Sears shocker

[rj-oz]

[It took me over TWO YEARS to get them to give me back the difference. After many phone calls and nothing happening, I finally sent a letter by Registered Mail to Sears Headquarters, and it got referred to something called 'Sears White Glove Service' I think it was, and that finally got me my difference refunded.]

Looks like I might have to try and find these guys too as I have this horrible sinking feeling my money , now with their merchant (solved), I paid with Paypal

 

[Al Bundy]

As for Kmart buying Sears, the story is a little different. Kmart was bankrupted by a bunch of scumbags who worked the system. The common stock ended up at .02, but the scumbags made a special B stock that was ahead of even vendors. They screwed vendors and stockholders out of 2 billion and created Kmart Holding. Kmart Holding bought Sears Holding. They will eventually bankrupt them both again, steal the remains and pocket 2-4 billion again. They are laying low as all the recent mortgage/banking thievery has shined too bright a light on stock shenanigans lately. My wife got screwed out of her life savings by the scumbags at Kmart Holding Corporation.

Any links where I can read about this?

 

[Kev442]

Any links where I can read about this?

Wiki treads lightly on all the underhanded thievery that went on but has some details. I should have used the term "bonds" to explain the stealing of Kmart by ESL. Bonds had value, the stock ended up worthless, so what was trading at $16 each went to .02 and the value was transferred to preferred bonds.

Wiki:

On January 22, 2002, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the leadership of its then-chairman Chuck Conaway and president Mark Schwartz.[15] Conaway, who had had success building up the CVS Corporation, had accepted an offer to take the helm at Kmart along with a loan of some $5 million. In a scandal similar to that involving Enron, Conaway and Schwartz were accused of misleading shareholders and other company officials about the company's financial crisis while making millions and allegedly spending the company's money on airplanes, houses, boats and other luxuries. At a conference for Kmart employees January 22, Conaway accepted "full blame" for the financial disaster. As Kmart emerged from bankruptcy, Conaway was forced to step down and was asked to pay back all the loans he had taken.

While the company was in bankruptcy, Edward Lampert bought Kmart bonds for his hedge fund, ESL Investments. On May 6, 2003, Kmart officially emerged from bankruptcy protection as the Kmart Holdings Corporation and on June 10, 2003, it began trading on the NASDAQ as "KMRT".


ESL:

ESL Investments is a privately owned hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut and estimated to be worth over $9 billion as of 2004.[1] ESL Investments are not associated with ESL International, the stock market investment technology company. The fund is managed by Edward Lampert, who found it in April 1988 and named it after his initials. The firm invests in the American public equity and hedging markets. Managing the fund with a contrarian investing approach, Lampert is the company's chairman and chief executive officer, and William Crowley is its president and chief operating officer.[2] ESL is fairly unique as a hedge fund in that it takes large stakes in a small number of companies and holds them for many years.[3] Most of ESL's portfolio consists of retail companies, particularly Kmart (now Sears Holdings Corporation), by far the company's largest holding (53.5% ownership as of June 2010).[4] The revenue from Kmart plays a big part in helping ESL acquire other companies.[1]

Lampert found the fund in 1988 with initial outside investments worth $28 million. Since then, the fund has had returns averaging 29% a year. His clients include David Geffen, Michael Dell, the Tisch family (owners of Loews Corporation), and the Ziff family (owners of Ziff Davis).[1] In 2004, the fund made Lampert the first hedge fund manager ever to make more than $1 billion in a year, when the fund grew 69%, following his decision to buy Kmart and merge it with Sears.[5] At the start of the financial crisis of 2007–2010, however, ESL's retail holdings were severely affected due to a drop in consumer spending, and the company's investment in Citigroup in September 2007 saw a significant drop in value since the fund made its investment. Through the fund, Lampert is worth approximately $2 billion.[

If you actually read all of this, you notice that he took his company from 28 million to 2 billion and took a one billion dollar salary in 2004.

Anyone who thinks this happened without cooking books and insider trading is hopelessly naive. He still has 53% of Sears Holding and has cashed out several billion over the years.

 

[srmofo]

Ive said it before and Ill say it again, Sears is circling the drain.

