mediatechnology wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:50 am
I am working on my car and needed some metric sockets (to fix my american car). Since my only car is parked in my carport until I put humpty back together again, Amazon seemed eminently practical. I managed to make it 7 decades without owning a metric socket set, while I already had some small metric wrenches and even a metric hex driver socket set for working on my bikes.
What about Home Depot or Lowe's online?
I've used both when appropriate...
I have one unresolved purchase issue when I first put 4" pipe down in my buried drain trench late last year... Home depot shorted me one 25' length of pipe out of a 5x25' order... They ignored my emails, and when I reached a customer service rep by phone even she couldn't get a straight answer about delivery... she suggested I use my credit card company to dispute the purchase, but I didn't. I wrote a letter expressing my anger to corporate headquarters, but for only $17 of pipe I no longer needed, I moved on.
I bought my stanley metric hex driver sockets at walmart where I do my food shopping, so if my car was working I could have bought metric sockets at Walmart store.
Now that Sears is fubar and with Craftsman sold to Stanley(?) Craftsman is available at Lowes.
I have watched Eddie Lambert (sears holdings) spiral the sears franchise into the ground ever since he purchased KMart. He invested big in bricks and mortar (over valuing the underlying real estate) just when the fortunes of bricks and mortar flipped negative.
I have a screen capture somewhere where Sears Marketplace was listing an SSL compressor.
Sears would be the last place I'd look for that.
Sears stores have been depressing in person for many years.
The last time I visited the Sears website I was trying to buy parts (broken temperature sensor... why me
) to repair my old Kenmore wall oven. No luck and I bought my new (not Kenmore) wall oven from Lowes.
Speaking of Amazon killing Sears I wandered into a Sears store a couple of years ago looking for jeans.
They had size 28" waist or less or 42" and greater.
32, 34 and 36s were completely sold out and never replaced.
The racks and tables were full of unsold winter gear - it was May.
I don't normally visit Flea Markets but Sears had that vibe.
Never went back - not even for a car battery.
Amazon didn't kill Sears, Eddie Lambert killed Sears. They have been in decline longer than Amazon's ascendency. They had an unassailable market position, iconic brands, and good reputation but frittered it all away. They have operated like they were in liquidation (like not having popular sizes) for at least the last decade plus, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Besides craftsman I think Eddie has also sold off and/or licensed other legacy sear's brands (like Kenmore) to raise capital, as he staves off straight liquidation bankruptcy and continues to shrink.
[edit] I just saw a several page article in WSJ about the history of Sears decline... The credit/blame is shared between more than just Lambert who opportunistically bought Sears after it was already in trouble from problems and missteps that started a few decades earlier. [/edit]
He is supposed to be a smart guy (big deal hedge fund operator who made $B) but doesn't look very smart from here. Ironic perhaps that Sears the original (mail order catalog) direct sales company, couldn't manage the paradigm shift to Internet selling. Walmart has even struggled with this but seems on top of their game now melding internet with B & M.
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OK almost warm enough to return outside to finish reassembling my car using my metric Stanley sockets I purchased through Amazon.
JR