Sears Stores Disappearing

[reactor]

I have been reading that there ae only 24 (Sears Full Line) still open in the United States, including Puerto Rico. Three of these 24 are schedule for closing very soon.

This is not counting some of the Specialized stores such as Sears Appliances and Sears Home Stores, which are franchised owned.

The last store in Illinois, Sears headquarters and home state, has now closed its doors.

From what I understand, the CEO, Eddie Lampert had personally purchased the remaining stores from the bankrupt Sears Holding Co., (which owned both Sears and KMart) himself and formed his own Corporation "Transformco" which now operates the remaining stores.

Some hail Lampert as a hero trying to keep the remaining stores alive, others seem to see him as an opportunistic vulture who is making a LOT of money by selling off the remaining stores and property, or renting out the former store properties to others. They cite that his personal wealth seems to growing by leaps and bounds while Sears, oddly, cannot seem to pay off its debtors.

Lawsuits are abounding from suppliers, who cannot get paid for their products. The remaining stores are having difficulty getting stock as many suppliers won't sell to Sears anymore for they are not getting paid.

Lampert claims he wants to keep a few of the larger Sears full line stores open along with the sub-stores such as Sears Home and Life.

Whether Lampert is a saint or devil (a very rich devil) remains to be seen.

Either way, it seems the Sears Stores we grew up with, which had a little bit of "everything for everyone," may soon be a relic of the past.

To me, Sears started going down hill about the time they ended their catalog business in '93. I noticed some (but not all) store employees were becoming rude and arrogant. Maybe this occurred only in the stores I frequented and not country wide.

I remember when TV was going digital and we were getting the government coupons (I think they were for $40) to help offset the cost of the convertor box. I took my coupon to s Sears store, in the Dayton area, and as I was checking out I gave the clerk my credit card (not a Sears card but a VISA) and he said they would not accept a credit card if I used the government coupon to purchase the convertor, I had to pay cash. I just barely had enough in my wallet that day to cover it.

A few years back, and I shared this before, I was in the appliance department at Sears, and an elderly woman was there attempting to buy a refrigerator. She was quite elderly/ She must have come by bus. She was there to buy a refrigerator.

I overheard their conservation. Apparently, there was an appliance sale that started the next day. The employee would not sell the refrigerator to her as the sale had not begun. I heard her say she saw it in the newspaper. He said it didn't matter because the start date was for the next day.

Another employees saw there was a problem and went over to them, and instead of helping he just reaffirmed that they wouldn't sell it to her. I heard her say once again, "But it was in the paper." He just said no, we can't do that. I didn't hear either one apologize or even act sorry. I should have walked over and said something, but it wouldn't, I am sure, made any difference.

I know there are lot of economic reasons why Sears went into the toilet. However, from personal experience I think there were other reasons as well with stock often being low, and employees that just didn't seem to care about customer service, or even being nice for that matter.

I remember the Sears of the 1960's where you could get almost anything you wanted and the employees, at least for the most part, seemed as if they couldn't do enough for you.

Another era gone.....

[this post was last edited: 9/22/2021-15:44]

 

[goatfarmer]

I worked at the local Sears Service center for a few years in the 80's. Sears was the place to work, many people who worked there had 30 or more years at Sears. Nice benefits and pay, retirement, etc.

 

[good-shepherd]

Whether Lampert is a saint or devil

A Devil.

Just another private equity take over where the target company is used as collateral to finance the purchase price.

Once the sale is completed the new owners promptly turn around and load the company up with debt to payoff the purchase cost.

The PE firm then proceeds to slash payroll and strip mine company assets, directly paying themselves boat loads of cash in the process. Eventually the company (or whats left of it) files for bankruptcy.

(Picture the scene in Goodfellas where Big Paulie "partners" with the restaurant owner).

Total predators that contribute nothing but destruction to society and really should be behind bars.

 

[wayupnorth]

Friends had a Sears Hometown store. They made decent money and then everything changed. Commissions cut unless they sold top of the line models and got $25 for delivery even over 100 miles from the store. They dumped the store and there is no full line or Hometown stores left here now.

 

[vacerator]

Many made good money

formerly in retail. Buh-Bye!
The latest hiring gimmick is gaslighting a position and applicants not ever being called back at all, or no follow up interview. Some are and then the old bait and switch gets them. Oh, you have to sell a quota to get that, or some other bull squirt.

 

[reactor]

Anyone live near an operating Sears store?

I was wondering in any of our AW members live near one of the very few Sears full line stores that is still open?

If so, what is it like? Any semblance to the old Sears stores we all knew?

 

[goatfarmer]

The only Sears remotely close, is a Hometown store, about 45 minutes

 

[pulltostart]

I think the success (and ultimately the failure) of the store was due to two factors.

 

First was THE catalog.  Think about it, Sears was like an early Amazon.  If John/Jane Doe could get their hands on a catalog and had access to a telephone they could order almost anything they needed.  The catalog almost functioned like a primitive internet.  The store could almost exist without benefit of 'brick and mortar'.  However, after they eliminated the catalog, they were totally dependent on a literal store - just a few years before all retailers found out they weren't necessary.

 

The second thing that helped make Sears was easy credit.  In the years just after WWII, when households were booming and growing at an unprecedented rate, financing a purchase at Sears was no problem.  Need a washer?  Pick a payment plan, make a down payment, and it's yours.  Other retailers offered layaway, but Sears offered credit.  I remember advertisements for young people to build their credit by opening an account at Sears.  In the early 1970's MasterCard and Visa appeared on the scene and within a few years everyone had credit and didn't need Sears.  Universal credit took away an edge that Sears had for a long time.