I had another pleasurable experience at my local store today when I had to exchange a few craftsman things. 2 socket pulled off the shelf , and 3 standard craptacular ratchets and a teardrop long handled 3/8 drive that I actually enjoy using. They guy behind the counter was trying to replace the teardrop ratchet with a very similar looking one but without any markings. No item number, No logo, No COO. I told him that was an unacceptable exchange and asked for either one of the new ones that was the same ratchet with markings or (and preferably) a new mechanism. He huffed, told me only 1 guy could rebuild them and he wasnt there. I said its fine, Im perfectly capable a rebuilding it myself. He tried to BS me some more about not knowing which one it was. Then I said find someone that does. I was still being pretty pleasant at this point and kinda joked with the guy "That Im not trying to be a pain in the ***, I just want a suitable replacement", His reply...."Well you are are".....Mine, "Get your goddamn manger down here now." Manager came down, sorta apologized, Found the mechanism I needed , and pretty much acted like he didnt care what that guy did.

 

[Coach James]

My order was broken into three parts. Part one arrived today in excellent condition. Parts 2 and 3 were scheduled for 12/28. Today they said part 2 shipped and part 3 will tomorrow. Weird.

As for Kmart buying Sears, the story is a little different. Kmart was bankrupted by a bunch of scumbags who worked the system. The common stock ended up at .02, but the scumbags made a special B stock that was ahead of even vendors. They screwed vendors and stockholders out of 2 billion and created Kmart Holding. Kmart Holding bought Sears Holding. They will eventually bankrupt them both again, steal the remains and pocket 2-4 billion again. They are laying low as all the recent mortgage/banking thievery has shined too bright a light on stock shenanigans lately. My wife got screwed out of her life savings by the scumbags at Kmart Holding Corporation.

Do you mean your wife had her entire life savings invested in KMart?

Coach

 

[Greatbear]

"Get your goddamn manger down here now." Manager came down, sorta apologized, Found the mechanism I needed , and pretty much acted like he didnt care what that guy did.

I can see you saying that with this expression:

Sears is definitely not much longer for this world. Last major purchase I made from Sears was a GE "Geospring" heat pump water heater, not quite two years ago. The purchase was not bad at all. However, I had problems with the thing a few months later, and I happened to be at the store and asked someone (not the original salesman) in the appliance center for some advice. When he found out that I was not there to buy something new, he got rather miffed. My simple question was first if Sears could help (no, after 90 days it goes to the mfr, I understand this) and if they had some sort of contact info or any other process. The old ******* got surly with me, refused to let me see the manager, gave me the wrong info for GE anyway, and royally pissed me off. I proceeded to loudly proclaim how my upcoming purchase of a new fridge will not be made from Sears, nor will any other major appliance purchase be considered or recommended. This pretty much cleared the appliance center of customers, especially since the salesman was raising his voice with me as well. This is a shame, because up till that point, I had made many major appliance purchases from that store in the past, received stellar service, and in a couple cases where a screwup was made, the store went out of their way to not only make it right, but offered additional discounts, etc. No more.

As an aside, GE themselves could not have been any better for service, making everything right with my problem.

At this particular store local to me, the tool area is staffed by a completely clueless twit who is completely unaware of the information, specs and whatnot of the items in his department. Not much of a loss, however, since the once well-stocked department has been downsized, and we all know of the overall reduction in quality of what remains.

 

[Neuswede]

Currently, Sears Holdings is sitting on some capital, however Lampert is not investing any of it into merchandise. You would think that in order to make sales you would actually need product on the shelves, but I guess not. I have 4 stores all within about 25 miles; all have marginal levels of inventory, most of which I either already have or don't need and/or would never buy. When I ask Sears employees about the lack of stock on shelves, they simply shrug and say they know nothing but that it is bad with no near-term improvement expected.

24/7 Wallstreet has Sears Holdings on their 2012 Top 10 watch list (companies to fail). The drain is definitely getting closer. As reported by 24/7 Wallsteet:

"The parent of Sears and Kmart--Sears Holdings-is in a lot of trouble. Total revenue dropped $341 million to $9.7 billion for the quarter which closed April 30, 2011. The company had a net loss of $170 million. Sears Holdings was created by a merger of the parents of the two chains on March 24, 2005. The operation has been a disaster ever since. The company has tried to run 4,000 stores which operate across the US and Canada. Neither Sears nor Kmart have done well recently, but Sears' domestic locations same store numbers were off 5.2 percent in the first quarter and Kmart’s were down 1.6 percent. Last year domestic comparable store sales declined 1.6 percent in the total, with an increase at Kmart of .7 percent and a decline at Sears Domestic of 3.6 percent. New CEO Lou D'Ambrosio recently said of the last quarter that, “we also fell short on executing with excellence.

