Thread regarding Sears layoffs

warranties are sold in a BK with money put aside to pay the costs.

Its sad but true they make more money on the credit apps and MA. right now it costs them $1.15 to sell $1.00 but the credit and MA is just free cash.. They literally can not make money selling anything physical.

My manager is keeping my departments' hours steady and as high as possible but I believe he is the exception. He has been trying to hire more people as well without luck. I think word is getting out people don't want to be on a sinking ship. My manager reminds us to always ask and shares tactics but he does not shove it down our throats or tell us to sell 5321 to our coworkers to improve our numbers. I have every reason to believe that my manager is shielding us as best he can becouse he knows we don't make enough money to put up with all the bull we have been. Having managers going around and harassing people after we have already told them about the promo is embarrassing. It makes me feel like we are desperate for anything, and that leads to people seeing this to not being intrested at all becouse they don't want their info sold.

Agreed. They actually brain wash a person who is strictly paid on commission to walk away from a sale because the person isn't buying a PA and it would hurt the persons numbers or metrics.

That makes absolute no sense. Why wouldn't the store want the profit from the sale?

I could write a book on this topic but here's a few comments. It's this sort of misguided thinking that got Sears where it is today. I was a commission salesperson when the PA/MA obsession first appeared in the early 1980's. All of a sudden getting the MA was more important than anything else. A $100 lawnmower sale with an MA was praised, while a $5000 tractor sale without the MA brought nothing but criticism. They turned commission selling into a miserable job focused on the "hard sell".

For a lot of years the enormous profit margin on maintenance agreements kept the company afloat. Contrary to what management might claim, MA/PA's are in fact nearly "pure profit" for the company. Sears would have gone out of business long ago without the profit dollars from these contracts. But the world changed while Sears focused on selling PA's. Most of Sears competitors had the good sense to skip the hard sell and focus on giving customers what they actually wanted in a store. Sears slowly fell apart.

Today it's just a desperation tactic. There is no way they are going to save the stores with PA's, credit, and SYWR. But store level and regional management can't change anything of consequence, so they focus on the trivial.

The threat is serious. They'll make your job life miserable if you don't "make the numbers". You mIght as well be working on getting out, since the of Sears retail is in sight anyway.

Both are free money with no obligation in bankruptcy court. And the collected contact info will be worth something at the bankruptcy auction unlike most things that are left.

This becoming a big thing at my store (kmart). Everyone is told that hours are based on PAs and 5-3-2-1. This is bull. We have the very few cashiers that we have who are always getting them only getting 1 day a week.

Our store is a huge mess and no one seems to care anymore.