This is just how incredibly low things have sunk. The bitter end is approaching, when I look for a lawnmower and this is all I see. https://www.sears.com/search=lawn%20mower?storeId=10153&catalogId=12605&levels=Lawn%20%26%20Garden_Lawn%20Mowers&searsTab=true After 126 and 120 years respectively it shouldn't end like this. Both Sears and K-Mart used to have what people wanted and needed. Not anymore.
5 replies (most recent on top)
@12amxFAe-2yzy - you need to click the 'Sears only' tab near the top. All the
other products are from the Marketplace - which means buy it though sears.com,
but its a third party company (like Amazon..)
Well, Sears website shows they are down to 3 - 2 stage style Snowblowers and 2 single stage styles.
The other few are on clearance price ($$xxx.88), meaning discontinued. A far cry from the selection
2 years ago. But keep selling those 5 year PAs in the north country!.....
The Sears website has plenty of mowers listed.
There is no lawn and garden anymore. It's been gutted.
Sears and Husqvarna started having issues. Then Sears sold Craftsman to Stanley. Then Stanley started the process of taking over MTD (who was making Sears mowers). Now that Sears and Stanley have issues, Stanley is kind of behind the scenes letting MTD know that doing business with Sears is going to be frowned on. Since Stanley will (fairly soon) be completely buying out MTD, MTD doesn't want to ruin that deal by doing business with Sears anymore than they have to.
Theres nobody left to make mowers for Sears. You have 2 main companies that make consumer machines in the US and Sears is not in good standing with either. 3 companies make consumer machines at a capacity to supply Sears. Husqvarna, MTD, and John Deere. For various reasons, none want to do business with Sears. Most of those reasons have to do with the fact that they don't need Sears.
The people running Sears lawn and garden have been running it into the ground for years and they've finally succeeded. Initials KD and ZC are the 2 biggest know-nothings the company has ever employed. Neither of them have a clue about mowers and how to market them and it shows.
Sears stopped training technicians years ago. Then they've ran off the few guys that knew how to work on them. Now, they have people working on mowers that simply have no business opening the hood on them. They've all but shut down tech support for the technicians. I called into stac the other day and had a guy that says he's an electronics technician trying to help me with a starting issue that didn't make sense. He made it very clear that he knew nothing about mowers and said that the 2 left there that do were off or gone to lunch or something. They weren't there.
Add to that, my tech manager tells me not to call STAC because they're closing it. I don't even think STAC knows that they're going to be closed. But with electronics techs taking lawn and garden calls, they must be letting people go to prepare for shutting it down.
When the electronics guy couldnt help me the boss said for me to just order a new engine and put on it and that should fix it. Thats not cost effective, but thats what my boss wanted me to do.
I have already started looking for a new job because I know that I wont have one for long since we're not selling mowers anymore.
Ya it's been like that since spring and upper management was jumping down store managers throats during spring for declining sales....it's kinda hard to match previous spring sales when a huge percentage of that was lawn mowers that you no longer carry, but that's no excuse according to them.