Our pals-in-arms at the Consumer Reports National Research Center recently asked more than 26,000 readers to rate their shopping experiences at the nation’s top retailers — both in-store and online — and in spite of being a members’ only warehouse store, Costco came out looking the best. [More]
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First Sears And Kmart Closings Of 2012 Concentrated In Midwest And South
By 12.30.11
Sears Holdings, owner of the perpetually troubled retailer power couple Sears and Kmart, has released the locations of 80 out of the 100 to 120 “under-performing” stores that will close in the coming months. Most of the stores on this first list are in the southern and midwestern U.S. [More]
Sears To Shutter 100 To 120 Sears & Kmart Stores After Disappointing Holiday Sales
By 12.28.11
Sears is pointing to a big drop in this year’s holiday sales as the reason they’ll have to close 100 to 120 Sears and Kmart stores in 2012. Which means it’s your fault, consumers, for failing to shell out big dough at Sears. Kidding! Mostly. [More]
Not-So-Secret Santa Picks Up $16K For 1,000 Shoppers' Holiday Layaway Items
By 12.22.11
Call it holiday cheer or call it the best bandwagon we’ve ever seen, but yet another kind-hearted consumer has plunked down cash to make the season a bit brighter for his fellow humans. A man in Laguna Beach, Calif. shelled out almost $16,000 of his own money to pay for layaway items of 1,000 Kmart shoppers. [More]
Reader Pays Off Strangers' Layaway Tabs, Becomes Santa Claus
By 12.16.11
Reader Gail read our post last week about a mysterious benefactor who paid off $500 worth of layaway tabs for random strangers at a Michigan Kmart. She found it inspiring, but in a different way from most readers: the story actually inspired Gail and her husband to visit local discount stores and do the same exact thing for some families in her area. She shared how the experience works from the benefactor’s end. “I can’t remember the last time spending $100 made me feel so good!” she wrote. Here’s the best part: she’s not the only one doing this. [More]
Secret Santa Picks Up Kmart Customers' Layaway Tabs
By 12.7.11
This time of year, it’s not out of this world to hear about generous folks going around and dropping coins in parking meters or picking up a round of drinks for strangers at the bar. But some truly secret Santa has helped out three Michigan Kmart customers by picking up their layaway tabs. [More]
Sears To Make DieHard Batteries Available For Sale At Meijer
By 9.29.11
One month after Sears realized it could make more money by allowing its Craftsman tools to be sold through Costco, the retail chain has decided to allow another of its long-standing exclusive house brands to be sold by another retailer, as it has given Meijer stores the rights to sell DieHard car batteries. [More]
Your Complaint Is Not Important At Kmart If You're 'Just A Customer'
By 7.14.11
Terrie finished up her shopping at her local Kmart and headed for the checkout. She was horrified to see that each open checkout had at least dozen customers in line, and the store had no intention of opening any more. When she inquired about making her purchase at the jewelry counter or opening some more registers, she learned exactly how important customers are to this particular store. [More]
Why I Won't Ever Go Back To Kmart
By 6.24.11
Everyone has those moments as a consumer where we say, “Screw you guys, I’m not coming back.” For M., that moment came for her at Kmart when she came back to pick up a refill and learned that in order to take part in Kmart’s $10 for a 90-day supply generic drug program, she would need to enroll in the discounter’s new Kmart Pharmacy Prescription Savings Club for only $10 per household per year. M. chose instead to transfer her prescriptions to one of the many pharmacies offering the same price for her generic drugs, without having to sign up for any memberships. [More]
Kmart Doesn't Remember That It Sold These Shirts Without Ironclad Receipt Evidence
By 1.21.11
Roger is stuck with some clothes that relatives bought him for Christmas that don’t fit. Did these relatives cut the tags off? Buy him shirts from an obscure store with only a few locations? No. The shirts come from Kmart, which has so much trouble remembering its own recent inventory that they’ve deleted all trace of this recent merchandise from their systems and can’t take the shirts back. [More]
Sears Launches Video Download Service
By 12.28.10
As we reported back in June, Sears would be launching a video download service sometime around the holidays. Well, the holidays are here and so is the service. [More]
Why It Sucks To Be Sears Right Now
By 12.23.10
Five years after their merger, how are Sears and Kmart faring? Not so well. The company faces deteriorating stores in near-abandoned malls, fierce competition in nearly every category, locations that were prime retail space in about 1974, and snarky consumer bloggers that mock the company at every turn. Oh. [More]
Kmart's Online Doorbuster Is Kind Of A Bust
By 11.18.10
Maybe Kmart is now a massive anti-capitalist prank like its sibling store, Sears. They appear to sell things, and taunt consumers with sales and deals, but refuse to actually sell things to anyone. That would explain the advertised-but-defunct sale that Christina recently ran into. (Or a miscommunication between marketing and IT….but that’s way less fun.) [More]
How To Get The Best Deals At 10 Major Retail Chains
By 9.22.10
Everyone wants a bargain, which is why more Americans shop at discount chains like Target and Walmart than at any other type of big store. But a new survey of more than 30,000 subscribers by the Consumer Reports National Research Center reveals that folks are also finding low prices at department stores, warehouse clubs, and general-merchandise retailers. We recently reported on why consumers shop where they do. [More]
10 Stores With Cheap Generic Drugs
By 7.20.10
Cheap generic drugs are good for when you’re between jobs, between insurance, or if you’ve just got a prescription drug plan that is costing you too much money. You might find, as Wise Bread did, that a generic version of your medication actually causes fewer side effects in addition to being more cost-effective. [More]
Kmart Wants To Tape Your Video Game Reviews To Display Cases
By 7.15.10
Non-gamers who cruise video game aisles looking for gifts are bewildered at the strange sights from the lineup of game boxes. Kmart is asking gamers to help out those customers by submitting user reviews that they’ll post near games in the store. [More]
Up-To-The-Minute Coupon Codes For Hot Sales
By 6.23.10
The deal aficionados on the FatWallet message boards have various discussion threads devoted to providing the most current coupons for a slew of stores. Rather then dig for them, here’s a master list of their official store coupons and clearance threads. Members routinely get rid of dead coupons and post new ones, so this is definitely one to bookmark: [More]
Sears & Kmart Get Into Streaming Video Business
By 6.22.10
To those of us old enough to remember the pre-Blockbuster video-rental boom, when just about every type of retail store decided, however misguidedly, their was money to be made in renting VHS tapes to customers, this might seem like a bit of deja vu: Sears and Kmart are planning to launch a streaming video service. [More]
