Insinkerator vs. Sears

[mm]

It was almost no effort to go to Sears and look at their garbage disposals.

Plainly they are made by In-sink-erator. The second cheapest, the half-horsepower is 75 at Sears but it was on sale for 65. (All this is Baltimore)

The same size at HD was 70 dollars regular price, and at Lowes 68 dollars regular price.

It wasn't true that the reversing feature was found on cheaper models at Sears. It was only on the second most expensive, something like

178 dollars (and maybe the most expensive, but I didn't check.) This is just the way it was with In-Sink at HD and Lowes. The models there totally matched the models at Sears.

I thought I recalled the HD price and on sale, Sears was 5 dollars cheaper so I was going to buy that one, but first the cashier wanted my phone number and then he wanted my name and address. I didn't want to give them and he said they were needed if there were a recall and for the guarantee** I know I could have made up the number and address, but then I had images of them writing to my phony address, and I got annoyed, so I told him I wasn't giving him all that info, and I put the thing back, and left.

I ended up paying 3 dollars more at Lowes, where they didn't ask my name, phone number, or address.

**BTW, the In-Sink guarantee is 2 years on the 2nd cheapest model. I think at sears it was one year. I'm sure it won't break during the second year, but still. Apparently if it breaks during the warranty In-Sink will come to yoru housse to fix it!

[Tom G]

Probably would, but an Insinkerator sales rep told me that the company would just as soon replace the unit, no questions asked. If a serviceman comes to the house, he/she's probably going to tell you that the unit is unrepairable and that it should be replaced which isn't covered by the warranty (the labor). So to save time to you and cost of a service call to Insinkerator it makes more sense to give the customer a new one. At least that was their instructions to Sears salespeople. You might run into more of a hassle at HD or Lowe's. The phone number/address thing is of course used in the event of a recall but more often used by the company to hound you into buying an extension on the warranty. So how is giving them a false phone number/address different than the false email address you use in posting to this newsgroup? I would find it fun to do to screw with their minds. If everybody did it, maybe they would get the idea and quit asking.

Tom G

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, Who cares about name and address. In this day and age they know of me better than I know myself. I get birth day wishes text message coming down on my cell phone, from my bank, etc. Nothing is private or confidential any more. More over, I have nothing to hide or avoid, LOL.

[mm]

Yes it does. And that would be fine with me. These things really are easy to install.

I thought it was something like that.

I don't use a false email address, only a spam-resistant one, but I have no problem using a false address or with others who do. Except that it should be clearly false, so no one wastes time writing a personal friendly email to someone, which then bounces.

I have no trouble giving Sears a phony name or number either**, except that I kept imagining them sending letters to the phony address, and I didn't want that. Then I got almost irrationally annoyed and I put the thing back and stormed out of the place. It would have made more sense to just make up a name and address. Even though I was over it 5 or 10 minutes later, I know if I went back there, I would tend to react the same way again, and would have to plan or to concentrate to avoid that.

**When I have to sign up for a card to get normal sale prices at supermarkets, I usually give the address 100 Main St. or my home address which is 600 W. Main St. I don't want people spying on what food I eat. If they send mail to that address, it's a real waste, but I want the sale price that everyone else gets.

Yes. IIUC, the supermarket did intend to snail mail people advertising, but stopped doing that. Maybe it is because they got so many phony addresses? I sort of doubt it though. Most people are obedient and many think there is never a place where it is ok to lie.

What they could do with those little pieces of plastic with bar codes is promise to send your keys back to you if you lose them with one of those things on the keyring. But afaik they don't say a word about that. Hotel key rings say on them: "Drop in any mailbox", and other services for house and car keys might have said that too. But afaik, the supermarkets give no indication that putting such a key ring in the mailbox would cause the keys to go back to them, and afaik it wouldn't happen. Nor would I want just any old person there to get my keys. If it was an established practice and they had someone they trusted to accept all the keys, that would be different.

When I was little, the charity that did this sent little tags that looked like my parents' car's license plate, complete with the actual license plate numbers on it. But people would drop their keys in parking lots, and this let thieves know whose car it was. So this changed by 1962 or earlier.