[AT] Craftsman Tool Warranty

Sun Nov 3 14:57:19 PST 2019

No.  Stanley Black & Decker currently owns the Craftsman brand.  Apex Tool
Group, a venture formed by the combination of Danaher and Cooper Tools in
2010(ish), does some of the manufacturing.  I know Apex pretty well; my
company actually manufactures a few thing for them.

SO

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 5:42 PM James Peck <jamesgpeck at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I believe Apex Tool now owns the Craftsman brand and can sell it through
> channels other than Sears.
>
>
>
> *From:* AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> *On Behalf Of *Cecil
> Bearden
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 3, 2019 4:03 PM
> *To:* at at lists.antique-tractor.com
> *Subject:* Re: [AT] Craftsman Tool Warranty
>
>
>
> 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> 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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