Sears closeouts

[jwaterdawg]

Lots of closeouts going on at local Sears. All the local Sears seem to have same so I guess its nationwide. Markdowns every Wednesday.

Dewalt router(s), PC 1/4 sheet palm sander, CM Industrial Biscuit jointer all 50% off. And many, many more. If you haven't been lately, pay your local Sears a visit.

[malefactor]

BEWARE.

Sears employees and managers will lie to you. They will also turn from Jeckyl to Hyde. There is a reason that everyone except the managers there is a teenager (and a young one at that)...

I bought a planer on clearance. The planer needed a safety key. No problem, $2. Sears guys said "oh yeah, we know that works, we turned it on before" and "if you have any problems at all, bring it back". I take it to an authorized non-sears repair center to get the key, and discover the switch is mechanically bad. $15 to fix. I go ahead and fix it, and go back to sears just wanting a slight additional price break to cover the switch ($15 was the manufacturer's price). I get the nastiest response that included "and now, because you had someone else touch this, I won't take it back either". He wouldn't even replace the existing, surplus broken switch with a working one.

IT'S A SWITCH. The only thing simpler than that is a blade, which was considerably sharper than him.

I will not be shopping at Sears ever again. I've seen what they consider to be customer service, and I would strongly advise caution.

By the way, one of their younger, nicer, naive employees confessed to me that they don't test any of the stuff--they just lug it out, pile it up, and put as small of a discount on it as they can to get rid of it.

[djmcheme]

So why do you *******ize the whole corporation from your bad experience with a $15 switch?

[Donnie]

I don't like the Sears where I live either. The (kids) that work there have no CLUE whatso ever as to tools, woodworking, no mechanical knowldege. Just off the street. Sorry - but I feel the same way. It seems that Sears is good, but it HEAVLY depends on WHERE the sears is located in that particular city or state. Where I live is horrible.

[malefactor]

I had a more detailed reply, but then decided I should delete it. I will not risk the wrath of Sears lawyers; in our overly litigous society it is often the person with deeper pockets that wins libel suits.

I should just point out that user "djmcheme" has been a member since *today* and has exactly one post so far.

All I will leave any readers with is this: three salesmen and the department manager lied to me in very overt, unquestionable terms and then dodged the issue when I called them on it--and when it was time to get service after the sale.

Quite possibly this is one bad, unique experience. And, I was probably overstating the issue to say I will never shop at Sears again. What I should have said was, I will be quite reluctant to shop at Sears again, and I will NEVER, EVER, EVER buy ANYTHING from Sears clearance again.

[vaking]

Sears clearance mostly is not too impressive. It is 20% off the original jacked-up price. That brings the price of goods to level closer, may be comparable to prices everywhere else, nothing ground-shaking. There are exceptions, but rare.
We all know that Sears chain has recently been bought by Kmart. This wave of clearance probably has to do with it. Whatever service existed at Sears before - remember that "past performance does not guarantee future results". The new management will likely introduce new rules. They may improve service (not likely knowing Kmart service) but it is possible. Gateway computers bought E-machines, immediately fired all tactical management from Gateway and made managers from e-machines run the whole production.
May be the new Sears deserves "the benefit of a doubt", may be not - each person is entitled to an opinion here. I also expect to see some new product lines. I cannot wait to see new line of "Kitchen essentials" tools by Martha.
From the perspective of "common sense" I am a bit puzzled by this whole scenario - when somebody just out of bankrupcy and presumably out of money goes out and buys a well-established company, one of the oldest and fairly reputable companies in US - doesn't it seem odd? To me that sounds like Sears was up for grabs, dirt-cheap despite the old name. Most likely, old Sears rules (like lifetime warranty on Craftsman hand tools maybe) turned that company into liability rather than an asset.
Sorry for the rant, this part probably belongs in the coffee-pot, did not mean to hijack the thread.

[djmcheme]

"Sears employees and managers will lie to you. They will also turn from Jeckyl to Hyde. There is a reason that everyone except the managers there is a teenager (and a young one at that)..."

The above quote is what I was referring to malefactor. It is a very broad and blanket like statement. I am sure someone somewhere could come up with their own example of being mistreated at every retail location on earth. Just last year I got double charged from Pizza Hut when we placed an order online with our debit card. They deducted the purchase amount of $21.49 twice. Even though I took my bank statement and receipt to the store manager he refused to remove the extra charge. I then proceeded to HANDWRITE a letter to the customer service relations dept of the parent company for Pizza Hut and copied the restaurant itself, our local consumer actions dept, the president of the company and the president of customer relations. Needless to say they took the charge off and offered us a $50 gift card which we refused. We only wanted the bad charges taken off the card. If they wouldn't have then I could have come out and said "Pizza Hut managers rip off the customer" because I took the appropriate steps to give them the opportunity to make up for a stupid move that one manager made.

