Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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timanny
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by timanny »

storewanderer wrote: April 3rd, 2019, 6:50 pm Sears failed on many fronts. Merchandise mix was bad, pricing was bad, commissioned sales structure led to situations where customers were not being taken care of in their best interests, heavy pressure on selling extended warranties to customers and in some cases refusing sales if customers did not agree to a warranty, hassling employees and firing them if they did not sign people up for enough Sears Credit Cards... Sears did everything is possibly could to make customers, employees, and anyone else involved have a negative experience. It took a few decades but enough people had negative experiences that finally everyone was fed up and quit supporting Sears.

I remember in about 2002 having a negative experience with the local Sears Store. I complained. Getting any kind of answer out of them was an incredibly difficult experience. Their corporate customer service was near useless and the store ultimately did fix the problem and was apologetic but it took way too many phone calls and questions to get it resolved. At that point I determined I would never make a big ticket purchase at Sears because if they screwed up a small ticket purchase and transaction issue so badly and it took so much effort to fix, how bad would it be on a larger purchase? A search online at various threads with horror stories from people regarding such transactions answered that question.

The problem with Sears is they tried to be an integrated provider. Their appliance service business and appliance business burned numerous customers over the years with backorders, delays on delivery, damaged products upon delivery, and various other things that gave customers a very negative impression of Sears that left a long lasting impression.

This sort of transaction when it goes bad/negative, is a lot more involved to the customer than buying some lawn chairs at Wal Mart and experiencing a dirty store, surly employees, someone hassling you for the receipt on your way out the door, etc.
Macy's also harasses their employees about signing up for the credit cards. In fact, when I was there, they seemed to care more about that then how much merchandise you sold. Is that something that companies do when they're going down? Macy's isn't sliding at the same rate as Sears.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by storewanderer »

timanny wrote: April 9th, 2019, 7:18 pm
storewanderer wrote: April 3rd, 2019, 6:50 pm Sears failed on many fronts. Merchandise mix was bad, pricing was bad, commissioned sales structure led to situations where customers were not being taken care of in their best interests, heavy pressure on selling extended warranties to customers and in some cases refusing sales if customers did not agree to a warranty, hassling employees and firing them if they did not sign people up for enough Sears Credit Cards... Sears did everything is possibly could to make customers, employees, and anyone else involved have a negative experience. It took a few decades but enough people had negative experiences that finally everyone was fed up and quit supporting Sears.

I remember in about 2002 having a negative experience with the local Sears Store. I complained. Getting any kind of answer out of them was an incredibly difficult experience. Their corporate customer service was near useless and the store ultimately did fix the problem and was apologetic but it took way too many phone calls and questions to get it resolved. At that point I determined I would never make a big ticket purchase at Sears because if they screwed up a small ticket purchase and transaction issue so badly and it took so much effort to fix, how bad would it be on a larger purchase? A search online at various threads with horror stories from people regarding such transactions answered that question.

The problem with Sears is they tried to be an integrated provider. Their appliance service business and appliance business burned numerous customers over the years with backorders, delays on delivery, damaged products upon delivery, and various other things that gave customers a very negative impression of Sears that left a long lasting impression.

This sort of transaction when it goes bad/negative, is a lot more involved to the customer than buying some lawn chairs at Wal Mart and experiencing a dirty store, surly employees, someone hassling you for the receipt on your way out the door, etc.
Macy's also harasses their employees about signing up for the credit cards. In fact, when I was there, they seemed to care more about that then how much merchandise you sold. Is that something that companies do when they're going down? Macy's isn't sliding at the same rate as Sears.
It seems like Macy's has pushed the credit card for quite some time. I get the impression companies start to focus on things other than sales when they are in a decline and in denial about their problems.

And for Sears, that was credit cards and product service plans.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: April 9th, 2019, 7:57 pm
timanny wrote: April 9th, 2019, 7:18 pm
storewanderer wrote: April 3rd, 2019, 6:50 pm Sears failed on many fronts. Merchandise mix was bad, pricing was bad, commissioned sales structure led to situations where customers were not being taken care of in their best interests, heavy pressure on selling extended warranties to customers and in some cases refusing sales if customers did not agree to a warranty, hassling employees and firing them if they did not sign people up for enough Sears Credit Cards... Sears did everything is possibly could to make customers, employees, and anyone else involved have a negative experience. It took a few decades but enough people had negative experiences that finally everyone was fed up and quit supporting Sears.

I remember in about 2002 having a negative experience with the local Sears Store. I complained. Getting any kind of answer out of them was an incredibly difficult experience. Their corporate customer service was near useless and the store ultimately did fix the problem and was apologetic but it took way too many phone calls and questions to get it resolved. At that point I determined I would never make a big ticket purchase at Sears because if they screwed up a small ticket purchase and transaction issue so badly and it took so much effort to fix, how bad would it be on a larger purchase? A search online at various threads with horror stories from people regarding such transactions answered that question.

