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Lowe's supposedly honors the Craftsman lifetime warranty. I haven't tried it, last time I needed to use the warranty was 30 years ago when in the middle of some

Lowe's supposedly honors the Craftsman lifetime warranty. I haven't tried it, last time I needed to use the warranty was 30 years ago when in the middle of some car repair job I was doing I took the busted wrench into Sears, still dressed in my grimy clothes I was wearing and covered in grease, I handed them the broken wrench and they simply handed me a new one. No questions asked, no paperwork. They handed me a new one and I walked out the door.

berniedurfee 3y ago
Had the same experience many years ago. I have a bunch of old Craftsman tools that are superb quality and will last decades more. Sad to see them as an empty house brand now. Just like GE appliances, all that’s left is a sticker.
- Moto7451 3y ago
  On the bright side, due to how the Power Tool industry works, that Craftsman is in many cases the previous gen Dewalt for 1/3 the price. Others are Porter Cable in red and without a sales rep. I’m tied to Ryobi batteries but I happily pick up Craftsman corded tools when those are an option.
  - berniedurfee 3y ago
    Lol, yeah, if you Google “who owns which power tool brands” you can find the Rosetta Stone of tool brands to figure out which cheaper brands come from the same factories as the expensive stuff. It’s a web of deception for sure.
- RedShift1 3y ago
  Have you tried the GE Big Boys series of appliances? They look built like tanks.
- anymouse123456 3y ago
  I don't doubt there are plenty of experiences that went the wrong way, but wanted to share an alternative anecdote that went well. I bought a brand new ~$900 GE dishwasher last year (for a non-intended purpose) and needed to take it apart - for reasons. IMO, the engineering in this thing was just marvelous. It was almost entirely tool-free click/snap fittings for full disassembly and reassembly. The parts were good quality molded, stamped or machined. It was clearly a master class in balancing competing trade-offs (price, assembly labor, reliability, noise, power, efficiency, etc). The simplicity of the thing was really remarkable. Water falls into the side at whatever rate your tap delivers, and when a pressure sensor in the reservoir indicates enough volume to start, the thing begins. It does this a few times, pumping, re-pumping, heating and replacing that reservoir depending on the selected cycle, but overall, the thing is just incredibly simple and (hopefully, somewhat?) reliable.
  - berniedurfee 3y ago
    You actually bought a Haier dishwasher with a GE sticker on it. It’s hard to tell these days whether you’re buying a product from a brand you trust or from a company that bought the brand you trust. Though, having said that, I recently bought a Bosch refrigerator because Bosch is still Bosch and I trusted Bosch. But the refrigerator is crap, broken on arrival and it took 5 phone calls and 3 weeks to get service.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      In Haier's case they bought way more than "just" the GE sticker. Haier is still using factories built by GE Appliances for many of their GE branded appliances and in many cases using the same people/processes/pipelines as before. There's still plenty of nuance in these rebadging situations. It's also hard to tell without following a lot of business news whether the new owner just bought "the stickers" or bought all the original factories or bought some complicated deal in between.
    - anymouse123456 3y ago
      Good point. I forgot about the Haier acquisition. While I was pleased with this particular purchase, my ability to trust any brand in general has been diminishing with age and each new betrayal of that trust. I have a growing heuristic that is (at least in part) inversely related to number of employees and the time a company has been publicly traded.
packetlost 3y ago
Sears was still doing this when I worked there in 2016. They went as far as to bust open a set of 24 drill bits to replace one of them on the spot.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Wait. Someone returned a drill bit (a wear item) for replacement? Crap like that is why companies have walked away from consumer-biased warranty policies. LLBean had to change theirs as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ll-bean-changed-its-return-policy-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ll-bean-changed-its-retu...
  - aaronax 3y ago
    It is plausible that it did not live up to reasonable expectations in some way. Equally likely that someone was being dishonest though. Example: I once returned a board that I had cut in half. It was window trim with a shaped profile, and I had previously purchased and installed some of the same SKU before. When I went to install my freshly cut board next to the first ones, it was a little too obvious that it was from a different batch or manufacturer with a slightly different profile.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    I’d totally bring one back if it failed because they forgot to harden it or something. Put it in some wood and the first time you use it the threads reverse because the metal is so soft.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    What else is a lifetime warranty supposed to mean on a drill bit? It's not something vague like the "100% satisfaction" you linked. If they offer the warranty on drill bits, then there's nothing wrong with using the warranty on drill bits. It's not being a bad customer.

berniedurfee 3y ago

Had the same experience many years ago. I have a bunch of old Craftsman tools that are superb quality and will last decades more. Sad to see them as an empty house brand now. Just like GE appliances, all that’s left is a sticker.

