I wish they would ditch the knucklehead that bought both Sears and KMart and is trying to turn them into a Frankenstein monster mashup of each other.

“Big K Mart” was much better than the new “Sears Essentials” that they’ve been turned into. Had better variety, looked better, better Customer Service, much better automotive supply area, etc.

I got a Kenmore stackable W/D from Sears for my apartment back in 2007, and a month and a half later the washer started squealing when running. The repairman found that the piece that joins the turning-spindle to the tub itself had shattered. In his words, it looked like it was made “out of pot metal”, all crystalline inside.

He rummaged around in his truck and found he still had an old version of the part (from way before the merger). This was a nice, stamped part and worked fine for the next year that I was in the apt. However, the repairman went to reorder it on his little handheld– and it came up “discontinued”. Apparently they replaced it with the new potmetal cheapy crap version of the part.

After seeing that I have stayed out of Sears like the plague. I hope CEO Idiot gets his hands off it and lets it return to a standard of quality merchandise… but until I see proof that it has I will avoid both stores.