Re: Why The hate for Craftsman stuff?
I don't hate Craftsman, but I do lament the deterioration in quality of some of their offerings.
Case in point, lately I have purchased 3 ratchets from Sears. Two long flex head versions in 1/2 and 3/8 drive and one "Premium" version in 3/8.
The 1/2 flex and Premium 3/8 are both simply flawless. They feel good when using them and I have no doubt they will have a place in my stable for years to come.
The 3/8 drive flex was simply a POS any way you look at it. It would work great in one direction, but the selector switch would float all over the place in the other, usually slipping to center and free wheeling.
I thought maybe it was just the one I got, luck of the draw (no mfr is perfect all the time), so I returned to Sears to trade it for another. I went thru 6 different ratchets on the rack, and all were the same.
I went to two other Sears stores in the area thinking maybe that store just got a bad batch. All the 3/8 flex ratchets I looked at from any of the three stores was the same, clearly a POS.
I'm not pissed about Craftsman, but I am shocked, saddened and just feel screwed because I grew up with Sears being a household name, offering stuff you could count on being of decent quality. Maybe never the best available or suitable for the Queen, but, good enough to make our family feel like we got what we paid for.
Nowadays, it's a **** shoot at best. Nothing worse than coming to realize a symbol of American pride (to some) has chosen to go the way of many companies and serve the interest of share-holders instead of customers.
What's worse is the shareholders just don't get it. Selling **** products will only lead to diminished profits and cause your customers to go to a competitor. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that customers still want value for their money.
Take a look at HF. Five years ago everything in the store was ****. Now, maybe just 1/2-3/4 of it is ****, but, they're headed in the right direction.
Sears two biggest money makers are Kenmore and Craftsman. Sears has never been in the manufacturing business, so, their products were always outsourced.
Now, with the advent of the internet, and changing business models, brick and mortar stores are archaic in any profit model.
Sears is making a hard push to get away from brick and mortar retail. Why do you thing they offer discounts for online only purchases, and offer in store pickup ? To get people conditioned to the idea of no more retail environment.
Sears is marketing the hell out of the Kenmore and Craftsman brands because of the recognition. That's profitable compared to paying overhead like mall space, insurance, salary and training for retail floor employees.
This isn't a total surprise, with regulations, taxes, liability insurance costs etc. going thru the roof they have to do something to remain profitable.
The real question is how long will it take the customer base Sears has grown for generations to come to the realization that the Sears we once knew is no more.
So, I'm not a Cman hater, I just hate to see something many people relied upon being forced into dealing with the market inundated by foreign (chicom and worse) mfrs who don't have a clue about what Americans perceive as value.
HF is starting to 'get it', truck brand and industrial tool companies have always known if you make a POS, you'll (permanently) lose customers.
So, that's one main reason for the quality difference between the truck/industrial brands and what's left of Sears. It's deliver or die in the marketplace.
Sears just chose to compete with the bottom feeders of the world. As a result, they are desperate to do anything to survive. Using a cheapo grade product to milk the brand for all it's worth is one way of remaining profitable as long as possible.
The sad truth is most customers could give a damn where a tool is made and wouldn't know a quality tool if you beat them over the head with it. Those customers are the ones Sears is exploiting during the transition they are now in.
Sears will either go online order only, with orders picked up from an order desk in some whse setting, get sold off, or go bankrupt.
The mgmt already knows this, the investors could care less and all the poor saps that made the Craftsman and Kenmore brands so popular (and marketable) with their loyalty over the years are now considered expendable.
That would be me and you.
If you wonder how things got this way, take a look at US foreign trade agreements and the sleazy side of global politics. In years past politicians would screw your dog, and maybe your wife, but lacked nerve to simply screw all of us at once.
Now they have pockets lined with foreign money and balls as big as fruit jars. Sears is no different than the rest of us in the fact they are trying every way they can to survive.
What they don't realize is Americans still give a damn and would support any company that does their absolute best to deliver quality with integrity and good ethics.
Sears could be saved, and turn into a shining example of how the American standard is still the benchmark. They have chosen to listen to too many suits and bean counters instead of their customer base.
So, I say let them die if they must, it's their own doing for lacking the balls to stand for something (anything ?) that resembles integrity.
They are to me, no different now than HF, they just sell furniture, clothes and other ****.
Just like HF, if you know what you're after, you can still find a gem or two that is a value.
The truck and industrial brands are next, just hide and watch.
In 10 years, what we call **** will be cream of the crop and tools will be largely dispensable. The few holdouts offering quality will be so damned expensive, they have to go off shore to mfr to keep costs within any kind of reason.
Make no mistake, you and me are responsible for all of this for letting the politicians get away with this ********.
Craftsman isn't bad, it's just a glaring example of how we've taken some things for granted and in the end been worse off for doing so.
I'm not a Craftsman hater, it's just a real sore point for me (and others) to know we let things get all F'ed up.
US made is great, but unless manufacturing comes back to this country, we might as well get used to the decline in the quality of what our dollar will buy.
Sears and Craftsman is just a common example that we can all associate with and see the effect of all of this up close and personal. Some of us handle the bad news better than others and vote with our dollars.
I don't hate Craftsman, I hate how F'ed up things are in general, Craftsman just gets to be the poster child for me, as I buy a tool once in a while and have been in the habit of getting good value from Sears all my life.
It's not totally gone, just harder to find.
I'm lazy, so any extra effort on my part, with sometimes inferior offerings at premium prices just pisses me off.