We cannot control the weather or economy or government spending. But we can control how we execute and leverage the potent set of assets we have.” D'Ambrosio needs to pull a rabbit out of his hat soon. Sharex are down 55 percent during the last five years. D'Ambrosio only reasonable solution to the firm’s financial problems is to stop supporting two brands which compete with one another and larger rivals such as Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT). The cost to market two brands and maintain stores which overlap one another geographically must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Employee and supply chain costs are also gigantic. The path D'Ambrosio is likely to take is to consolidate two brand into one--keeping the better performing Kmart and shuttering Sears."

 

[rj-oz]

[Employee and supply chain costs are also gigantic. ]

Yep, my 2 sets of GW metric flex heads and my 2 sets of XL cross beams and my slim ratchet set are lost in there somewhere-but they won't sell em to me-cancelled my orders instead-the lot of em-the excuses (and they were plenty-all different, depending on who I got) they gave me, got progressively worse until I just gave up-- simply not good enough.
Signed,
Seersucker.

 

[Kev442]

Do you mean your wife had her entire life savings invested in KMart?

Coach

25 years of her life working there. 401k was set up the old fashioned way, to give you shares of Kmart stock. Little did the employees know that they set up another B stock that was given to Conners and his cronies, which they cashed out as fast as they got them. This caused the regular stock to crash. Kmart had some small print in the 401k stating that if the stock lost more than 10-15% of it's value, you could not cash it out for 30 days.
The stock continued to crash, the employees could not cash out, but B stock holders could and did. End result, 25 years of 401k savings gone, over $20,000. The Kmart thievery was equal to Global Crossing and Tyco International. The Tyco guy did time and Tyco was melded to Ansul to save value. Ansul almost went under from the Tyco BS, Kmart did go under and Conner walked after repaying a token amount.

Conners and his cronies robbed it blind, and ESL stole it to create Kmart Holding Corp.

 

[billymade]

Thats interesting about not buying inventory; I worked at Sears for 7 years and was there during the Kmart buyout and creation of Sears holdings. One of the first things I noticed as a employee that oversaw the inventory; was that the inventory levels (allocation) were cut and this seemed to be a direct correlation to the Kmart way of doing business. Go into any Kmart and it is plain to see this there. This always caused problems when we had things on sale; we were never able to meet demand as well as we had in the past. This caused allot of anger and frustration among the customer base in my area; this happened before... as you cannot fulfill every sale when there is a rush on a great deal but it was far worse after the Kmart buyout. I didn't see much improvement in anything but things just seemed to get worse; I would say during that time... I also saw Danaher based Craftsman tools take a nose dive in quality and quality control. My thinking at the time was that Sears Holdings was pressuring them to reduce costs of production and or changed the contracts; I also heard during that time that Danaher closed a number of earlier tool production plants and converged them at Dallas Texas. I'm sure there is a number of "reasons" for all the changes but I just saw a negative change at Sears (it was technically no longer Sears, they took on Kmart's style of business, wages, benefits, etc took a dive too) and loss of tool quality as well. Ultimately, maybe this is or was just a trend in corporate america in general... I just remember watching CNN the day of the Kmart buyout and the quote was something like "two loser retail giants merge..."... I couldn't have put it any better...

 

[toasterburn]

Ive said it before and Ill say it again, Sears is circling the drain.

I had another pleasurable experience at my local store today when I had to exchange a few craftsman things. 2 socket pulled off the shelf , and 3 standard craptacular ratchets and a teardrop long handled 3/8 drive that I actually enjoy using. They guy behind the counter was trying to replace the teardrop ratchet with a very similar looking one but without any markings. No item number, No logo, No COO. I told him that was an unacceptable exchange and asked for either one of the new ones that was the same ratchet with markings or (and preferably) a new mechanism. He huffed, told me only 1 guy could rebuild them and he wasnt there. I said its fine, Im perfectly capable a rebuilding it myself. He tried to BS me some more about not knowing which one it was. Then I said find someone that does. I was still being pretty pleasant at this point and kinda joked with the guy "That Im not trying to be a pain in the ***, I just want a suitable replacement", His reply...."Well you are are".....Mine, "Get your goddamn manger down here now." Manager came down, sorta apologized, Found the mechanism I needed , and pretty much acted like he didnt care what that guy did.

Yikes. The sales people at my local sears seem friendly enough, but they're way too pushy. "No, I don't want a sears card... Yes, I'm sure that I don't want one." At this point, they should give up, but I usually have to say it a few more times. Still not as bad as radioshack though.

 

[Neuswede]

Sears/K-Mart also ruined another American Icon: Lands' End. The wife and I spent alot of money with Lands End before they were acquired. What a great company they were. Had very few issues, but when we did, the service was second to none and quality was exceptional. Not any more.