I went to some garage sales yesterday and didn’t find anything crafty that I wanted to buy.  I did find two great big stuffed animals for the dogs, and they’ve been carrying them around the house like they are their babies.  If you’re a dog person, it’s really cute to watch.  One of them fell asleep with her head resting on the stomach of her animal.  I should have taken a photo of them.

I have a frustrating story to tell you and see what you think.  We went to our local Sears to buy Rich a new riding lawn mower.  He’d already picked out the one he wanted at Sears.com, but he wanted to buy locally, so we went to the store.  They told us they basically “rent” the Sears name and if the Sears chain goes away, they will still be functioning.  We thought that was kind of odd since the name is “Sears”, but went along with it.  Rich gave them the information on the tractor he wanted and they said they didn’t have one in stock, but could get one from “Sears.”  The delivery fee would be $82.11 (not sure where that number came from), but we could get that waived if we applied for a Sears card.  The price of the tractor online was $100 less, but they said they would price match it.  Also, they were having a special and we would get an additional 5% off and $50 if we applied for and used the Sears card.  So we decided to think about it.

Since both of his tractors aren’t currently working (don’t ask), time is of the essence, unless we want to live in a hay field.  So we went online and applied for the card and were approved, but, you can’t use the online approval to purchase anything online, you can use it in the store however.  (I thought it would be easier to use it to order the tractor online, get the online price and free delivery that they offer, but I’d need to wait for the card that we’d get in 7-10 days…hay field time.)  So we take the online approval and go back to our local “Sears” store.  The man that helped us must have been new, as he wasn’t really sure how to do a lot of what needed done on the computer.  He did ask for assistance and here’s what we got.

They would price match with Sears.com, and since we now had a Sears credit card and were buying a Craftsman tractor, were eligible for free delivery.  (At this “Sears” store, you could only get free delivery on a tractor if you used a Sears card AND, bought a Craftsman Tractor, but not the more expensive Husquavarna tractor that Rich thought about buying, but didn’t.)   And that’s when things fell apart.  Keep in mind, if we’d have bought it online from Sears, we would automatically have gotten the price we had to fight for, and would also have automatically gotten free delivery.  Also, online we would have gotten an additional 5% off the tractor price (but couldn’t get that in the store because they had given us the price match.)  Online we would also have gotten $50 and be able to use a $25 coupon, but couldn’t because we weren’t technically in a Sears store.  So in the end, we gave up $160 in savings because we bought locally from a store that wasn’t really Sears.   I have no idea why they show the offers that real Sears stores use, as they wouldn’t honor them, because they aren’t really Sears.  Could you follow that logic?

My head was spinning by the time we left there, because we had to have the tractor, and it still won’t be delivered until Thursday, but isn’t that the way it goes when you have to have an appliance in a hurry?

Long story short.  All things called Sears, are clearly not Sears.

• Uncategorized