Without insurance, some vendors balk at stocking Sears’ shelves. Is this the beginning of the end for Sears? We’re old enough to remember when you ordered things from the Sears Catalog and waited with anticipation for them to arrive.
U.S. department store operator Sears Holdings is having trouble stocking shelves, as some vendors have fled while others are demanding stricter payment terms because of difficulties hedging against default risk.
The strain in Sears’ supply chain is exacerbated by the scarcity and high cost of a type of vendor insurance known as accounts receivable puts, which ensure a supplier will be paid even if the retailer files for bankruptcy, according to interviews with Sears’ vendors and insurance brokers.
This post was last modified on August 29, 2017
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Their guarantee on Craftsman tools was great years ago and so was their onsite warranty service for mowers, snowblowers and things like that. Pay a couple of bucks a year and they would perform routine maintenance like change the spark plugs, oil, air filter, etc. That ship done sailed, at least around here.
I had a scrollsaw that kept crapping the bed and all I had to do is take it to the local service center to get it repaired for nothing. It was a ten mile drive but all I paid was the cost of gas there and back.
Is it just me or did I just help write their obituary? :)
I heard that Amazon is going to start selling Kenmore appliances.
After my last experience with their appliance department, I don't care.
They're probably all made in China anyway. Almost everything is these days.
Sears auto care is excellent to be honest... but the store itself... yikes... who goes in there to do anything anymore? Not only does Walmart has everything Sears have and cheaper and at a still good appropriate customer service, but the whole department store thing is really not as hot as it used to be especially with the internet.
When we had our flood and were appliance shopping, we went to Sears. Their prices were at least 2x what we saw everywhere else. That was the last time we shopped there. The other thing is they have an excellent parts department, but they closed the one in my store.
Sears, Where America used to shop".......Best thing all years when you were a kid, the Ward's, Sears, and Penney's Christmas catalog...SEars will soon collapse, followed by Penney's, and probably Macy's....
Penney’s already closed in the mall near me, and Sears looks like a ghost town. They closed one K-Mart near me a few years ago, and the last one near me is closing in Oct.
Take Sears behind the barn and put it out of its misery. Big box stores crippled them and then they started outsourcing manufacturing of their iconic Craftsman brand years and years ago. I know people that started referring to them as Crapsman.
The KMart merger was a desperate attempt to survive and it failed terribly. 17, 18 years ago both stores were bustling with activity, now they're basically concrete ghost towns. I can't even set foot in one these days because I have great memories of both when I was young and it's sad to see how far they've fallen. When I was a kid, I looked forward to the Sears Christmas Wishbook every year.
The only positives are, the lack of activity means you can park anywhere you want and checking out is quick and easy when I do bother to visit.
The only things Sears still had going for it was their automotive department, their Cratfsman line, & home appliances. It now looks like they are on borrowed time.
Their automotive dept has been an albatross since the suit over recommending unnecessary repairs. In case you don't remember, the Bureau of Automotive Repair did an investigation and found in 38 visits to 27 Sears auto-repair shops, unnecessary service and repairs were recommended 34 times.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/23/business/sears-auto-centers-halt-commissions-after-flap.html
Wards used to do that shit too. I had a friend who was a service writer there. They were told to upsell. I asked her how she could sleep at night.
The last thing that Wards had that was worth anything was their "Electric Avenue" home electronics section. TVs, stereo gear, that sort of stuff.
I think shopping malls may be a thing of the past also.
Hope not, & if they can be creative, they can be viable. I still like the experience of going to the mall & just wandering. But that could be a generational thing as well.
Adapt or die; I wonder how many of today's social media companies understand this.
Now the catalog store is Amazon. Ironically, Sears could have been right there competing with them if they had the imagination to know what was happening and created an online version of their catalog along with the delivery infrastructure.
Not surprised. When they merged with K-Mart I knew it was their death knell. They killed themselves by trying to expand.
Merging with a dying chain usually doesn't work out well.