Sears has been in a downward spiral for many years. It seems that the stores are secondary to the financial games Lambert is playing, and some of them will cost them more in the long run. How long can they continue this way? Also, the very generous rewards program is costing them a fortune. I have piles of stuff that I got for free with surprise points.
Sears is a real estate company. They own a lot of valuable land. The real estate crash hurt them more than the even dwindling retail business
The brand Sears has a lot of value still, I would expect within 3 years that Sears will be sold by the holding company. Perhaps Federated (Macy’s parent company) will buy Sears. Whoever does the buying will probably only want Sears and the brands Craftsman, Kenmore and DieHard. and won’t want to touch KMart and the few other remaining holdings.
Sears has a lot of loyal customers despite 10 years of complete mismanagement, that is a relationship that is hard to build. It has name recognition that is still positive.
No idea, but their CS is horrible! They make it very difficult to want to spend money there.
I would say more like 30 years.
Can’t be soon enough for me. I just spent half a day waiting for a Kenmore “repairman” who didn’t show up and then lied about it to the dispatcher. It wasn’t the first time either.
As a kid, Sears was pretty much the only store we shopped at; appliances, tools, furniture, clothes, whatever, it was all from Sears. I don’t think I’ve been in a Sears in the past 30 years, though.
I quit them after the lawnmower fiasco. They sent me a letter yesterday notifying me that if I don’t use my Sears credit card, they will close the account. 
Their store in Santa Barbara is on some very valuable land. The place is an utter piece of crap inside. One day someone will put something nice in there.
I don’t understand how the real estate crash hurt them. It’s not like they were in the business of buying and selling property or collecting rent.
They aren’t already? Well, damn!!!
I buy lots of stuff from them with points I earn from my Sears Mastercard. Last year I went shopping there and found two spiderwebs in one of their shopping carts. Doesn’t seem like a good sign.
They closed their local store in the mall a few years ago, which was unhandy when I needed another Craftsman tool or new drip pans for the range I bought there. Good thing there’s one in Mt. Vernon, 50 miles south of here. It’s easy enough to get off the freeway on the way home from Seattle. Except when I went there a few months ago, it was gone.
I still get credit-related stuff in the mail, but I don’t buy Sears stuff online. Since there are no stores to spend money in, I don’t even know where my Sears credit card is.
Oddly enough, I was cleaning out the desk in my office last week and came across my old Sears credit card. I got it around 30 years ago. It was as long as a regular credit card but around two thirds the height. It used to be that that was the only credit that they took but now they take all regular cards.
Sears has lost $7 billion in the last four years. Sears has already sold its best 235 properties to a REIT owned in part by Eddie Lamprey . . . I mean Lampert. Excluding profits from that sale, Sears lost about $256 million in the quarter ending August 1. As of August 1, it had something like $1.8 billion cash on hand. Sales are plummeting, and losses are expected to continue in that range. That would give Sears maybe a couple of years at best.
We really like Kenmore and recently purchased all new stainless appliances through Sears. I feel like we got a good deal, but when I called to put an extended warranty on the Microwave they asked for my Sears Card #. I told them I didn’t have a Sears card and I was going to use a Visa. They said that since they can only take the Sears card over the phone that I would need to drive to my nearest Sears to pay with a Visa! How ridiculous is that?
One of my Facebook friends is an attorney who used to work for Sears Holdings. I wasn’t surprised when she left that job a few years ago. As a corporate lawyer, you just know she was privy to information the rest of us wouldn’t have until many years after the fact.
‘Rats leaving a sinking ship’? 
“Somebody told me” that Craftsman tools have taken a considerable downturn in quality. Don’t remember how recently this is supposed to have happened.
Circa 1980, Sears, Roebuck and Co. decided to use the (boring, no future) retail operation as a cash cow to fund a new, exciting business in, wait for it - 'Financial services!.
Just as every other old-line business had decided THEIR future was in financial services.
If you had a Sears charge card, you got a brand new ‘Discover’ card.
By 1990, it was obvious that ‘financial services’ was an over-crowded industry, and that the Retail business was hurting.
Not to worry - we still have the real estate!
Now, they are nothing but the real estate and have maybe thought about turning the retail around.
I’m not holding my breath.
I grew up with Craftsman tools. They’re almost the only tools dad bought. I have some old Craftsman tools and new ones, and they seem about the same to me.
Note that Sears has different lines of tools. Some are made in the U.S.A. and have a lifetime warranty, and some are made in China and I don’t know if they have a lifetime warranty. Mine are all domestically made. I have not compared the domestic ones to imports.