Beyond sad - criminal. Steal $100s of dollars from a convenience store and you can go to jail. Loot $100 millions of dollars from a corporation or a pension plan and nothing happens. No wonder the top 1% control as much wealth as the entire midddle class.
Gotta disagree with you Mak. EL didn't drag a once proud company so far into the gutter that K-Mart(F'ing K-MART!) had to save them. I've seen repair invoices from Sears auto centers that were nothing short of robbery, kitchen cabinets (poorly) re-faced at a cost that exceeds replacements and more recently Craftsman branded power tools built to a price that are same Chinese junk sold at HF for 1/2 the price. Anyone wanna talk about greed? Sears has it in spades. Stores now get pissy about hand tool warranties plus the replacements are inferior to the originals. Sears has sucked since the seventies, I'll be glad when they are finally gone.
You may find some folks who disagree with you on that. But, you are correct in that they have circling the drain (for reasons just like what you mentioned above) for a long time now. I'm somewhat surprised they are still holding on.
Oh, absolutely there are still believers. For instance; Our good friends who own the re-faced kitchen I've mentioned. Sears survived this long on a reputation earned a generation(s?) ago and some less than savvy customers. The gig is up.
Ross I don't live with rose colored glasses on, Sears in the 70's had a great reputation at the customer level, but within the industry there reputation was awful, take too long to get into it, in the 80's Sears moved away from retail and became more of a financial institution, Allstate, Dean Witter, Coldwell Banker, Discover Card, when they put out the Discover card, combined with the Sears card they became the #1 credit card Company in the world, by the 90's we started to get things back to the where the Store was in the 60's as far as integrity, value of products, customer focus etc. The Company by 2001 was making money, had a lot of cash, great brand names, owned 2% of ALL retail space in the US and had a stock that was undervalued. we were never perfect but when we were good we were the best, period! but when we screwed it up we did that the best as well. BUT we treated the employees fairly and honestly and didn't manage threats and intimidation. What other company would that pay a PART TIME ( 15 hours a week) associate a decent wage and then pay $3500.00 per semester for their college tuition, with no strings attached! I had 10 associates that basically got a college education with Sears paying 80% of their tuition. So think what you want, but I lived it
Mak, I lived it too, as a customer. Isn't it the customer's view which determines survival? Too bad you or someone like you wasn't in charge of how my friend's mother was dismissed after decades of service. Herded into a conference room, shown a video(because upper management were too cowardly to face them) informing those present their career at Sears was over and the nice fellows at the back of the room will escort you to the door. A little different attitude demonstrated at HQ than what you profess. Do you think perhaps Sears got a little too big for their britches with all the stacks of cash they funneled into whatever niche they thought they might make a buck? Management seemingly had no aversion to price gouging for services, chiseling on insurance claims or lying and cheating at the auto centers which made those huge piles of cash. Allstate insurance, along with State Farm were the innovators of LKQ crash parts replacement. How many here can relate a story of cheap ill fitting parts used for car repairs? Ask a body man if you don't have a story of your own. Again, thanks to beloved Sears for finding a way to chisel us on that too. Sears' arrogance continues even in their current pathetic state. A local mall had an incident recently where some nut job drove his car into the mall. Smashing through the Sears store, into the mall proper causing general mayhem and panic. Fortunately there were few injuries and he was not a terrorist, just some mental case with a driver's license. The SEARS store was the only point of entry to the mall without bollards having been installed to prevent vehicles entering. Sears, owning their portion of that mall, had refused mall management's request to comply with this (sadly necessary) safety measure. A fish stinks from the head down, upper management at Sears has done some pretty despicable things. Too late for recovery. The store I mention above is a huge one, now with nearly bare shelves and employees wandering aimlessly. Good riddance to Sears when they finally pull the plug. Sorry that you were in a bushel full of rotten apples.
Ross I will agree with a lot of what you state, the reputation within the industry was that they were arrogant bullies, I watched in the 70's how they put 5 manufactures out of business, including a friend of mine. Late 80's/90's Sears hired outsiders (me for 1) to change that culture, I left in 2003, due to my dad's health and had to get back east. Did I lay people off, Yes. some of the folks that I let go will haunt me to the grave, but NEVER en mass, it was 1 on 1, and tried do it with the utmost respect for what they had done for the company and me. That was 20 years ago and will most likely remain the hardest thing I have ever had to do. During my time there I can honestly say that I never saw or felt the arrogance the predated me or the indifference that I know went on after the Kmart merger. While I was there can honestly say that we tried to do right.
