this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Craftsman and Kenmore always had pretty decent quality. We bought a lot of our bigger household purchases from Sears back in the day. I do kinda miss 'em, just not the constant harassment from the salespeople to buy an extended warranty or open a Sears charge account. Some of 'em would get a little pushy about those damned warranties...
My ex used to work for them, and he’d make more than 10x the commission on a warranty. I think he also just didn’t make an hourly wage, but it’s been over a decade, so I don’t remember.
The point is that the insistence of salespeople is not a coincidence, but something that sears heavily incentivized
Back in the 80s and before, that extended warranty was incredible. We joke that my parents were the ones responsible for bankrupting Sears because of how much they used the lifetime warranties on things like appliances. As a kid it felt like we had a Sears repairman at the house monthly for the washer or dryer or fridge... Since Sears is long gone, I think I can tell this story. My parents had a betamax player that they really wanted to unrepairably blow up so they'd get a credit towards a new VHS player (they recorded all the shows they watched so they could fast forward through commercials, we had like 100 VHS tapes just to record TV on), so my dad wired up the betamax player to run 240v through it. Sears repaired it.