A lot of people are acting like Sears is on it’s last legs, like it’s not sustainable… whatever. I hope not. At least for hand tools.
They were the first to offer a lifetime warranty (guarantee?) on hand tools, and in the last few years Home Depot (Husky), Lowes (Kobalt), even Harbor Freight (Pittsburg) have followed suit with various results (I’ve seen good and bad, notably Kobalt really took care of me recently), but Sears/Craftsman has always been good for me.
I’m usually not abusive to my tools, at least I rarely use them incorrectly unless there is no other way to get what I need to do done, but I am pretty big and can put forces on them that probably are not reasonable. When I was a kid my dad would keep a nice pile of ratchets and extensions on display on a windowsill that I broke. Usually I’d lean into a ratchet too hard, and pop, an extension would twist into 2 pieces (notably, I don’t think it was ever a craftsman extension). A few times I’ve had a ratchet head explode or just rip the teeth out of it (only once a craftsman, a really old fine tooth ratchet that I found at a garage sale that I loved).
That said, I’ve broken A LOT of tools and although I wouldn’t consider any of the craftsman tools that I broke to be defective, I’ve always GREAT warranty service from them… just walk in and they replace it. If it doesn’t exist anymore they do their best to give you something comparable or better. They’ve also agreed to upgrades (sometimes charging the difference, sometimes not). Never a hassle, never a question (sometimes a little joking around). I like it. I don’t want it to go away.
This brings me to the reason that I decided to write this:
Recently I was working on the Trans Am and had a stack of wrenches and some other stuff sitting under the hood. Byron stopped by to give me a hand and knocked them into the support area in front of the radiator where the stuff ends up sliding down into the bumper. Usually he’s pretty good about going after them, but this time both he and I forgot to. Later I was driving to the gym and heard a THUNK, TING TING, Ting ting ting… as my 1/2” box end wrench left the car and bounced down the road. I went back but couldn’t find it…
Yesterday, (on my birthday, happy birthday too me 
) I stopped by to see if I could get another. I was talking with the guy at the counter about it and told him the stupid thing I did and he’s like “well, if you’re replacing an existing wrench I’ll cover that under warranty… I mean you had one, it’s a ‘no questions what happened to it warranty,’ obviously you intended to replace it… so here”
WOW!!! I don’t know if it’s really your policy or if they guy there was just doing me a favor, but wow… Thank You!
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