rumor mill - the inevitable end may be very soon

[YakkoWarner]

Sears management was a mess the last time I shopped there (in 2001). I had just moved into my house here in TX from VA, I needed new front tires on my car on a Sunday and Sears was the only place open (plus I had gotten the 2 back ones from Sears in VA the previous year so I wanted to get matching ones). So I went in, they had the tires in stock and while they were being installed I walked through the store a bit while waiting. Ended up finding a floor model TV that was a good price because they lost the remote but included a generic universal one in its place, and having just moved into the house I didn't have a TV at all.

So I rolled the TV up to the register over in the auto department, added it to the tires and was just a little over $400 total (remember this was 2001). I didn't have that much cash on me so I planned to pay with a check (there was over 2000 in the bank account at that time) but because I had recently moved, the address on the checks didn't match my new address and they refused to accept the check. BUT, I couldn't leave and goto an ATM to get cash because they wouldn't release my car with the new tires on it until payment was received. I didn't have enough cash on me to cover the tires (even without the TV added). I ended up sitting the loss prevention manager's office trying to get them to accept the check, but company policy said no. I even had them call the bank's automated phone thing that would tell them what the balance in the account was - answer
was still no. I was effectively trapped at Sears.

The only path to the door they would offer me was to apply for a Sears card (which approved without problems) and pay for the tires on that. Since it was either that or change my address again to Sears, I relented and 15 minutes later was free to leave. So I walked over to the customer service desk and - using the exact same check they refused to accept at the register - paid off the balance on the card. The customer service desk accepted the check without any questions and I never used that card again.

 

[3798j]

Like others, my very first credit card was the Sears card which years later became the Sears Master Card. As a symptom of their money troubles, for the last three months the card is giving a 10% statement credit on gas, grocery, and restaurant purchases. Two weeks ago I got their $109.95 shop vac for $69.95 and 5% off of that price by using their card. Some great memories shopping there, I'll miss them. In the '69 Wishbook that Healey Rick linked (very nostalgic), in '73 we purchased that 1/3 HP bench grinder advertised for $44.95 for the bicycle shop. It's still spinning smoothly 45 years later.

 

[Gliderman8]

In 1971 I bought an FM radio for my car. It fit inside the glove box. The radio is hooked up to a power supply and now is in my shop. All those years later and it is still working.

 

[gonzo]

Sears was our go-to place for everything. Remember those toughskin jeans on the first day of school? They never wore out! Much later, we shopped at their high-end store called "The Great Indoors". My guess is that Sears followed the Home Depot - Expo business model. Both "Great Indoors" and Expo were perfect for the house remodels over the years.

I'm sad Expo, Great Indoors, and now Sears are gone... Gonzo

 

[pdplot]

Let Wall St. into your business - goodbye business.
Seen it repeatedly.

 

[catfood]

We have a large retail park around the corner from us in th UK called the Sears Park. Wonder if it's any relation.

 

[pdplot]

My mom had to be different. We only got the Montgomery Ward catalog. Remember them?
Rumor was country people used these catalogs as toilet paper.

 

[John Turney]

My mom had to be different. We only got the Montgomery Ward catalog. Remember them?
Rumor was country people used these catalogs as toilet paper.

Only because they came before telephone books.

 

[Boink]

I suppose it's time for me to gather together my broken Craftsman ratchets, screwdrivers, etc and cash in on their lifetime guarantee one last time.

I thought the same thing.

 

[PC]

.... We only got the Montgomery Ward catalog. Remember them?...

Remember them? They're responsible for my death!

My folks were Ward's customers for many decades. Right up to the end.

They outlived my dad, barely, and my mom shopped with them until their demise. She found other places to shop. So other than killing her son, she did OK after they folded.

We didn't find out they had killed me until we tried to refinance our house. That's when the mortgage company pulled my credit report and told us they couldn't give me a loan because I was deceased.

I was listed as deceased by only one credit reporting agency and they told us that it was (now defunct) Montgomery Ward that had reported me as such. Of course they were deader than I was and weren't in any position to resurrect me. For whatever reason, neither the agency nor the mortgage company were willing to accept I was still breathing.


Warning: long and tedious story ahead.

[begin: long and tedious story]

So, why did Ward's murder me? What did I ever do to them? (That's a rhetorical question. I never did anything to them. I didn't even shop there. Although I would drive my mom there occasionally.)

Once I got into college I moved around a lot. From home to the dorms and various apartments and back home again throughout school and then to a series of apartments and short stints back home after that. I always used my folks address on official paperwork, driver's licenses, job applications, credit cards, etc to avoid missing anything important in moves. I didn't change my address until we bought our house.

When my dad immigrated to the US he started using the American version of his first name. Of course his birth certificate, naturalization papers, passport and such still had is old country/language first name on them. But a lot of not-so-official paperwork had the American version, including some bank accounts and credit cards.

My parents gave me the American name. So, I'm not technically a "Jr" (our first names are sort of different and our middle names are very different). But we would still get a lot of mail addressed with the same name. It caused some minor confusion in the family mail-call but nothing serious. It even made for some wonderful fun when he declined a wedding invite from my office-mate at work (but that's another long and tedious story).

Anyway, it turns out our credit reports got pretty mixed up. We didn't find out until I had been working a couple of years and applied for my first car loan at my credit union. They were surprised that a young guy would have such a long credit history. It wasn't a problem because we both had good credit and the Credit Union let me go down the list and point out what was mine and what was my dad's. I never thought about it after that and it never popped up again for either of us until that re-fi.

Oh, and apparently thanks to an obit in some local newspaper, one of my long time friends reported that there was a memorial to me and our other deceased classmates at our latest high school reunion.

[/long and tedious story]


Luckily, my sister-in-law is in the mortgage business and was somehow able to figure out how to raise me from the dead. At least for now.

 

[PC]

I suppose it's time for me to gather together my broken Craftsman ratchets, screwdrivers, etc and cash in on their lifetime guarantee one last time...

As I understand it, Stanley Black and Decker also assumed Craftsman's liabilities with the purchase, which would include the warranties. Although I don't know if the process will be as simple as walking into just any Craftsman dealer as it was with Sears.

I would look into it If I had pieces that needed to be replaced. Sears will just swap for whatever is on their shelf. And the stuff on the shelf at Sears is different from the stuff on the shelf at Lowes (at least according to the YouTube review I saw). In that vid the stuff at Lowes was not only different, but made in a different country as well.

And with SB&D threatening to bring some production back to the US, there might be a brighter future for warranty returns.

 

[pdplot]

NY Times Business Section today had two feature stories on what happened to Sears and the hedge Fund guy Edward Lampert who invested heavily in it. Maybe you can read it online. Monkey Wards was actually first. Remember A & P - the largest and most successful supermarket chain? Every competing supermarket used to wait to see what the "Tea Company" was going to do. I ought to know. For two years, I worked for City News Printing Co. who printed those supermarket circulars you got in the mail.

 

[Basil]

Last Sears here in Albuquerque slated to close. https://www.abqjournal.com/1233328/sears-files-for-chapter-11-amid-plunging-sales-massive-debt.html