside a Sears store for more than 10 years, until Thursday, June 22. And, wow, did I learn a lot.
Mainly, I came away with a better understanding of why Sears Holdings Corp. is closing an additional 20 stores on top of the 245 it already planned to shutter. And why it has failed to turn a profit in 29 out of the last 37 quarters and seen same-store sales decline in 11 of the past 12 quarters.
I observed alienating treatment of a loyal customer at the store in Jersey City, N.J., which was also messy and uninviting inside.
When I came upon customer Stephanie Rosso, a resident of Jersey City, she was struggling with four employees to get a simple return transaction completed for a dryer she'd bought and sent back to the warehouse that day with the delivery man. Normally, getting a refund takes about two minutes tops.
she was obviously an affirmative action promotion. and to make matters worse, her bf was in the department, and routinely showed up too drunk to function and spent most of his shift in the back room sleeping it off.
sears must own land for their stores.
what they lease can be terminated with a bankruptcy and the inventory sold off at full retail by one of the scamming liquidating companies.
Sears on Main in Houston used to draw people in from all over Southeast Texas who had never seen anything like it.
Of course it's abandoned now.
Seems like they'd quit hiring him back every day.
Yes, I'm talking to you Kohl's.
Wow, sad to hear about that, I grew up in the area and spent many years as a kid walking around that place.
That’s a pet peeve of mine, that you go in some stores, and the people who work there can be clueless about the products their stores are selling. I wonder about what training, if any, they give their employees about the merchandise they sell.
I think the best example of is Radio Shack. I'm old enough to remember being able to go there to pick up electronic components (and get my free battery, using my free battery card,) and be able to ask the employees about any electronic projects I happened to be working on at the time.
Back then, the RS motto was "You have questions, we have answers," and they took it seriously. Today, if you can find a Radio Shack, it's "You have questions, we have blank stares."
Mark
It’s not just Sears. I splurged a little on dinner out with friends last night, nothing over the top mind you but nice enough. Server seemed bright and didn’t seem new so she had no real excuse. Appetizer, caprese. She actually sounded as if she thought she was correcting me by calling it “Caprice.” Cocktail before dinner, a nice filtered vodka with tonic and lime, they had Ketel One on special so I ordered that. She called it “kee-TELL.” It’s pronounced like “kettle.” They had a nightly special on filet mignon, I asked for lightly seared, mid-rare to medium. It came out butterflied. I know the kitchen staff there aren’t idiots so the very disappointing error was in how she submitted it to them.
Couple of things:
1) you shouldn’t expect a refund on something that hasn’t been returned into the warehouse yet
2) author doesn’t say if this store is one that’s closing or not
3) is this really the first time someone has seen cardboard boxes in a store?
4) a empty beverage up? You see those in Walmart on every row thanks to lazy people
I agree with that.
Horrible customer service. Horrible.
If Sears had never abandoned their catalog business, they might have become Amazon before Amazon became Amazon. They could have had millions of customers of many years ready to start ordering on the internet once it was invented.
I don’t agree that Sears was done in by not changing with the times... that may have hurt, but the thing that drove my family off was changes they made away from the old way of doing business.
Quality, customer service and rewarding loyalty are not “new” ways of doing business... But at this point in time, they would be new to Sears... they abandoned all three.
Even the Craftsman stuff is made in China now. If I want that, I’ll go to Harbor Freight. Same warranty bout the same quality of tools now. Sometimes better.
Me, too. Loved the smell of roasted nuts and fresh popcorn when we went there with my parents.
For the most part, though, their clothes were always odd colors.
The only tool brands I trust are Craftsman and Black & Decker. Know a lot of people with the same attitude. Black & Decker just purchased Craftman from Sears. What a stupid move by Sears. That was the one remaining reason I’d ever set foot in a Sears store.
I disagree, I think they did exactly like Tandy Leather and Radioshack did; they 'anticipated' 'market demands' and changed 'retail store stock' to match those 'anticipated demands.'
So in the case of Tandy Leather, at huge expense, they re-dedicated 1/4 of each store to picture framing. RadioShack turned 1/4 of each store into a mall cell phone kiosk. And Sears converted half their clothing section to 'follow fashion trends and sizing.'
In each case, their 'staying abreast of the changing marketplace' caused them to stop selling products their customers wanted and instead offered products that people could get anywhere else for much cheaper and would never have considered these stores the first place to get them.
I tie the deaths of these brands in exactly with the college degrees required to be involved in marketing and sales. All were told in college what the 'new trends' were, showed up and were hired, implemented these academic assumptions and were rewarded with bonuses for killing their companies.
Mark
When the Sears catalog arrived in the mail it was a big deal. My sister and I would go through the catalog looking at all the interesting products and clothes. None of it we could afford but it was a nice break to dream with the help of Sears!
I was in a chain grocery store the other day and saw a couple of gnawed chicken bones on top of some packages of soup mix.
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