The problem with Sears is they tried to be an integrated provider. Their appliance service business and appliance business burned numerous customers over the years with backorders, delays on delivery, damaged products upon delivery, and various other things that gave customers a very negative impression of Sears that left a long lasting impression.

This sort of transaction when it goes bad/negative, is a lot more involved to the customer than buying some lawn chairs at Wal Mart and experiencing a dirty store, surly employees, someone hassling you for the receipt on your way out the door, etc.
Macy's also harasses their employees about signing up for the credit cards. In fact, when I was there, they seemed to care more about that then how much merchandise you sold. Is that something that companies do when they're going down? Macy's isn't sliding at the same rate as Sears.
It seems like Macy's has pushed the credit card for quite some time. I get the impression companies start to focus on things other than sales when they are in a decline and in denial about their problems.

And for Sears, that was credit cards and product service plans.
Also, in recent years, some Sears locations got VERY pushy about the Shop Your Way program, in a couple instances the cashiers kept on about it long after I said no, in those instances I put down what I was going to purchase and left. (the locations where I encountered this have all closed)

I also remember for a while Lowe's was pushing you to buy extended warranties when using the self-checkouts. It would ask on simple, inexpensive things like doorbell buttons and switches, as well as other inexpensive items. This did not last long.

As for credit cards, the department stores will sometimes extend credit when you have not been established yet, but interest rates tend to be sky-high, and you can easily pile up debt if not careful. Many people, like myself, tend to get rid of department store cards when acquiring a major card, and the high interest cards really have no value to me. The stores that push them I do not shop at often to begin with.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by storewanderer »

I got into a Kmart again for the first time in a couple months this weekend.

Same old, same old. Actually I think it may be worse now than before.

They are basically out of the grocery business for any serious purposes. They do have shelves with grocery items on them... But, no more brand name cereal, brand name snacks, or anything like that. Candy is cut way back. The dry grocery area is a strange assortment of Dollar Store type goods selling at prices above $1. They had Lay's Chips but no private label or others. Paper products were in an awful lot of aisles in very wide areas, so was bottled water. I'm not even sure where the intended home of paper products or bottled water is.

The drug/HBA department is a laugh with prices higher than literally anywhere on literally everything. For instance 56 ounce Softsoap Refills $8.19 (those don't go over $7 even at high priced drug stores who also often run them on sale at 2.99 or 3.99). 32oz Smart Sense Rubbing Alcohol 70% was 4.69, again those don't really go over $4 even at high priced drug stores). Unbelievable prices. The pet area had similar very high pricing with pet foods just as high or higher than the next highest priced competitors.

Took a look at the auto department. Motor oil has been restocked but very peculiar it is only in 5 quart size containers in various brands and few containers on the shelves. They did not have any of the standard small size bottles available in any brand or weight at all this time.

But the good news was they did have a rack of Big Kmart t-shirts for sale for just $9.99. Some of the employees were wearing those t-shirts. They also had canvas beach towel bags available at a similar price with the current Kmart logo.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by rwsandiego »

storewanderer wrote: April 20th, 2019, 10:20 pm...But the good news was they did have a rack of Big Kmart t-shirts for sale for just $9.99. Some of the employees were wearing those t-shirts. They also had canvas beach towel bags available at a similar price with the current Kmart logo.
Who needs Polo by Ralph Lauren when you can wear KMart by Eddie Lampert?
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by Super S »

Sears is closing the Oakbrook Center store, which was remodeled and downsized just last year:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ ... story.html

This is not a good sign when they are talking about downsizing the stores that are left.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: April 22nd, 2019, 6:15 pm Sears is closing the Oakbrook Center store, which was remodeled and downsized just last year:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ ... story.html

This is not a good sign when they are talking about downsizing the stores that are left.
It is same old same old. Stores will keep closing, real estate will keep being sold off to the next highest bidder, stores will continue to be terrible (worse than ever), employees will keep being laid off. The bankruptcy court judge who approved this thing to even continue operations did a disservice to everyone except Eddie who seems to somehow enjoy this very slow death to the chains Kmart and Sears. But I'll give Eddie some real credit if he can hold Sears in business longer than JC Penney sticks around.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by Knight »

Is is time for another Sears Holdings store closing announcement.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by cjd »

Sears sues former CEO Eddie Lampert, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and others for alleged ‘thefts’ of billions from retailer:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/sears-s ... hefts.html

About time.
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Re: Sears Fears: The Final Days of Sears & Kmart, 2019

Post by reymann »

i'd like to see eddie lampert explain himself with his intent with sears and kmart to the SEC. lampert being held liable in court is what could finally put sears to sleep once and for all.
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