[AT] Craftsman Tool Warranty
Cecil Bearden
crbearden at copper.net
Sun Nov 3 13:02:44 PST 2019
In the late 70's Sears had a commercial tire & battery shop here in
OKC. We had bought batteries from Sears for over 25 years. We got a
good price on them from the commercial shop, better than the store. If
we bought a tractor battery from the store and they found out it goes in
a tractor, they cut the warranty in half. The commercial shop let us
keep the full warranty. A few years later they went out of business and
we jumped around all over trying to get a good price on batteries. I
now buy them from a local shop and they appear to be a good battery for
the money. I probably go thru 30 batteries a year. I get a lot of
tires from Your next tire in Nebraska, but they were bought out by
another tire shop and immediately raised prices. My local Coop has
become a reliable source for common sized tires. The same thing has
happened to my local fuel supplier. In business since the early 50's,
it was bought out by a large firm in Amarillo. They came in, cut 2
warehouse/delivery guys, added a receptionist, replaced all the trucks,
put in a security system and got rid of the dogs that ran the yard at
night, and raised gas prices by 10cents and fuel by 20. A barrel of oil
went up nearly $100. The Coop looks to be my new fuel supplier.
Cecil
On 11/3/2019 2:35 PM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>
>
>
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>
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>
>
>
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