I know this is only my 2nd post but I really enjoy this website.

[don_hart]

Welcome aboard djmcheme. Malefactors comment about your recency on the site and the fact that your first post was what some could consider an aggressive post was made because we have had some slight problems with forum trolls recently. We try to keep a nice place around here and our normal method of handling trolls is to ignore them. So if you had turned out to be one we did not want this topic to turn into a big argument.

So once agian welcome aboard.

[onedash]

The only problem ive ever had was when i got the close out router table fo $27 it was missing the mdf fence inserts. Instead or taking it apart and returning it (they had none left to trade) or taking it to the sears with the service department I just made some.
I had my mower serviced recently and they told me it would take almost two weeks because they had to ship it to MD.(wheel fell off) it did come back a few days early. Got the 2 year product whatever guarentee on that. But over all I like sears. And they always have lots of girls clothes on closeout. My son cant grasp that he has less clothes because his cost more than hers. She sometimes gets a pair of pants for a couple bucks and same with shirts. And she doesn't need "skate" shoes. Penny's has a lot to but no tools to look at.

[vaking]

Malefactor,
The word clearance has multiple meanings. The tradesman jointer is on clearance at Lowes because it is being discontinued (closed-out). In this case you are still buying a new product in a sealed box with the new product warranty. But when you are buying a floor model or return and the product is known to be in not-new condition then warranty rules are different. Sears marks such products as "used" and sells with "as-is" warranty. In my experience even when Sears sells product "as-is" they will still be willing to take product back and refund the money. Sears manager did not lie when he told you to bring product back if you get problems. Instead you fixed the product at your own expense and asked Sears to reimburse you. Sears manager cannot apply new product warranty to a product sold without it. I do not think based on your own description Sears manager lied to you and I believe he is within his right to refuse the refund if you altered the product. When you are buying used items you are accepting some risks.

[jwaterdawg]

Just to chime in with my own measly $0.02, I've never had any problems purchasing clearance items. Most of the time, even though they are marked "used", they actually are unused floor models. One should thoroughly inspect the product before purchase. Normally (not that I am implying my method is foolproof or even effecient) if I see something potentially good on clearance I go check out the reviews on the product and print out the product manual. Some times there's a knob or two missing, but cheap to replace or rig something up.

Oh, and the sales I've seen recently are much more than 20%, maybe it's just the local stores here, but I've picked up several items half off the original competitive price (compared to HD, Lowes, Amazon, etc.). Just wish they would make a couple of lathes or TS 1/2 off, now that would be something.....

[malefactor]

I didn't really want to get into this, but since people are ready to defend the idea that the customer is always wrong:

This was marked as "discontinued", not "used/returned", or "floor model". It looked relatively new, excepting the missing safety key. I am well aware of "let the buyer beware" and that inspections should be done. There was, however, no amount of inspecting that would have shown me that the switch was totally mechanically broken.

This delta planer sold for $136 with tax, I believe. 22-560. That's a good enough deal that I'll pay for the key and deal with the hassle of buying a potentially screwed up floor model. So I start calling around, and Delta nor their authorized repair centers can even identify what the key is that I need. Keep in mind, I want to use this planer relatively soon -- I didn't want to buy something that I have to spend a bunch of time and effort repairing. So I find a shop that repairs Delta, and he spends a long time figuring out which key is required (cost $2), and then realizes the switch is mechanically broken. He basically does this without asking me, and I was torn as to whether or not I should fight it. Bills me $15 (having called around, I know this is the price of the switch).

At this point, I'm relatively happy. Still think $150 is too much for this planer (plus the gas driving around.. the repair shop was not near), but on the principle of the matter I wanted to go back and try to get them to knock a few bucks off because, basically, I repaired their planer for them. A better question is this: Why didn't they fix it themselves before tossing it out on the floor for sale? Anyway, I go back in, I'm very nice, I just say, hey, two things - the blade wrench was missing, it's a $3 part, and the whole switch assembly was missing. Here's a receipt, could you knock a few bucks off? And of course, it is from an authorized Delta, but not Sears, repair center. The 13 year olds go back to talk to the dept mgr, and come back and give me an awkward "no", because they knew my request was reasonable (they even told me as much). So I have to go chase down the mgr myself, and he is not only rude, but condescending and full of excuses. Here's how it went:

him: "If you had come in here with this planer claiming it was broken, we'd be having an entirely different conversation, but you went off on your own to have it repaired, so I can't do anything.".
me: I respond: "Ok, that's fair. So how about just replacing this broken Delta switch? I think I'm entitled to that".
him: No.
me: Would you at least order this blade wrench part? It's only $3 from delta, and it was missing.
him: No.
me: "But you guys told me this thing worked. All 4 of you. You said you plugged it in, and it ran just fine. It could not possibly have done so, as the switch was mechanically defective! You lied to me."
him: "This was a used item, and sold as such. You have to assume the risk. You got a good deal anyway. This was a $300 planer, and it was marked down so far..."
me: "This is a $180 planer, actually."
him: "But, this is a model that is several years old, so at the time, the price was $300, so you got a good deal."
me: Look, you told me this carried the full Sears warranty, was never used, was a discontinued model. You told me the only difference was that because it was discontinued, the warranty was 30 days to return, 90 days parts/labor.

At this point he degenerates into the same old babbling lies and misdirection. At some point he tells me "You opened this up, so I can't even take it back.".

I am an electrical engineer and a handyman. While that may be technically in violation of Sears rules, it is still under the domain of common sense to say that replacing a switch with spade connectors is hardly "opening up the box". I did for $15 what would have taken their repair center far more time and money (in-kind) to fix. All I wanted was a bit of a cut. I would have taken $7. I would have taken him replacing the broken switch with another working one. Anything. But this guy was not interested in the slightest bit in being reasonable. Why should he? He is dodging a very reasonable request behind a technicality of a beaureacratic policy.

You know what I did? I put the broken switch back on there and returned the thing to a different Sears. Anything wrong with that, sir? Nope [this was the truth, as the 4 guys at Sears told me], never even turned it on [this was also the truth as the switch was broken]. I felt a little bad doing that, because I hate mendacity. Hate it. It makes me fume. But if they're going to do it to me, I'm not going to be the sucker left holding the bag.

Oh, and to head off this question: Why didn't you just take it back and let Sears work on it? Because I believe they would have used excessive repair times to eat into or exceed the 30 day eval period I had, thus forcing me to keep it. And, because I lived a long ways away from Sears, and because I didn't feel like waiting forever to get a tool I bought that is allegedly NEW, and TESTED working.

Not sure why people would tolerate that kind of treatment. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but that's ok.

Oh and by the way, the 13 year old kids working there even confided in me that they thought what the mgr was doing was BS

[jwaterdawg]

I hope nobody is suggesting the customer is always wrong. That would be, ahem, shortsided. However, on the other hand Sears does have a business to run and they need to protect themselves from potential abuse from customers. Dont get me wrong, I think your request was perfectly reasonable and it would be great if they we have comped you some refund or the parts in question. But I can't hold all of Sears accountable for the actions of a particular jerk manager/store. That's kinda like me saying all people who drive trucks are evil (I was run over by a F150 when I was a kid: yeah, yeah, I know, that explains whats wrong with me). And I OWN a truck.

That being said, I always insist on plugging the cheaps little gems in and turning them on. Oh, they hem and haw about safety issues and such and some times wont help; but its pretty easy to find an outlet in the store and do it yourself if they wont oblige. Just my $0.01.

I guess I'll probably get screwed on some lemon floor model, closeout, clearance, etc. eventually......

[autiger1]

Malefactor...I'm with you and a feel your pain - but life is too short to get upset over $15 and to spend that kind of time rehashing it. I respect you vote with your wallet, and you may never shop again at sears. Also Sears is quite foolish losing a customer over $15. For you own sanity...chalk this one up to experience.
Tom

[DaveinFloweryBranchGA]

20 years ago, after many disappointing experiences with Sears in North Carolina, I quit going there. Two or three times in the last couple years I've gone into the local Sears store to see if things have changed and to give them a chance to earn my business again. What I learned was Sears has not gotten better, but has gotten worse over that period of time.

I don't buy there and I advise others not to buy there. Anything they sell, I can buy for a better price somewhere else, where the customer service is better. Anything I need repaired, I can get repaired somewhere else for less, with better service.

The huge number of problem posts I see on all the tools forums I frequent (Woodnet, Sawmill Creek and here.) tell me I am not alone in my experiences. Bad service is bad enough. Bad service with high prices is just beyond tolerance for me.

Just my .02,

Dave, who's been Sears free since my son was still in diapers. (He's a junior in college this year.)