[AT] Craftsman Tool Warranty

Sun Nov 3 12:35:02 PST 2019

My father had worked at several things and started building a house for his
parents about 1940 on their farm. He had been doing work with his carpenter
uncle for some time and was planning on starting into home building.  He
was quite good at it and the great depression was easing up to where things
looked hopeful. He was adding tools both new and used. Most of the new
stuff he bought from the local Sears & Roebuck store. Along came WW-II and
he started working testing aircraft engines 12 hours a day 7 days a week
and as my grandfather's heart began to fail my father took over the farm.
He was converting the farm from draft horses to tractor power and like most
farmers of those times a lot of horse stuff got modified to work behind  a
tractor and slowly replaced (largely after the war ended in 1945) as stuff
became more available. He was buying his tires and batteries from Sears
along with additional tools. One of the early words in my vocabulary was
"Allstate"...  :-)  Another name was "David Bradley". In the years after
the war he bought a new DB flare wagon bed, an ear corn / grain elevator
and in 1947 a new David Bradley garden tractor with a sickle mower, a
cultivator and a DB axle to make a trailer for it. In 1952 he bought a new
DB lime / fertilizer spreader. During all of those years he kept buying
tires, batteries and even oil from the Sears store Most of what he could
buy there he did buy there. Then came the fateful day about 1953 when he
had a Craftsman screwdriver snap in the middle of the shaft... They had a
new guy as manager at the time and he seemed to think everything came
directly out of his pocket. He absolutely refused to replace it... My
father never entered that store again... That managers stubbornness cost
them many years of steady income but he probably never had any idea how
much. He probably bragged about how he saved the company the price of a
screwdriver. Our money just went another direction, we still spent it, just
not there.

.

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 11:52 PM <deanvp at att.net> wrote:

> Here is my experience with Craftsman tool warranty before they sold out to
> Stanley.  20 years or so ago when I was first starting antique tractor work
> I wanted a good torque wrench so I bought a Craftsman ½” drive for in the
> neighborhood of $99.00 which had the Craftsman Lifetime warranty.  I used
> is sparing for several years not often but worked just fine.  Then one day
> it just flat broke. So I brought it to the local Sears store for
> replacement. Their response stunned me. Torque wrenched do not have a
> lifetime warranty.  See it shows right there on the shelf. I replied it had
> a Lifetime warranty when I bought it. They would not honor it.  So I went
> home and damned if I didn’t find a 1999 Sears Tool Catalog that showed the
> Lifetime warranty on the Torque Wrench I had purchased. Went back the week
> before Christmas with wrench and Catalog in hand. There was a long line at
> the register and when I finally got up to the register I presented the
> wrench and the Tool catalog. The clerk still wouldn’t honor the Lifetime
> warranty.  I told the clerk that he better call  a manager because I was
> going to stand there until they honored their warranty.  Eventually a
> manager arrived and he too tried to renege on the warranty,  I held my
> ground. Eventually the manger caved and I also got him to hand write and
> sign on the receipt that the replacement wrench had a lifetime warranty
> including his name, title and employee number. . Fortunately the
> replacement has never failed so I have never had to test the lifetime
> warranty on the replacement. But… be very careful when shopping Craftsman
> tools. Many of the Craftsman tools no longer carry the Lifetime warranty
> with some as low as 90 days.
>
>
>
> I haven’t purchased very many Craftsman tools  of late so I don’t know
> what they are doing today relative to warranties.  I suspect they haven’t
> gotten any better. I know the Craftsman hand tools of the last 20 years are
> nowhere close to as good as those I purchased in the 50’s.  I now tend to
> just buy specialty tools that I’m not going to be using much and they
> usually are purchased at Harbor freight. They are usually good enough for a
> shade tree mechanic and the closet store is 7.5 miles way. The closest
> Sears store in now over 25 miles away.  The last few years I would only end
> up in a Sears store to pick up something I had purchased on-line at  less
> than half price they had on the shelf.  Between that pricing idiocy and
> being able to throw a grenade in the store without hitting anyone it was
> obvious Sears was in big trouble. Sears snatched defeat from the jaws of
> victory.  They could have owned the on-line marketplace just using their
> catalog name list. A management lesson in incompetency.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dean VP
>
> Snohomish, WA 98290
>
>
>
> *From:* AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> *On Behalf Of *Jim
> Becker
> *Sent:* Monday, October 28, 2019 11:27 AM
> *To:* Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com
> >
> *Subject:* Re: [AT] Craftsman Tool Warranty
>
>
>
> I had thought about that, but decided the tool was probably made out of
> material I wouldn’t be able to drill through.
>
>
>
> I recently acquired another one of these handles.  It was in a tool box I
> bought at an auction.  It has the hole, so my round bar became usable
> again.  Interesting thing about the newly acquired one, it is evidently
> even older than the one I turned in.  The catalog number is not permanently
> marked on the tool, as has been Craftsman practice for a long time.  The
> hole in the handle goes the opposite way from what it did in the handle I
> turned in.  I have two other 1/2 inch breaker bars, other brands.  They
> both are cross drilled.  One of them has a hole in the end so it can be
> used as an extension.
>
>
>
> Jim Becker
>
>
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-- 
-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com
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