Many years ago when my father still had his appliance repair business, he bought a majority of his tools at Sears. In fact Sears once had a store in Hazleton, PA. It closed way before I was born but I have heard stories about Sears being where the Hazleton Shopping Center is on Broad Street. There is now a UPS Store and an Urgent Care clinic there now. In fact the garage bays are still there as well. I'm not going into detail about the Sears and their history in Hazleton.
Where was I going with this? Oh yes, the story my Dad told me about when he tired to get his Craftsman Adjustable Wrench warrantied for a new one. You see the thumb adjuster wheel on my Dad's adjustable wrench had somehow fallen out. Everyone practically knows that Craftsman Tools have a lifetime warranty. However they tried to give my Dad the runaround. Instead of exchanging the wrench for a new one, they tried to fix it. That's right, they tried to repair it instead of giving him a new wrench.
According to my father, the Sears employee had attempted to fix the wrench by hitting the thumb adjuster wheel back into the wrench with a hammer. My father was quite annoyed at this bull that the Sears employee tried to do. My father told the employee that he shouldn't attempt to fix the wrench. The employee didn't listen to my dad at first. I remember my father telling me that the employee tried several times to place the thumb adjuster back into the hammer. My father had enough of this rigamarole from the Sears employee, that he demanded him to just give him a new adjustable wrench. The employee gave in to my father's request and exchanged the broken wrench for a new one.
I find this story funny because this all could have been avoided if the employee would have noticed that there was a screw holding the thumb adjuster wheel in place in the wrench this all could have been avoided. You see I was going through my father's Craftsman Tools today in the garage when I noticed his 12 inch adjustable wrench. The wrench was made by JH Williams which is ironically now the industrial brand of Snap-On Tools. The wrench has a JW stamp on it. Although when this wrench was made by JH Williams, they weren't bought by Snap-On then.
Anyway my father would later go on to buy Snap-On Tools in the 1970s to I guess the 90s as far as his business records go. I have a master list of when he purchased his Snap-On's. On that list is a Snap-On adjustable wrench. My father never had any warranty issued when it came to Snap-On tools. I believe the only time he had to wait for a replacement was for his magnetic shank for his soft grip ratcheting screwdriver. The reason being for the wait was because the Snap-On dealer was just getting started and being trained by a veteran Snap-On dealer. My dad had to wait a week for the new shank. My father didn't have a shop anymore so he had it delivered to his friends gas station. If you are wondering if we still own the Snap-On adjustable wrench, sadly we don't. We only have a handful of Snap-On tools left. I prefer the Snap-On Tools over Craftsman any day.
