Lou wrote:
Sears lost my business 7 years ago when they sent gang members to my
house to deliver appliances. I haven't been back since.

Yeah, they outsourced the delivery and they outsourced the service, and
it got much worse. Never let them deliver anything. Hopefully you won't
need warranty service.

Still, they very often have the best price, by far, on appliances, and
have a much larger selection that places like Home Depot, Lowes's, Best
Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, or Costco. Costco has the benefit of a 2 year
standard warranty, but their selection is very limited.

I need to buy a range and microwave/hood for a rental unit. I was in
Sears today, and I did my usual "reluctant to buy today routine," which
almost always results in a fairly substantial price cut. In this case
the oven came down from $450 ($500 sale price - 10% mail in rebate) to
$382 with no rebate needed. This was the "associate friends and family
discount") which was 20% then another 10%, for 28% off the non-sale
price of $530.

I actually would have paid the higher price, as no other oven from any
manufacturer had the features I wanted for the rental, which was coil
burners (no ceramic top) but self-cleaning including the oven racks, and
a hidden oven element (the last two features are rather rare on
sub-$1000 ranges), though common on more expensive ceramic cooktop ranges.

Similarly, the microwave/hood I wanted was not available anywhere else.
I needed a relatively high CFM 30" hood/microwave (400 cfm) which is not
all that common for less than $500, but with the 28% discount, there is
new Kenmore model that is around $250. If you have tenants that do a lot
of Asian stir-fry type cooking, you need a high cfm exhaust. Even 400
cfm isn't terrific, but a lot of the microwave/hoods are 300 cfm or less.