 

lawrence

 

[good-shepherd]

live near one of the very few Sears full line stores

I was in the Willowbrook Mall Sears near the end in 2019.

By that point they had chopped the store in half and were converting it to some food place.

Inventory and customers were skimpy, prices sky high.

Sears was one the original tenants when the mall was built with Bambrgers and Sterns. All gone now.

Hard to believe that mall is down to one anchor tenant, Macy's and its not for lack of consumers in the area.

I was also in one of the few K-marts left in N.J. over the summer, same thing, very little inventory.

However, it was nice to see how shopping use to be a pleasant experience, not the noisy, crowded warehouses of today.

 

[wayupnorth]

Sears swapped my old Sears card for Discover in 1988 and I still use it, even though it wont work at Sears anymore

 

[davey7]

Mas para tu vida...

Never fear, Sears is alive and well south of the border, why, it's even upscale (compared to here - I mean, Audrey could get her Givenchy there)!

https://www.sears.com.mx/

 

[turbokinetic]

Sears Tire & Auto Center...

...kept the Tuscaloosa Sears open for years. But in the end, that wasn't enough. 

 

Working out of town often, I worried about my older parents having car problems while I was out of town, and getting treated unfairly or getting poor quality service from local repair shops. Our family has respected and done business with Sears for decades. We had revived good honest service from the Sears tire center since moving to AL many years ago. 

 

The writing was on the wall for the local Sears. It was a ghost town and the auto center was really the only thing there. About 2 years before they closed, I took my "vintage" car there to get tires. They aligned it, and mounted / balanced four tires.  As soon as I got on the highway, I could tell there was a problem. The car had a bad vibration at speed. Mind you that the old tires had no tread remaining but the car still drove without vibration.

The Sears store insisted, strongly, that I had "bent wheels" and that was the cause of the problem. This car has factory aluminum wheels which are hard to get. I have two spares, so I brought them to the Sears and had them swap out the rims until the vibration was gone.  They returned the car in the same condition.

Life got in the way, and I lived with the poor experience for about 2 years. Finally the tires were worn out again and needed replacement. So I went back to Sears, and they were replaced. The vibration was almost gone...... for about a month.  Then it came back.  Returned to Sears and got the same story "Bent wheel! Bent wheel! Bent wheel!" as before. So I brought them the other spare rim to swap out. They did so, and again there was no noticeable improvement to the ride.

Having another similar car (with steel wheels) I swapped wheel/tire assemblies one by one from my "non vibrating" car to the car with the issue. Each wheel swapped made some difference but never corrected the problem. Finally, I swapped all four wheels from the "good" car over to the car in question.  The vibration was 100% corrected.

At that point, I went back to Sears and gave them one more shot at correcting the problem. This time they said my car had "worn out front end components." That would not be likely since those parts were replaced just a few years ago and the car drove perfectly with the set of wheels from  my other car.

After this, I took my car to a performance oriented chassis and wheel shop. Told them the story and offered to pay for proper diagnosis. They acted like they already knew from my story, what was wrong. It took them about 30 minutes to find out the problem. All four tires were defective. All... Four... Tires...  Defective.... 

I asked them how they found that out, and they explained that there is a fairly common piece of shop equipment called a "road force tester" which looks for this sort of tire defect. They were able to print out a report of the problem. I happily paid them and took the report back to Sears, since the tires were still under warranty. To make a long story short, they said "Our criteria for tire warranty do not include road force balance problems. We already told you you have bent wheels and worn out front end parts." When asked, they let on that they didn't have a road force machine. So they don't use that information because they don't have the proper equipment for the work they are doing.

After this, I went back to the performance chassis shop and bought a new set of tires, of a different brand. No new wheels, no front end parts - just a new set of tires. The vibration was gone and stayed that way for several years until the tires were worn out.

So, I had to move on from Sears tire center. The first set of tires were bad, and Sears convinced me to "accept it" by claiming all sorts of nonsense about my car. I lived through several years of poor ride quality until those tires were worn out.  Then the next set of tires were just as bad, and I got the same story. In the end, I had to eat the cost of the other shop's diagnostics, plus the cost of new tires. 

When you have a shop who try to convince a customer that bad tires are good, and refuse to give any warranty consideration even when given proof the tires are bad - it is time to move on. Because of our previous positive experience with Sears, I tended to trust them and as a result lived with a miserable (and possibly unsafe) driving experience for two years. They paid not one penny of warranty consideration for any of this.

 

[fan-of-fans]

There is a Sears Hometown store still open, about 45 minutes from me. Never been to it though.

I did see a full line Sears still open at the Florida Mall a few months ago. Didn't go inside though. There was a JCPenney store still open there too, walked through it on the way into the mall and it looked pretty good and had a good number of shoppers.

I still see JCPenney commercials on computer and TV and hear them on the radio. Sears I don't hear from or see ads for anymore.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

IIRC, the 'Auto & Tools' (my name for them) stores were profitable but were insufficient to keep everything afloat.

When the catalog was discontinued I remember reading a few articles expressing surprise as catalog sales either were profitable or losing less money than other divisions so cutting the catalog didn't make sense.

Assuming that's true, my guess is the decision was made by the same people who cut the number of cashiers, causing huge lines, and then wonder why floor traffic drops off.