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Comment by wnevets | Hacker News Reader

I kinda forgot they were still in business. What does Sears offer that no one else does?

Maybe Craftsman hand tools, but that's it. Those are well made, and the socket wrenches are lifetime warrantied (they will fail, but they will just give you a new one). Craftsman power tools are garbage; might as well get them at Harbor Freight.

We always bought appliances from sears, but recently the refrigerator was from Lowes, and the microwave and oven from Amazon.

They don't stock appliances (very long waits for refrigerators) and the sales people can be horrible. The fridge we bought recently sight unseen, online.

The checkout process at Sears is fully fucked up. A convoluted connection of iPads, credit card swipers, and ancient IBM registers.

Best Buy also sucks, so it's not like they have much local competition.

I swore I'd never buy a large appliance from Amazon, but the in-wall oven was just fine, and I installed it no problem. If you can do your own appliance installations, I suppose online is the way to go.

You can buy Craftsman at other stores:

http://www.acehardware.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=215...

They also stopped going out of their way to honor the warranty.

Sears is a jack of all trades store that doesn't have much value these days. Before Home Depot and Lowes were everywhere, Sears was a good option for appliances, lawn care, power tools, etc. They were good for fitness equipment before Dicks. They were good for electronics before Best Buy. I suspect a place like Kohls took over their clothing audience as well.

Of course the internet didn't help them much either.

I'm sure someone will gladly buy up Craftsmen when it goes up for sale but I agree with you that it's their only exclusive asset that sets them apart.

Sears died for me when the internet replaced the catalog.

As a kid, we'd spend literally hours pouring over the Sears Catalog to circle christmas/b-day gifts (each kid with a different color pen), and we'd actually fight each other to get to it first.

That culture doesn't really exist anymore, and Sears really didn't adapt to it. Amazon would be the modern version, I guess.

The Sears catalog and the JC Penney Christmas catalogs. Such an amazing time of year.

I still get a bit of a thrill from the Quadratec and Cabelas catalogs, but nothing on par with that. It was really the best.

My first Nintendo came from that Sears Christmas Catalog :)

Someone may buy Craftsman, but all they'll get is a name. It's a house brand Sears puts on tools that are manufactured by a number of other companies, and whoever buys the name will need to make sure those business relationships continue. It probably wouldn't be easy.

Craftsman used to be a good name, now it's just the same (or worse) house-brand tools you can buy at any big box retailer.

I have a 20+ year old Craftsman socket set that I use regularly... then a couple years ago I bought a new set for a project at work -- I broke one of the sockets within 2 days trying to loosen a tight fastener, and then the snap-ring that holds the socket head together came out a week later (not sure if it broke, or somehow worked itself out, I never found it), and the socket head fell apart.

Sears did refund my purchase price, no questions asked, but I'm no longer buying Craftsman.

Last time I broke a ratchet, they gave me a rebuilt one that they had under the counter in a box.

They killed the lifetime guarantee on tools.

And killed the only reason to go in there.

Hand Tools still have a lifetime warranty

Power Tools and Specialty Tools have limited time warranties

When I bought my house, I had to buy some appliances... fridge, washer / dryer, etc. I bought them at Sears because my Dad said, "If you ever have a problem, Sears will make it right..." So anyway fast forward a bit... everything was delivered by contractors (not Sears employees) and Sears did nothing to remedy the situation when one of the appliances (a dishwasher) was installed poorly and leaked because they bolted it in on the sides and stretched the frame out. Something like 50 emails with photos and calls, and Sears did sent a new dishwasher but didn't schedule an installation... so I had an extra dishwasher sitting in my living room and was told I couldn't do the install myself or it would void Sear's warranty of the work... like 3 months this crap went on. I finally just said fuck it, installed the other dishwasher myself and since they never came back to pick up the old dishwasher I left it on the curb for large item trash day. Total debacle.

When I bought a new oven, I bought it from Costco.

If you paid with a credit card, a lot of them will do a chargeback if you didn't get what you paid for. Worth asking about.

They still have prime commercial real estate but that's it.

Ehhh. The local Sears here is in a mall with two empty anchors already. I don't think anyone is clamoring for that third anchor location.

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