sears and Amazon

Amazon.com and Sears came to an agreement by which Amazon.com will begin selling Kenmore appliances.  I have done a lot of business with Sears during my lifetime  but mainly because they carried what I needed but Sears didn't always make doing business with them a pleasant experience.  I distinctly remember one time I purchased a small item but got the wrong one so I took it back to Sears.  I expected to give them the one I had and get the one I needed and go home.  My item was unopened and the two parts were the same price.  But no, Sears could not even handle the transaction at the register.  I had to go to the back of the store to customer service, stand in line fill out a form get a refund then go back to the department to make my new purchase.
  Not only lousy customer service but one never felt appreciated but did feel like they were paying more for an item than it was really worth.  Even so Sears was always a fun store to shop it because they had everything and they were everywhere.  But now I do most of my shopping at Amazon.com.  Shopping is easy, fast. accurate and returns are not problematic at all.    But still one has to be cautious.  Not everything on Amazon is cheaper.
  In fact this week I wanted a certain book and it was $29,00 to $31.00 on Amazon but from the publisher it was $12.99.  In many cases the prices are the same and if they are I'll buy from Amazon rather than the original supplier for two reasons.  First, buying most of my stuff from one place limits the number of places my personal information is and the second reason it is much easier to return things for credit, exchange or Refund through Amazon.  Convenience and confidence means a lot.
  One would think being able to see and handle merchandise before purchasing would have an advantage over ordering from an impersonal website, especially if there was a live person to ask questions  but the truth is, the live person doesn't always know what they are talking about and I have had to return just as big a percentage of items I've purchase in a store as I have things I bought online.  Comparison shopping is so much easier sand one is more likely to find the exact item that meets ones needs online.  I only shop at stores if I need it now or if it is a perishable item (can't see buying ice cream on line even if it does come with free one-day shipping).
 The funny thing about Sears is they began to really expand when they put their emphasis on their catalogue dales.  Roebuck sold his part of the company because he didn't think there was a future in catalogue sales.  Instead of printing and distributing catalogues it would have been so much easier to distribute a web address and Sears could have been the first Amazon.  They had the name recognition and the supply line to have been successful.  But knowing Sears, they would have made you go to a customer service counter and wait in line to make a return
   Not so many years ago Sears made the fateful decision to get out of catalogue stores and concentrate on their brick and mortar operations when the wiser thing to do was to which over to online sales.  But many times we get stuck in a rut and think that if we just refine business as usual we can reclaim our former glory when we need to be either changing with the times or become innovative and initiate those changes.  One has to in order to be successful.