Sears to sell Craftsman to Stanley/B&D

[Leon]

WOW! They must have been picking on you in particular, I never experienced that.

In Houston RS opened a super store IIRC it was called Incredible Universe. It was a very nice store that scratched all itches with product selection. The problem was you had to have an ID card to get in, not just to buy. They wanted all your personal info to give you a card. They were very intrusive and there was always a line of people at 4 spots re registering because they for got their cards.

The store failed miserably and I would probably blame the PIA procedure to get inside the store. Talk about idiots.

[Leon]

On 1/12/2017 9:57 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote: Snip

Yes! Our local store was a nightmare to get into on a weekend, you drove around looking for a parking spot. And then suddenly too much up close parking. I do not know if your stores are big or not but IIRC ours had about 50 registers with next in line purchasing at those registers. On holidays I saw almost all of those registers open. Now they could probably get by with 2~3 registers.

[Scott Lurndal]

All the stores have the large checkout area with 50 or so registers.

I don't recall ever seeing them use the second set of 25, and in the few years, they seldom have more than two or three registers open. But then I go there once or twice a year now (more frequently in the past).

Each store has a "theme". The Brokaw store is Mayan themed, the Burbank store looks like a crashed spaceship from a 50's SF movie. The Palo Alto store is a wild-wild-west theme. The Campbell store is Egyptian themed. I haven't been to the Anaheim store, but it is based on the Space Shuttle.

Houston looks like it's oil (suprise!) themed.

[-MIKE-]

Scott is partly correct. :-) Some of that stuff was excellent for consumer electronics. Obviously, RS didn't have a factory where they were cranking out this stuff. They were a stencil brand that contracted out their manufacturing and had the manufactures stencil their brand names on it. In fact, there was a good amount of time in the 90s when Sony was making a LOT of RS audio gear and they weren't skimping on quality. There were a lot of models that were simply Sony boxes with Realistic badges.

I still have a RS audio/video receiver/amp I bought at lest 25 years ago that sounds and works great. It's been a while since I was "in the know" but because of some relationships I had in the professional broadcast video industry I knew what companies were making all of RS's gear and which models they were patterned after and if and/or what inside was any different from the name-brand stuff.

[-MIKE-]

But like Walmart, for most stuff they are simply redirecting to "partner vendors."

[Puckdropper]

Leon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

They probably read about how important knowing your customer was in some trade rag and interpreted it wrong. You don't get to know your customer by forcing them to give you their personal information, you just talk to them: "Did you see this was an N scale part?" "Oh yes, I've got both HO and N at home."

Hey, you just learned something about your customer! Your customer just learned something about you, too.

Guess who you'll see next week because he happened to be in the area? Not the guy you forced to give his address, social security number, mother's maiden name, car history, license number, and the names of his first three girlfriends.

Puckdropper

[notbob]

I'll agree on that.

Likewise, they charge $7 fer a phone cable union, which I can buy at Walmart fer $2.50 and Ebay fer about 47¢.

nb

[Markem]

Radio Shack is now Sprint store here, they still carry electronic components. But any electronic components I need I will get online cheaper, but if I need it fast.

[clare]

We lost the "shack" stores in Canada LONG ago - ended up as "the source" with no components. Basically a cell phone and R/C toy store with a bit of radio and electronics equipment thrown in.

[Leon]

I see that as an increasing trend. Best Buy too.

[Leon]

Yes that is the north side store, the theme for the sw store is ghetto. ;~) They say, South Houston honors the city's rich pioneer heritage.

[woodchucker]

RS spun off computer city. Which was a lot like a big box store. The problem was price. They offered rebates on their own branded stuff to lower the price. The problem was they didn't pay out the rebates w/o hunting them down. Repeatedly we found that to be a problem and they offered all types of excuses. But we knew it was BS because we even used my father inlaws name and address for a few items when we bought more than 1. Same issue. So in my mind, The offered high price, low service, and low trust. The perfect reason to stop buying from them. Which we did.

[russellseaton1]

You seem to believe everything is so easy. Back in August Wal-Mart paid $3 BILLION for Jet.com online sales company. After spending years trying to increase online sales at Wal-Mart. Did all the fools at Wal-Mart have thei r head up their behinds? Why couldn't they just make online sales magicall y? Why? Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. How could they no t know how to sell online?

As for comparing catalog sales to online sales. Maybe they are similar, ma ybe not. Catalog sales for Sears started dying out in the 50s, 60s. They had physical stores so no need for catalog sales. And the US became far mo re urban, not rural, in the second half of the century. Today everyone alm ost lives in a city or near a city. So today almost everyone is close to a physical Sears store. Why would they use a catalog? Online sales you hav e 50 choices and prices. Catalog you have 5. Are they the same? I have a tool catalog from Acme Tools on the shelf. I doubt I would order anything from it. I'd go to the store in town or use the internet. Is a catalog t he same as online ordering, even in philosophy?

[DerbyDad03]

They weren't just picking on him, they picked on me too. I hated answering the same questions over and over again. It's a frigging electronics store. Shouldn't just a phone number bring up everything they needed? Even Harbor Freight can do that.

I used to make stuff up just to screw with them.

[DerbyDad03]

Let me see if I understand this...

You cheated their system by using other people's names on the rebate forms and then stopped shopping there because *they* were untrustworthy?

Interesting.

[Bill]

I didn't like it either.

[Martin Eastburn]

I used to work across from one in Sunnyvale. It was a place to eat lunch and look at the new tech books and buy the odd thing needed at home. Then at Christmas - the kitchen area was large and I found plenty of presents there when I wanted. That was in Y2k and thereafter.

Mart> Le>> Snip

[Scott Lurndal]

*top posting fixed*

Which sunnyvale store? There have been three, if I recall correctly.

[Leon]

I never had any issue, just gave them my telephone number. If you were making stuff up they probably got several extra hits on your reference and then had to narrow it down to which one you were going to pick for that day.

[Jack]

Point is it was/is annoying as all get out when the sales clerk is more interested in getting your info into the computer than selling you something.