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Comment by nnutter | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, when I went appliance shopping 8 years ago I went to Sears not Best Buy. When I went tool shopping I preferred the lifetime guarantee of Craftsman. I wasn’t a pre-existing customer. I live within ~30 minutes of three large malls that all seem to be doing well. There is a Sears Hardware store that just closed in the last couple years.

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I bought a pretty good mattress and also a good vacuum from Sears. They're not high-end but they're pretty damn good.

The only reason I had a vacuum at all in college was because Sears still stocked parts for 10 or 15 year old vacuums so I was able to repair someone's broken vacuum.

Sears owned Orchard Supply Hardware from 1996 to 2012. They never branded it as "Sears", though. "Sears Hardware" is a franchise, like Ace Hardware.

I went appliance shopping there too, around the same time. Cheap-ish fridge that's still going strong, and an LG washer and dryer (LG repaired the washer under warranty last year). The Sears I bought them from was razed a couple of years ago.

There are some "Sears home appliance showrooms", and an actual Sears about half an hour away, but there used to be 3 or 4 in that same area.

The "lifetime guarantee" of Craftsman just doesn't have much sway anymore. All of their tools are made in China junk that breaks if you look at it funny. The quality is just non-existent these days. Might as well just go to Harbor Freight if that's the kind of tool you need.

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