Moto7451 3y ago
On the bright side, due to how the Power Tool industry works, that Craftsman is in many cases the previous gen Dewalt for 1/3 the price. Others are Porter Cable in red and without a sales rep. I’m tied to Ryobi batteries but I happily pick up Craftsman corded tools when those are an option.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  Lol, yeah, if you Google “who owns which power tool brands” you can find the Rosetta Stone of tool brands to figure out which cheaper brands come from the same factories as the expensive stuff. It’s a web of deception for sure.
RedShift1 3y ago
Have you tried the GE Big Boys series of appliances? They look built like tanks.
anymouse123456 3y ago
I don't doubt there are plenty of experiences that went the wrong way, but wanted to share an alternative anecdote that went well. I bought a brand new ~$900 GE dishwasher last year (for a non-intended purpose) and needed to take it apart - for reasons. IMO, the engineering in this thing was just marvelous. It was almost entirely tool-free click/snap fittings for full disassembly and reassembly. The parts were good quality molded, stamped or machined. It was clearly a master class in balancing competing trade-offs (price, assembly labor, reliability, noise, power, efficiency, etc). The simplicity of the thing was really remarkable. Water falls into the side at whatever rate your tap delivers, and when a pressure sensor in the reservoir indicates enough volume to start, the thing begins. It does this a few times, pumping, re-pumping, heating and replacing that reservoir depending on the selected cycle, but overall, the thing is just incredibly simple and (hopefully, somewhat?) reliable.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  You actually bought a Haier dishwasher with a GE sticker on it. It’s hard to tell these days whether you’re buying a product from a brand you trust or from a company that bought the brand you trust. Though, having said that, I recently bought a Bosch refrigerator because Bosch is still Bosch and I trusted Bosch. But the refrigerator is crap, broken on arrival and it took 5 phone calls and 3 weeks to get service.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    In Haier's case they bought way more than "just" the GE sticker. Haier is still using factories built by GE Appliances for many of their GE branded appliances and in many cases using the same people/processes/pipelines as before. There's still plenty of nuance in these rebadging situations. It's also hard to tell without following a lot of business news whether the new owner just bought "the stickers" or bought all the original factories or bought some complicated deal in between.
  - anymouse123456 3y ago
    Good point. I forgot about the Haier acquisition. While I was pleased with this particular purchase, my ability to trust any brand in general has been diminishing with age and each new betrayal of that trust. I have a growing heuristic that is (at least in part) inversely related to number of employees and the time a company has been publicly traded.

packetlost 3y ago

Sears was still doing this when I worked there in 2016. They went as far as to bust open a set of 24 drill bits to replace one of them on the spot.

sokoloff 3y ago
Wait. Someone returned a drill bit (a wear item) for replacement? Crap like that is why companies have walked away from consumer-biased warranty policies. LLBean had to change theirs as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ll-bean-changed-its-return-policy-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ll-bean-changed-its-retu...
- aaronax 3y ago
  It is plausible that it did not live up to reasonable expectations in some way. Equally likely that someone was being dishonest though. Example: I once returned a board that I had cut in half. It was window trim with a shaped profile, and I had previously purchased and installed some of the same SKU before. When I went to install my freshly cut board next to the first ones, it was a little too obvious that it was from a different batch or manufacturer with a slightly different profile.
- jandrese 3y ago
  I’d totally bring one back if it failed because they forgot to harden it or something. Put it in some wood and the first time you use it the threads reverse because the metal is so soft.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  What else is a lifetime warranty supposed to mean on a drill bit? It's not something vague like the "100% satisfaction" you linked. If they offer the warranty on drill bits, then there's nothing wrong with using the warranty on drill bits. It's not being a bad customer.